I'd like to see a character progression path at max level that can be advanced while participating in any aspect of the game, and I'd like it to not have anything to do with gear.
People can advance themselves in this new system from doing lots of different things - Participating in dungeons, scenarios, world events, earning an achievement, using their professions, doing pet battles, etc.
Rewards should not be power based, because then it becomes an obligation for people who have to be on the bleeding edge of progression (or obsessive people like me). Rewards should be more like perks that make playing your character more convenient, fun, and lucrative. I'd like it to be somewhat like D3's forthcoming paragon revamp, where players can choose from a large variety of options to allocate their points. Off the top of my head, I would think of rewards like these:
- Increased profession proc rates
- Reduced mount cast time or increased mount speed (not active in BGs, Arena, etc.)
- Increased chance to find items, Gold (magic find, gold find)
- Increased storage space, increased gold cap
- Higher pet capture rate, higher chance to encounter rare quality pets
- Class based perks that are non power based (longer shout buff duration?). These would be really tricky to make feel non mandatory. Minor glyphs might already do things like this adequately.
I'd like to hear what people think of this!