How to bridge the gap between ROLEPLAYING and video games.  Wouldn't you like to roleplay a Daemon?  (replacing word God with Daemon)

"Alpha characters?  Didn't Jedi destroy SWG."  Absolutely, but that's because they played on the same realm as everyone else.  Imagine a game where you're character can level up to Daemon status, but the catch is:

  -You're stuck in the realm of the dead, if you enter the mortal realm (ironically where there is no permadeath) you have to go incognito, as an ordinary average character with no special abilities, just like in AD and D.  And if you're ganked whlie incognito you lose some "energy".

  -Mega-Permadeath.  If you die while in an immortal battle your entire account is wiped.  It's all or nothing.  You can only die to another immortal, or maybe if enough players do something special in the mortal realm.  Or maybe mortal characters enter the immortal realm and do battle, that stuff use to happen in AD and D.

  -It's hard work.  You have to design your own realm of the dead, with tools made by developer, sort of like modding

  -Anyone can grade your roleplaying and realm you designed, so use them emotes.  You will have a number next to your name; good roleplayer or 1337 dickwad will define you, not your level.   Possible penalties for bad roleplayin;  leet speak, metagaming, substituting ye-olde-english for real roleplaying.

Each newly made daemon will chose their theme:  Good, Evil, neutral (effects PVP, or PVP effects this).  Elemental theme  (fire, water, air, earth, cloud, ice, etc)  Each object in the world, from the lowly stick to castle will have an elemental theme created by developers but restricted to daemons.

Each player choses which daemon, clique, to belong to.  So when they die they enter the immortal realm for how long or short their stint in heaven/hell/shaeol is, which is determined by daemon.  Some players would like a badass looking afterlife when they die, some don't care if it's an empty room which immediately respawns them.

"What purpose does a daemon serve  if they cannot even be in the mortal realm?"

The daemon player, while a boring job, selfishly plays their theme (selfish is natural for a gamer), attempting to progress their theme on the mortal world  (good, evil, neutral, elemental, maybe more themes, who knows) in a sort of real time strategy way.  They will be given limited real time strategy tools to spawn stuff belonging to their theme, including NPC's, in the mortal realm.  They can spawn items in either the upper realm or mortal realm that only belong to their theme when their energy levels reach a certain point, and mortal followers (ironically with no permadeath) have to feed their daemon that certain theme energy.   Just like in AD and D. 

Perhaps occasionally if your followers feed you enough energy, they can summon you to walk to mortal realm and create havoc or something like that.  It's a sort of feedback thing, the daemon needs to advance the position of followers, the followers feed the daemon energy somehow, with maybe sacrifices or something.

"Everyone will want to play A Daemon then, too many Chiefs and not enough Indians sort of things."

Not really.  You have a small realm that belongs to you that you can't leave.  Most of your interaction with mortal realm will only be from one perspective, a top down view, if you want a first person view you have to enter incognito and you can't effect anything that way, only communicate.  You might bore of your theme after a few days.   You can't advance your character, you can only make your realm look better, and try to get more followers.  You are constantly serving the needs of your followers.   You have to constantly roleplay, and don't be afk for too long.  Mega-permadeath.

Gods in AD and D didn't Raid till they dropped, they advanced their "theme" in the mortal realm.

Think of it as like quests and quest rewards.   The player Daemon will make the quest and create a reward for it (based on theme), a mortal player will chose a quest if the reward is great enough (supply and demand).  The daemon needs something done, like an evil fire daemon who wants to destroy a good water daemon's castle in the mortal realm but has to pick off some of the archers on the wall first:

-Spawn an ugly fire imp quest giver

-Create a quest which says if a player kills 10 good water themed archers, then rewards this evil fire themed weapon or armor, or just plain old gold.

The average character can be completely oblivious to everything that is going on in the immortal realms, they will just see quests that seem to be reacting to what's happening around them in real time and battles that have a purpose and aren't  as arbitrary as in your average static wow-clone world.

Priest class returns to it's roots.  

Spirits and elementals are NPC's spawned by daemon players in their immortal realms that can't leave a particular daemon's realm.  Normal activities for spirits and elementals is randomly meandering back and forth in one spot, like your average mob in your average MMORPG.  Good for defending a spot when afk, bad for attack or anything more involved.  If you want more activity out of a spirit or elemental you need another player.

A priest player character can take control of spirits and elementals and allow them to invade another immortal realm, or rarely enter mortal realm.  When a player priest character is remotely controlling spirits and elementals they look either asleep or in a trance.  Maybe require an object to do something like this.

Priests also funnel their daemon certain objects from mortal realm to increase their daemon's "energy".  Without it the daemon can't spawn anything.  So if their daemon's theme is say disease, then they feed their daemon diseased objects, if their daemon's theme is water, then they feed their daemon water themed objects.  Something like this. 

Priest characters also directly drain their daemon of "energy" when they use their spells, so the priest and daemon players will have be coordinating the most.

"What's the reward for priest when controlling spirits and elementals?  Experience, objects, level up"? 

Nothing.  That's the beauty of it, there is no character advancement for priests controlling spirits/elementals engaged in immortal realm battles, just as there is no character advancement for daemons, period.  Only players interested in roleplaying will be involved.  Although no doubt some guilds will attempt to metagame this.  But don't expect many unaffiliated players to partake in thei rmetagaming, and where more players = better this won't help their metagaming attempts.