Not sure if this idea has already been thrown out there, But I think it's worth mentioning.
I heard the dev's would be dedicating an island to the villager+ tier characters, and I thought why not expand on that a bit and maybe insert a large sort of Guild hall. This way you have a more natural feeling of introducing these kickstarter characters as "Traveling Adventurers" or maybe the higher tier backers are staff of the Guild Hall.
With a random quest generator, you can turn these npcs into the ones that have more functionality. On the other side you can put the Kickstarter Shop for the exclusive items we got from kickstarter.
While maybe in the courtyard or in the middle of the guild could be large plaques with all the backers names ( instead of or along side with them in the credits). Each plaque can be separated by tier.
