This game has so much potential, it was my favourite game when I was in middle school, I have played it all days long and enjoyed every minute of it (even though I got killed by Jorb for trying to steal his hat, but nevermind).
I still see so many ways for this game to be far more fun. I wonder why developers never try to do anything epic, this game is pretty much the same thing as legacy Haven, just on a new 3d engine and as you can see - it doesn't bring too many new players (partial problem was payment model, but that's another thing).
So why not to change scheme a little bit and actually add something really new? You could add dragons which would fly around the world and search for some comfortable caves so they can sleep there through the night. They could also kill random cattle and don't even try to tell me that you won't add anything like that because it doesn't fit to the scheme of game (which I am not sure what really is based on) or that it's unrealistic, cause you would have to remove these cave trolls and a lot of other nonsense too.
I am pretty sure that creating a very rare dragon scale armor would keep some players interested in the end-game.
You could add Grizzly Bears which would be far stronger than typical ones, they could also keep away from shores so killing them from boat wouldn't be possible.
There are literally hundreds of possibilites which I can think of, I guess that any - even small update every week would keep players happy and make them play and not just abandon game as they do now.
So that's what I expected this game to be now, after 4 years. Just something really epic in true sandbox world as pretty much any other sandbox MMO has failed at this what made Haven special.