It came to my attention that the developers respond to ideas and criticism is a decidedly one-sided manner by making locked threads and elevating them in importance compared to other posts in an almost dismissive fashion. Take this thread for example:
viewtopic.php?f=40&t=44710
This is Jorb addressing the issue of a potential peaceful game idea, it isn't that this argument is completely sound and gives absolute credence to the idea of a PvP game or even makes it necessary that the game be PvP, but because the discussion was locked it became a much more passive-aggressive 'discussion' in tone. For example you could argue that it is not that a more peaceful Haven & Hearth server would be impossible, just difficult. There is also the issue that PvP does not act as a great stand-in for options that could be resolved by code. It also draws interesting parallels between a simplified low risk game environment and the actions of criminals in the real world which at worst could be summed up as myopic interpretations of criminals and why they do things to blatantly offensive in the case that in real life, laws are dictated in some cases by people who are merely powerful and offer no basis for equity, subjective 'rightness', or fairness. That argument is also a moral point, not a functional one, morals do not solve game limitations, effort and coding does.
Take Loftar's post. Annoyingly, many of the situations in his post could have easy counter-points that would not even be that difficult to code (let's avoid this kind of 'oh it would be easy' talk, and let's look at runescape for example). I'm only going to make a point with one of his to show you the holes in this.
"What if a player blocks you?" Well, you make the other player capable of walking through them. Don't like the specifics? Make them only walk through them after repeated clicks and a given amount of time, or a toggle. It's approachable with many angles, this is a peaceful option and a quality of life change, of course it might lead to other unforeseen consequences, like PvP stacking, but that doesn't mean they can't be worked on, it means that with new features comes new challenges and the game must progress mechanically to account for them. Note that in solving a problem for peaceful players being griefed here, that it created a potential exploit for PvP situations. Making the game better for one play style over another may end up doing this sometimes.
Tl;dr
It's not that the game can't become more peaceful, or that grief would not be addressable by code or any of these arguments. The issue is a bit more complex, it's a designer philosophy too, Jorb does not want a peaceful game, let's not kid ourselves that this is a 'solution', it's an excuse to keep things the same.