Well, as with most things what's better now compared to older content is subjective. But for me: 1. instanced content that's done right. By that I mean progression raid encounters, 100% needs to be instanced, otherwise all sorts of crap can and will happen (guilds messing with other guilds for a start). Certain dungeon content should be instanced, but this ties into my number 2. Instances also let's devs tune content to be harder in my opinion. Times have moved on from 'just throw yourselves at this dragon for 3 hours and it will eventually fall down dead'. I remember my 1st time raiding Vox in eq very fondly, would I want to experience that in this day and age? Hell no.
2. Overarching expansion quest story telling (think ff14's msq) and class storytelling (swtors) - if you have NPC's that either need to be killed or interacted with out in the wilds then these also need to be in an instanced area. There were times in eq where I was stuck for weeks on end trying to get my water sprinkler as other groups of clerics would be farming the required mob that i needed a drop from, there's zero need for that in a modern mmo.
3. This one will be contentious, a lfr tool of some description... ONLY if your story has elements woven into raiding. I don't mean a lfg tool for dungeon content either.
Things that modern mmos have adopted that need to go away? Outside of automatching dungeon tools and 3rd party UI accessories the main thing for me would be how any sort of progression or gear is invalidated the moment a new patch drops. Armour and weapons need to hold a certain value from older content to keep that content relevant. I suppose that would boil down to a vertical power gain as opposed to a horizontal gain. There's no need for initial 'endgame' content to be vastly lower in item power to the higher tiered content for example.
I keep seeing the older mmo player knocking solo play, but every now and then there's comes a time when you just wanna chill by yourself and progress, there has to be a happy balance between the 2 that's outside of rolling a class that is able to solo grp content ala Everquests necros/druids/wizards or vanilla WoW's mages/hunters/prot paladins. Ideally you would have solo play areas in zones, be it abandoned crypts or keeps where someone could go and still have progression of their XP bar but at a much reduced rate compared to group play. To keep it from being exploited you just have XP reduced to zero if you don't deal the vast majority of damage. If people start griefing solo play well that's where the community comes into play or active GM's.
Well I did solo a *lot* in EQ. By it wasn't easy. You could also duo in many places with success.
What I mean by "easy solo" is where grouping isn't even beneficial. In fact the downsides of having to deal with other players can make solo the better option.
I wouldn't disagree with everything you said, although I'm not a fan of instancing in general. I prefer the experience with 0 instances - warts and all.
As for other things in modern MMOs I hate -
*GPS maps. No need to learn the lie of the land, just open your map and know instantly where you are and where you need to go. Bleh.
*Quests that are telegraphed and braindead. You see a guy with a "?" over his head. You click him. You skip the flavour text because you
don't even have to read it. You open your GPS map and go to the quest marker, conveniently telling you
where you need to go. You briefly check the quest log and see you need to kill 250 boars. You kill the boars. You open your GPS map and navigate back to the quest giver, who now has a "!" glowing and pulsing above him. You realise a monkey could be trained to do what you just did. And that is apparently a "quest". Laughable.
*Button mashing combat. At some point designers decides it would be more fun for players to stare at two or three rows of icons, waiting for them to refresh/pop, instead of looking at the world rendered before them. Then they made it so that you have to push a button (in sequence) at least once a second just to
do your job. And yet it's always the same sequence and absolutely no thought is required once you've learned the correct sequence. Then you repeat this button mashing every single mob over and over, amen.
*Static NPCs and no reward for inquisitive players. In EQ I remember being blown away, finding hidden quests by following NPCs and eavesdropping on their conversations. Some of them would only interact once a day, and would (appear to) move from zone to zone. You could spend hours in a city zone just finding out what's going on, listening to the NPCs chat, walk around, drop clues, etc. In modern MMOs the NPCs are just standing around waiting for a player to notice them and dish out quests. They don't even move. They are vending machines.
Etc. I could go on for hours
