I hope they don't delve any more deeper into alternative timelines than they already have. That is always messy, seldom done well and a bit of an overused plot device.

I hope, if they use Atomos, its as it already has been used, as a way to travel between shards. That way we can keep a connection with the first and Ryne could travel between and it could keep Thancred and Urianger in the Eden questline. This also opens the potential for us to travel to the 13th to help purge it of darkness. However at the same time I would much rather see more of our own world before we go galavanting between shards again.

Creating a stable portal between the source and the first is a way to keep the first in the picture in a much more meaningful way. It's already a shame we have no reason to visit the zones we were given in previous expacs, so this would make it easy for the writers to connect the two.