I really like the politics/drama angle Caeden mentioned.
I want statues in the main city that update each week with the top players or guilds. You were the best at PVP, tradeskill, or whatever last week? You get a statue in the center of the city and a buff/prize. if you get lazy or whatever someone else gets it next week.
In addition, I want some type of encyclopedia (Warhammer had something like this iirc) that has player lists of top performers in various categories. It would also track tons of things like, who killed you and when, bestiary, lore, a notepad that I could add to, etc. It would also show the top players with kill steal complaints against them. Top 10 each week become flagged kill on sight to all players and they can be looted 1 item from their account (certain restrictions apply). Let the players police themselves to an extent. This encyclopedia would have a ton of info and be constantly evolving, allowing players to have something to do on the side during downtime.
I would also like there to only be 3-10 guild halls available in the main city. You can have smaller guild halls out of the way in the open world but the best and most useful ones go to the guilds who earn it. The top 3 in the city go to the best guilds in terms of progression, pvp, trade skills, etc. The rest of the guild halls are decided on different factors (most active, largest, etc) For example, Fires of Heaven is the best guild on the server for 4 weeks and as a result they are awarded the top guild hall in the city. But maybe they struggle with some new content and Afterlife overtakes them. Fires of Heaven receives an eviction notice and is booted to the second ranked guild hall the next day (there would be some type of auto save for items placed in the guild hall so that when FOH regains control their items appear in the same place). Obviously, there are alot of issues to be worked out and ways to make it better but I think the drama would be awesome. Also, each guild hall would have a public front area that is open to all players. This front room would include trophies, heads from raid kills, or replicas of rare weapons. These could be changed and modified by the guild to what they want to display. Say a guild had killed Rallos Zek, Tallon, and Phinny they now have the ability to display that mobs trophy in their front room. Maybe they kill a rival guild leader or officer they can display their trophy/head as well. Front rooms would also serve as the guilds marketplace where they sell their loots and wares. It would be interesting to do away with server wide auction houses and allow guilds to employ their own auction houses and let the economy evolve around that.
I have some more ideas but I gotta get back to work.
SOE, if you wanna hire me now you can
