I can't debate what I recommend from ingame experience since I'm new, so I will keep it to experiences from other games that may have limited my enjoyment as well as those games who have provided good features for me to enjoy. A mmorpg for me should be a game that enforces every aspect of it's community: experience hogs (I tend to be one myself in many games), merchants, simply social people, musicians (if there is such a thing in the game which I admit I have yet to find one if it is implemented), artists, player kill zones, inside multiplayer minigames (maybe tag), etc. Honestly I came quickly to recommend these features, without absolute knowledge of some existing, since I have only seen three people (none spoke a word lol) since I started (3 days ago not much).
1. The spirit of having a
global chat is to enhance communication between players. It's a step towards building an online community, which in my opinion comunication would be one of the fundamental aspects in need of such development. In some games, it is a mere tool for players to spam it with trading offers (which is actually good), but in games where there are alternate open systems (auction houses and others) for trading: global chat seems to be reduced to chatting. Thus adding a social and nifty prominent charasteristic for the game.
~Reaction to the external thread: Please tell me if I got it right. A global chat in the game would imply technical problems? Honestly I came here to leave a friendly recommendation, it is not in me, and pardon my if it may sound hostile, to start reading thread by thread on the forums cause the free time I have I'm reserving it for the gameplay.
2. I didn't know that
marriage was available. Sorry. Are there benefits to being married? Is it limited to guy to girl relationships or is it open minded? Are there places for honeymoons? Like treating the honeymoon as a quest with funny things in it.
3. A family tree might be too much, maybe adding an
adoption feature for a limited amount of sons/daughters and brothers and sisters. It doesn't have to be real but sometimes players even end up calling themselves sis or bro. Suggested benefit would be a small bonus on status when in party.
Sorry I got delayed, you know how the holidays are over

As you can see my intention is to benefit the social area, other than that I am pretty much clueless right now.