NPCs can be hired to do the work for you and a profit can be made from the business, even with absentee owners. Scripted quests and subquests will abound that will charge characters with exploration, killing of monsters, and other events both economic and political. Computer controlled monsters and characters will have intelligence and be sufficiently complex to give them social structure. Monsters will not just attack to be mean, but for reasons of hunger, economic need, something like a Maslow chart of needs and desires. Rules about unprovoked attack or attacking another player within a city prohibit senseless random mayhem.
Attacks are punishable by incarceration or worse, fines.
There will be an involved judicial system which will meet out swift justice. There must be a balance between the guilds of the dark arts and the rights of citizens to live unmolested under the protection of the city guards. Graphics resemble those of Ultima VI where the NPCs have a life of their own and continue on a daily schedule of human like activities. Baking bread, drawing water, making dough, making pastries, and other events that will be familiar to those who played Ultima 6. The normal high quality orchestral Ultima music that is constantly changing in ebbs and flows of melody.