Yeah they need to do something because a lot of people are coming to a realization that SW:TOR offers most of the things people expected FFXIV to have. Namely a truly, genuinely, epic storyline.

What I'd like to see is just a bunch of gear and mobs and events added. A ton. Myself and my linkshell are sick of getting 1 boss every 3 months with 1 drop for each class with horrendous drop rates. 1.19 was a great patch, 1.18 was good... but 1.20 was rather ... uneventful. Sure moogle was a fun fight, and once you beat him it's about 200 kill grinds. Joy.

If they are going to a new engine it would still be nice to see a flood of items and loot and events to participate in. Ok so not all fights can be extremely epic like Moogle or Ifrit, but WoW and Rift and LOTRO and FFXI and every other MMO has lots of cannon fodder, tank and spank, minor challenges where you are limited by gear and you know what ... it works. It allows a change of flavor.


Point 1
If they turned every dungeon in this world into an instance, that can scale with your level, or has "Heroic/Hard/Elite/Epic/Whateverthehellyouwanttocallit" difficulty adjustments I think most people would be content. If every dungeon had a "Level 50 Hard" setting where all the mobs are scaled to be level 50 to 60, and all the bosses got massive stat increases, with some randomized loot at acceptable drop rates, I think we'd all have a blast for now.

What works for DDO was giving items random stats. Perhaps they could give us armor drops with random materia augments already socketed. Think about it for a min - they wouldn't have to script a lot of gear. Gear could have a random # of pre-socketed materia between 1 and 3 (leave 5 for crafters only i guess) and random stats and tiers. That way you'd have a chance of getting something meaningful from casual play, and you could make the armor Bound and Untradable if obtained this way.

Point 2
After playing Old Republic with some friends you really love the hell out of having NPC party members. We already have a Path Companion, having the ability to summon them at any time (and count as a party member, thus limiting their usefulness) and giving them a slight AI upgrade and stat upgrade would be highly welcome. Especially for soloers having difficulty with mage classes or slower-to-level jobs.