well since this seems to be some sort of wishlist rant fest in here..
I liked the bind soul mechanic, and the porting in eq1, specifically that wiz vs druid were different ports, and that the porter went with you. Some group asking me for a port to plane of hate for a corpse run was actually a risky proposition. in fact, I think it would be a great idea to make most of the port destinations (if there is going to be ports) risky/hostile. if they are used enough players will keep the area safe just with through traffic, if not, then you may want to be prepared to die.
Also leashing. there needs to be some sort of reasonable test for a leash length, (if any). someone who is level 20, shouldn't be able to run through a zone that is meant for level 20. maybe 1/10th of the way through before they die. unless they are real careful. how to implement that? no idea, maybe a factor of resists/miss of ranged attacks from the mobs etc? snares whatnot. but being able to run through damn near anywhere in most games in annoying as hell.
also pulling gorenaire onto kc was good times. so yeah fuck leashing in general.
I liked the buff someone else with whatever which ties into powerleveling, begging for sow or hell wolf form from some mid 30's druid before going into unrest. that shit was boss.
Twinking in general, was good times. And Instead of using bop and boe as a crutch for keeping a crafting market viable, make gear in general able to be broken into something that was useful and consumable (am thinking soul shots ala L2). some other method of having equipment exit the world. also make crafting somewhat of a pain in the ass, I recall the shitlots of plat it took to level all the crafts to make that fucking earing. it sucked. but at the same time rewarding.
Also, content that when you go into it, you are committing, whether it be due to back spawns or some other mechanic, plenty of groups would clear part of hate and then campout till x time the next day etc to finish it. that kinda shit was great you felt like you were really on some sort of adventure, you were disconnected from the rest of the world for a time. vs oh raid times over, better fuck off to town and check ah, click on some button to be right back where we were in whatever instance the next day.
Corpse runs. fuck yes. xp loss, absolutely. actually losing a level? please god.
Also as someone else mentioned dunno how the fuck many pages back, Negatives, for the love of Christ let there be lots of them. Attacking a fire elemental with fire? that better be doing zippo dmg or even better, heal/buff it or reflect the dmg. Selecting the right tools for the job and having various levels of draw backs for how poor of a choice you made really needs to be a thing. Resists need to fucking matter, and not be super easy to swap around, other then the base resists on the actual gear itself maybe only allow 10-15% additional from spells and enchantments an shit. I want to have to farm and maintain all sorts of shit.
Skills too, for everything. leveling blunt or some crap because you got something nice but have always been using daggers previously. Yeah it may kinda suck spending the time to level it, but it reinforces (whether you realize it or not) just how good your new toy is, if you are willing to go through with it.
Classes having significant differences in solo abilities. every god damn mmo these days makes every class able to solo to max level. Not that you technically couldn't in eq1, but there was a massive difference between a war soloing to max vs a druid or shm, etc. that shit needs to come back. it was imo a critical part of meeting people. many classes were far more effective grouping, and that built circles of friends, where as classes that could solo really well and the ones that chose to solo all the time felt the draw backs of not readily finding a group when they wanted to do group content, as they weren't making any friends. They would sit there max level at some zone in, begging for a group. in the solo vs non solo classes the trade offs were social vs xp vs access to content.
What else, oh yeah, fucking quest markers and journals and shit. fuck all that in it's ass. I don't want to be led around, I want to figure that shit out. quest items too, killed some random odd looking skeli? dropped some bone of aids? the shit is this? no idea... good.
No god damn skill macros. no pressing 1 and then 2 and then 2 and then 1! hurray your "uber". also I dunno how feasible this is but mobs need to do shit that is randomly defensive. not so much or so quick to make it pure twitch gaming but often enough that if you are sitting there doing some kinda mindless rotation you have to go, ah fuck, and do something else. hell if you could make it so the mobs recognize that ppl are following some sort of skill pattern, and to raise shields or some shit as soon as some stacked up buffed big hitter is about to come down on them. Just to screw with rotation kid that managed to press a few buttons in order for 20 mins straight, that'd be great.
Gear and mudflation, that will be a bitch to manage, but I can think of a few examples of items that stuck around for quite some time, like wiz legs from plane of fire, or hell the like level 5? or some crap instant cast tiny debuff stick that i'm sure piles of ppl had pretty much forever. damn if i can remember the name of it. not sure where i'm going with this point but on gear in general, no token bullshit, if rng hates your face, sucks to be you. everyone can't get everything, also seeing some vendor with all the "raid gear" on it is ass. I don't want to know everything about the endgame gear day one, also why the fuck can't i just kill that bitch if they have all that shit.
Oh and vendors, eq1's vendors please. vendor mining was a good waste of time and money, sometimes you struck gold or a huge amount of crafting mats from low levels etc other times it just sucked. but either way. it was good.
oh yeah, if everything can die. excellent.
rare spells and shit? sounds good, but i think they need a % chance to burn themselves out of your mind.
shit no ones gonna read all that anyways i'll stop here.