Really, one really only needs to look at pen and paper RPGs to discover what would be awesome things to add to EQ in a perfect world:
Tradeskills: as mentioned, they should be much more useful. In traditional pen and paper RPGs, almost everything up until the end of the game is purchased at shops from merchants. Rules are in the game to make just about anything. Think about it - everything in the game (except for those items that are biological in nature) were created by someone, sometime and then became named and a part of lore afterwards. In a perfect EQ world, rules should exist and I should be able to make "Hobiewan's dragon slaying staff". It could either be a traditional great staff that, due to some heroic deed while fighting an evil dragon was imbued with magical dragon slaying properties by Karana himself, or it could just be something I made due to the knowledge I had of fighting dragons. Kill 4 dragons and you now get the ability to imbue items with dragon slaying properties due to your knowledge of dragon slaying.
Loot: Killing a sabertooth tiger should always provide the adventurer with chunks of meat, sabertooth hides, etc... Killing a griffin should provide the adventurer with 100's of feathers, not a rare chance at 1. Killing Quillmane should not provide a Pegasus cloak - it should provide Pegasus feathers that a very skilled tradeskiller can then make into a cloak.
Quests: Really - what sane person wants billions of gnoll fangs? How many times can an epic quest giver really ask for Venril Sathir to die? In a perfect EQ world, quests would be given at random and would be given more from players than from NPCs - we outnumber NPC's anyway. In a perfect world, players could award experience based on those quests. In a perfect world, EQ would have a player based quest builder where the player would select from a number of options to build their quest and then the program would calculate the variables based on the quest scenarios and decide an appropriate amount of experience to award. If NPC's can ask for 4 rat ears and award experience and gold for it, why can't players ask for 20 bonechips and reward players with experience?
Property: Adventurers need places to store their loot. Storefronts, guild houses, houses themselves - houses and guild halls were even promised when EQ was out at the beginning but was late redacted as the developers realized how impossible it would be. It would be nice to have something that represented me. It would also allow cities to grow and be more lively. Of course to buy property, you would need to have money and political influence which opens the world up to more quests to where faction would mean more.
Fame: For those in the top guilds, how many times have you killed Cazic Thule, Lady Vox, etc...? How many times have you, in storyline, saved the world? How often have villagers rewarded you for your deeds? In a perfect EQ world, faction would mean much more then it does now.
meaningful encounters: The first time you take down an enemy, it is meaningful. you get that rush of "wow, that was cool - we did it!" The 50th time - not so much. In a perfect EQ world, named major bad guys would only ever exist once. That would make for a lame MMORPG though, and really is only a carryover from pan and paper RPG where it is much more feasible. In a pen and paper RPG, there are only supposed to be a very few high level characters that can even take down a major bad guy.
Changeable Words: The world would change based on things happening in the game lore. How is crushbone still populated? Their emporer has been slain over and over again. Elf guards 3 times the power of the emperor literally sit 5 minutes away.
Most of the above scenarios just aren't feasible being a MMORPG and I realize that. But to make roleplay mean more many of these things would need to be implemented to feel meaningful about what is done in game. There are hundreds of other options to mention as well, but really - they can't be implemented given the nature of the game so I'll hold my post to those mentioned above.
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