"Grinding" (never heard the word used in this context before) would be replaced by just purchasing skills in-game with BTC, or by hiring other players who've grinded/bought their way to the physical/financial/etc state you want them in. Why spend 3 weeks collecting magic levels when you can buy a shop protection spell, or hire a tough to hang around your door? Obviously there will still be some grinding/farming happening, but it won't be necessary and will only be for those who want to earn BTC without providing or creating anything that the public deems useful / worth buying.

In-game tech support requests get sent to the Hall of Wisdom, where you can read the ancient scrolls of FAQ, or hire an expert to help you organize the items in your shop, hone your farming skills, etc.

Want an off-limits area of the map opened up? Approach the Council of Elders, who will decide amongst themselves whether or not to enable it. Can they be bribed? Who knows.

Make (or lose) some quick money by stumbling into a gambling house, and trying your luck at some dice.

Based on how much money a character is spending in-game, more or fewer money-making opportunities will present themselves. Little kid who's farming wheat for 1mBTC a day? He might get lucky and find a 25mBTC coin in the soil every once in a while. Shop owner who pushes BTC10 of revenue a month out the door? Maybe the mayor gives him a prime location for his new shop, or the keys to the city.

Fact of the matter is that the splash page is a red herring; nobody gives a fuck about the splash page. Any dummy with a Wacom tablet can pull one together in a couple of hours. The meat and potatoes of this "create a splash page and we'll make a game around it" contest is that you're fishing for game ideas without saying as much. So I'm going to keep sketching out details of the game that's gonna put S.MG on the map (we've only scratched the surface), and you and MP are going to either take the freebies I've given you so far and run with them, or you'll realize that this project is enormous, too big for yourselves and one 20-hour-a-week programmer, and start, y'know, paying the people who are creating your game for you. Or I'll get tired of handing out freebies and you'll miss out on all the ideas I haven't come up with yet.

Assembling a round table of people who aren't idiots is a good start; more ideas will obviously follow when the council of non-idiots realizes that their ideas aren't just being pissed into the wind.