I think part of the reason why the game feels barren is because all the stuff we do doesn't transfer well into the game world. Battles are fought, history happens, but that doesn't show easily. Everything, from open landscapes to villages and kingdoms, looks and feels the same from the outside, even though its not. Some single player games counter that feeling by adding their own lore, but that's not the case here.
The suggestion is that we be given some tools to create some lore for the game. In other words, we need tools to make generic stuff more meaningful for us and for the unknown random player.
For example:
- Upon inspection, some items above a certain q would display the name of their crafter and place of origin, like "Ring crafted by X, in the kingdom of X".
- Weapons, in particular, could have a name given to them by some special action, costing gold, crystal or something to engrave. It could even show a list of its kills by another special action.
- Skeletons, as someone else suggested, would give some information on when and how the player died.
- Parchments should be more useful. They could be used by anyone to replay a song, be bound into rolls or books, send messages to people when they're offline, or even by a king to deliver messages directly to the hf of all his vassals, and so on.
- Expensive special king actions that create a permanent scent-like marker somewhere, allowing random people who are actively tracking to find out that "here queen X was crowned", "here a major battle between X and X was fought", etc.
- Monuments or large structures for community projects could be implemented. Huge trees that need top farming, water and soil to grow, ice colossus, wicker man, and things like that.
- Villages should have more customization props disguised as quality of life furniture, like tool racks to hang stuff outside, statues or mannequins that can be dressed in clothes and gear, torchpost additions that change ambient light color, glass display tables for curios, shelves for the same, and so on.