An Idea I had a while ago, was that during character creation, you would go and plot out the course your character took during life up until the game started. so for example, what kind of schools they went to, what decisions they made, what jobs they had, etc. And from that it would generate they're starting traits.
I am personally not a fan of this. It turns character creation into a guessing game, and generally feels like a long and boring process when I just want to start playing. I find it to detract from LCS, ADOM, and other games that use it. Like always, my opinion may be swayed by a convincing demo.
Which do you think is more important in the game: balance, or fun? It isn't a multiplayer game, so in my opinion it doesn't need to be perfectly balanced. If a change would allow few who wish to break the game balance to do so, but gives many more players the ability to make characters they find fun, would it be worth it? If a player likes min/maxing, would it hurt the game to allow it for him as a side effect?
I feel as though it is the job of a game designer to balance the game for the player. Generally, players want to do well/achieve success in a game, have fun with a game, and often be able to use the game as a platform for creativity (which can take many forms--character design, gameplay strategy, etc). If the game is set up in such a fashion that to achieve optimal success means to limit yourself in creativity, that detracts from the overall fun of the game, and it becomes an exercise in rote performance of "that which is best."
It's also worth nothing that Cataclysm can be played as a kind of multiplayer game, on an SSH or telnet server. This was never an intentional design feature--just a happy side effect of how the persistant map works--but I don't want to limit or preclude future development in this area just yet. If a player wants to min/max or break the game balance, it's easy enough to edit the code and compile at home.
Regarding the persistant world:
Meta-gameplay is definitely an intended feature. Factions are slowly getting fleshed out, and personally I think it will be great fun to play two different characters on opposite sides of a conflict, or to have your second character seek to avenge the first's death. I also think it's awesome to find trails of carnage, to stumble upon old stashes, etc., especially on a shared world (SSH or telnet server).
There's no win condition(s) yet, but they are vaguely planned, and they'll be somewhat epic in scope. Long-term survival will become much more difficult once NPCs are reinstated, and winning the game will almost certainly require the efforts of several consecutive characters.
Besides, if you don't like the persistant world, it's easy enough to delete the save directory when you die.