I think they are thinking deeper with emergent gameplay this time. Not just oh look, people are using fear in combination with snare, or people are using FD to split stuff. I think in EQ Next they are looking at emergent gameplay outside of combat mechanics. Like they want people to own their own towns and care about them, so that when someone comes along to threaten it, they will be a serious enemy. And if someone is a respected trader or tradeskiller, the player might offer some kind of incentives to those types of players to hang around in his town. Maybe he will make money from the town by taking a cut of trades or something, or maybe the towns generate their own income somehow. And if so, maybe he will then hire players to help him protect his town. So players become part time Guards or something.
Maybe if players are no longer quest grinding, the rich people who are building their own towns might hire a player or group of players to go and chop some valuable wood from a far and dangerous place. Adventurous types will go and do that for the XP and then make cash from selling the materials.
Maybe mages can set trees on fire and it spreads like wildfire through a forest, injuring all the mobs - making for easy XP. But maybe those trees were needed by some players. So you have two groups of players with opposing needs. Something might come from that. If PVP is enabled.... a tradeskiller might hire players to go and kill other players who are disruptive by burning forests etc.
I'm sure there will be emergent combat stuff too, if you give players an interesting variety of spells and skills, smart people will inevitably come up with their own sneaky combinations. But I think the interactions between the players and the world is going be a bigger deal this time. That's what they are leading us to believe anyway.
