All of these issues have been fixed in other games you know.
I go back to my previous argument that changing some of these things is just changing what makes EQ EQ, or SoD SoD. The downtime thing for example, I agree, raiding is slooow and involves an inordinate amount of waiting around around doing nothing. But when you talk about getting rid of downtime, don't you realise that every other game has already done that? You are just doing what Blizzard did in 2001 or something. They looked at EQ and said yeah it's pretty good, but why does there have to be so much waiting around?! Along comes WoW and they fixed that perfectly. You now are back to full just moments after each fight, and it makes the whole experience far more action packed and combat orientated. You enter the zone, engage the first trash mobs and then the second, then up the hill and kill the next few. Then kill the first mini boss, on to the next, and soon enough you are at the big bad guy and you're done. It makes everything in to a dungeon crawl type experience.
It's fun, not sure if it's actually 'better' than EQ/SoD, it's just different. But if you are going to play something like that, why not just play Rift? Or WoW or whatever else. They are all like second generation games which have already fixed all these issues people have with EQ/SoD.
But not only that, you've also got Guild Wars 2 coming soon which has improved on even those newer generation games. I'm in the beta and I'm pretty blown away by it. They are just smarter than everyone else and their game is going to show the world how their new way is the best. Not only is there no downtime, but there isn't even any mana. Your spells have cool downs and take time to activate so the tactics are in what you use and when, and how well you use it, and using the wrong thing doesn't waste your mana, it wastes your time instead. So they basically made time in to a resource which completely manages to replace the concept of mana. They also did away with roles all together, so there's no such thing as waiting for the healer, because healers dont even exist. You are never sitting around waiting for anything in that game. You are never hanging around LFG, never wishing something would be happening that isn't, because the entire game shapes itself around you. If you attack a giant by yourself, the giant scales to put up a good fight against one person. If a bunch of other people show up, it scales and puts up a fight for however many people are attacking and rewards each person for whatever they put in to it. It solves everything. There is no kill stealing, no solo/group content, no waiting for people, no nothin. It's just one big constantly entertaining experience.
I don't even know where you go with this. My only instinct is to either make SoD one extreme or the other. Either make it super old school more like p99, or make it super modern more like GW2 or something. But all these tweaks keeping it somewhere in between is just making it less attractive to anyone who prefers games one way or another. In other words, if people are really hankering for less tedium, then they are crazy to even log in to SoD at all.
