Let's say there are few large safe zone cities around the map - with NPC traders, quests etc. connected with roads. Each city has a different price for items, for example one favores hunting stuff like leathers, second one contains farms, third one lies in the mountains and has cheaper iron. You can buy in one place and sell it in another. You can set a caravan (wagon) for larger trading that can be attacked by other people during the journey. So you hire people in city to protect your caravan against bandits and reward them if it's succesful. This involves some PvP and PvE combined.
There are battlegrounds between factions every week/month for each city to capture and own it, get rewards from taxes and stuff. You can register your faction for it.
Also some NPC quests - NPC caravans to protect and raid
Would like haven & hearth like this ? It would increase player base to 1K IMO because people would enjoy different styles of playing and play the game more