A good story that has goals worth working towards. Good quest stories too and small cutscenes + fame as a reward for completing them.

Above all I want all the things that wold be in an old school story driven non-mmo rpg.

XI had those and it was the only thing that managed to make me play an MMO and not feel like I'm just pointlessly running on a treadmill.

Gear should be tools for the player to reach goals but if they're the only goals to work towards then I don't see a point in playing at all.

Overall I think people have the same standard for a mmo that they do for a single player experience and I don't know why that is. XI managed to feel like a FF title because it didn't subscribe to the modern lazy way of mmo design and the main game was built around a core that could easily be just a normal FF-rpg without the mmo aspect in it.

(if everything was soloable that is)