@Theroleplayer I think for some people (myself included) it's hard to self-motivate like that. I used to delete my alive & well characters and start again because the initial survival is fun, but now I'm too good for that too
The only pleasure I currently get is starting a new char when a new version comes out (can't wait for the upcoming one!
). This means I play a few weeks per year at most.
What is usually proposed as long-term goal has the advantage of enabling a big set of smaller goals to keep people interested:
Animal husbandry: keeping your animals alive, let the healthiest ones reproduce and kill the weakest for food, defend them from predators, sell them for that sweet hauberk, accumulate/process wool.. and probably more stuff.
Family: find a compatible wife/husband, do quests to marry her/him, build a farm, let her/him settle and do the house chores (perfectly linked to animal husbandry above?) while you go adventuring, make kids (and keep them fed! You probably need to mix passive and active hunting with agriculture and fishing to give them a stable supply of food), protect your family from predators/njerpez/robbers, teach skills to kid so that when they reach adulthood they can do some tasks decently, and finally.. when your char dies, you take control of one of your kids, and the cycle starts again.
Settlement: expand your family by accepting friends from other settlements and allow them to build near you: you'd be the village elder and have a whole new set of quests to keep your settlement fed and happy and protected. You could mould the people into hunters, farmers or whatever you deem necessary to prosper.