I have played many RPG games and have many insights into what I would like to see added, in my opinion, to enhance the in-game experience. NOTE: Other games may be referenced to create a better understanding of the suggestion.
1. What you don't know, you can't know. This referrs to the proverbial "Fog of War" where you can only see on your map where you have actually already been. This has been done fairly well on Diablo I and Diablo II. This 'exploring the land' is part of what playing a "whole world game" is partly all about. If you know where everything is at the beginning, you are only trudging through without learning. This option could be accomplished by finding, or being given, a map paper of Dorpat during the tutorial which may show just the outline of the area without details and those would be filled in as you explore the world. Wizardry 8 has a means to also add personal notation to the overhead map in addition to the automatic information such as is currently contained in the available Wiki. By the way, the Wiki is great but needs to be learned and not just provided.
2. Creature stats. Only after you have eliminated a creature could you know their health stat and only after they have dropped an item could you know that they carry that item. These are currently knowable through the Wiki but should be learnable through actual battle. Perhaps an enhancement on a riing or even a piece of armor (forgable) when worn would allow other information to be learned such as 'DEF', 'ACC', etc. Each time a new drop occurs, your personal Wiki info would be updated for your future reference. The enhancement could be a drop and forging would be a means of attaching the enhancement to the chosen item always with a chance of failing which would only destroy the enhancement and not the item. Eh, you took a shot. It didn't work. Better luck next time. Add these to your 'Book of Enhancements' which takes up only one slot in you chest and would be catagorized by the stats they enhance.
3. Books of learning and recipes. Initially, your trainer would give you a recipe for what they are teaching such as "Mining: Two sand may forge into a small vial". As a part of your first quests, finding books on Forging, Crafting, Carpentry, etc, would activate the in-game Wiki mod for that skill and your recipes which start out taking up space in your inventory would transfer into the book when you bring the book to the forge or fire pit or anvil, etc. Having the recipe in your inventory would add 2.5% to your success rate. Putting it in your book adds 5% to your success rate. Finding another copy and putting it into your book would each add an additional 5% untill you reach 100% (or 95% since nobody is perfect) as a master for that recipe (adding more after max does nothing, so don't even waste your time). A new player could sell his first copies for easy early cash and once sold the drop rate would reset as if he/she never picked it up. Drop rates begin at some predetermined rate and reduce as you find more copies. As far as weapons and armor are concerned, instead of selling them, you could take them to a forge and 'break them down' for the first one to create a basic % chance of making the item and both your skill level and finding a recipe paper would contrbute to a greater chance of success. Also finding recipes for the higher end equipment would be possible once you reach the appropriate level and complete quests or eliminate creatures who wear that gear or carry that recipe.
4. Movement. As a game design limitation, diagonal movement isn't possible but this isn't a drawback, just a condition of the game. However, when moving to a square which is diagonal to your current position, whether you first move 'up' then 'right' or 'right' then 'up', could put you in a battle with a nearby monster. Using the 'wasd' keys is massively helpful in these situations to avoid a fight or to intentionally start one. What I would like to see is that if you are on a path and you select a location also on that path furthest away from you, that your character stays on the path when moving the entire distance. This wouldn't effect crossing a path from a non-path tile to any other even if your character moves over multiple path tiles during the trip. This would also only effect those times when the entire journey is visible to you in the current window. Selecting a path destination from a path tile when not in full view would cause the character to go 'cross country' to make that trip. This is similar to being outside of the town of Reval while gathering sand. When you get far enough south to see the path into the town, you can click in the town and watch your guy walk down, over and up to the end location faster than if you did it manually by clicking section by section or using the 'wasd' keys.
5.Technology. Well, really, there is none. Call me crazy, and many have, but tech, or inovation, would make the game less time intensive but more creative. If you were able to create a mining operation for sand which would automatically dig and deposit it into your chest, you would be freed to persue other aspects of the world. But, as soon as you automate, perhaps at a very high mining level, your sand would no longer be sellable on the in-game market and anything made with that sand would also not be sellable. Diablo I has a glitch where a player can drop an item on the ground, walk away from it some distance and then click on the item. The character walks over to the item and it is automatically picked up and put into inventory if it will fit. However, if the player clicks on a potion or scroll in the speed slots at the bottom of the screen at the right moment, two items are created. One goes into inventory and the other is held by the player and can be dropped on the ground or, if a potion or scroll, placed in the speed slots directly. So long as the duplicate item remains in the characters inventory, the item can be worn, drunk, cast or sold. But when it and another copy is removed from inventory and put on the ground, one of them is destroyed for being a copy. This also happens when duplicate rings are worn and the player dies. You can duplicate money but can't leave it on the ground as the duplicate would be destroyed. You can effectively launder money by duplicating an expensive item and then selling the item (keeping one copy for future laundering needs). I mention the Diablo glitch since the marker attached to a duplicate item could be incorporated into automated materials to keep them from being mixed with manually harvested goods.
Automating sand would not automate mining tin. Automating tin would not automate copper, etc. Perhaps, then, a max quantity of base materials would be available for use, say, 500 units, which would then resupply as you use them to make your equipment or furnature or jewelry molds (perhaps limit molds to 10 or 20 with a slow recovery rate giving the player time to find the ingrediants and recipes to make the jewelry). So, to recap, you begin digging sand, mining tin + copper and chopping fir trees. You turn sand into small vials, tin + copper into brass bars and fir trees into fir logs for making weapons and armor. You fill the vials with water to make soil to farm (at least filling the vials with water is 100% successful). You then automate the sand to small vials filled with water so that now, when you farm, you can concentrate on farming and not harvesting the raw materials to supply the farming. There will be a refresh rate on the operation. If you have one sand mining operation, one sand unit per minute of game time and having two would produce two untis per minute, etc. limited only by the number of sand piles available in the game and the 500 units per space available in the chest. You will have to build each automatied unit and find the next available mining location to increase your production rate. Most players who reach level 20 in forging will find that they no longer even harvest tin or copper and over level 40 they stop mining iron as you begin making better equipment without those base materials. Automating tin, copper, iron and beyond becomes useless while sand and timber is continuously needed and automating these makes sense. Making the island bigger and having more tree material available, players could build mansions or castles as an aside to making a stonger fighting character.
I have never played Second Life, but people there create clothing and accessories among other items and while they sell these pixels for Earth world money, it is the creativity I am interested in. In this game, once a player reaches a high enough level, just walking around eliminating pixel monsters becomes a non issue. Once fully automated, each player could develope their island to an insane degree of complexity and perhaps make it possible for players to create new, custom, in-game items. Using Minecraft, people have created working memory circuits, the Starship Enterprize, massive buildings and that is just using cubes of varrying types and colors.
These are just my opinions and suggestions for future modifications published here for your consideration only and are not meant to lessen the existing game in any way. As Mr. Spock has never said (provide a reference if you know of it) "There are always possibilities".