The decline of side quest quality, quantity and length

Juomuuri · October 2

I've been playing ESO since 2016, and I've done all its quest content (aside from Cyrodiil's side quests) at least once. I have some thoughts about the old quest content vs brand new content.

This year I've been replaying older and newer chapters/DLCs and making some mental notes comparing them. And I've come to the conclusion that Blackwood and beyond we've had a steady decline in the writing, environmental storytelling and overall immersion. For example, I've just finished Morrowind's side quest content and comparing that to my experience with High Isle in April and Gold Road this July? Gold Road feels beyond rushed in comparison, even to High Isle.

Let me explain further: in the base game, we have all these Alliance zones which all explore the lore of the given region, the relationships of different peoples and how the Three Banner War affects the peoples, daedric shenanigans, crime, etc. It's all very interesting, there's a ton of fascinating side quests and the main quests of each zone also open a window to the world of Tamriel.

Then we get the first PvE story DLCs with Orsinium, Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood. These three follow suit in what was done in the base game, and they still hold up with lots of content for the price. Contrary to the popular opinion, I think Orsinium is a flawed masterpiece. Yes. Flawed. Its main quest suffers from bad pacing in its final. There, I said it.

After that we get Morrowind, a chapter that's phenomenal in its sheer size and complexity of themes for its quests. The chapter follows its inspiration, TES III: Morrowind beautifully. (With none of that "let's pretend there's no slavery or racism by the dark elves" that Necrom does... *sigh*) This is my favorite chapter due to the amount of visitable indoors areas, the atmosphere, quests, writing, innovation. It has so many things to enjoy!

I'm not going to go through all the other chapters to not make this post a million miles long, but starting with Blackwood there's been this weird trend where NPCs repeat the same thing to you at least three times within a minute and it's driving me nuts. We don't get any quest chains after this, everything is just self contained. Morrowind has the stories of Veya and Sun-in-Shadow, both quest chains of 4-5 quests! In one chapter! What is going on?

There's also Leramil the Wise-cracker following you around in Necrom and Gold Road if you're just trying to mind your own business on an alt. There are also additional NPCs put into different base game zones to annoy players who don't want to replay the boring chapters. Since Blackwood, we've had so little side quests and the amount shrinks after each new release... And we just get these one-off short quests that add nothing to the atmosphere and lore. It's tiresome. I love this game, but I can't say I love Blackwood, High Isle, Necrom and Gold Road. I don't hate them, but they're just mediocre to me, not worth replaying unless I want to get annoyed and angry at the repetitive NPC dialogue and rushed stories.

But, these are just my observations and opinions. I don't mean to stir an argument, all I want is to hear other quester's opinions on the matter.

Cheers!

ajkb78 · October 2

Completely agree. There was far more side quest quantity and variety in the base game and the zones feel richer for it. There are even hidden quests, like the one in Eastmarch where you have to be in exactly the right place to even find the (invisible) quest start, and which leads you into a cool but tragic mini-story. There's everything from trivial "fetch an object from 200 yards away" quests to more involved mini-stories. Quite a lot of them have a bit of emotional impact. Pretty much all the dlc zones have abandoned this variety, at least from Summerset on, and it's a real shame. The base game zones actually feel much more richly developed largely due to the increased side quest density. I do hope they work harder in this respect in future DLCs.

LunaFlora · October 2

i like most quests in eso and don't replay many quests, because i remember the quests i love quite well still.
However even the quests i dislike add to the lore. they all do as do all the lorebooks, bard songs, and character dialogue outside of quests.

if i get annoyed by a quest NPC like Leramil on an alternate character,
i either accept the quest or ignore it.
it's only like a second or less of seeing the character if i encounter them at a gate or wayshrine so it's easy to ignore.

With the additional NPC's, are you thinking of the prologue quests characters? i cannot think of any other characters related to chapters in base game zones.
And every chapter and zone dlc after Morrowind has a prologue quest. so that is not a recent addition.

since you say since Blackwood i have to wonder:
do you include the companion questlines in Blackwood, High isle, and Necrom?
and the Tribute and Scribing questlines in High isle and Gold Road?
they are part of those chapters and they aren't tiny.

How did Necrom do "let's pretend there's no slavery or racism by the dark elves"? Sharp-As-Night's questline certainly didn't pretend that and that is part of Necrom.

i looked at Vvardenfell and High isle's quest numberw and it's nearly the same number of quests.
https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Vvardenfell
https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Online:High_Isle

Vvardenfell:
- 7 zone story quests
- 4 Morag Tong story quests
- 5 House of Telvanni story quests
- 24 other side quests
40 in total

High isle:
- 7 zone story quests
- 5 Tales of Tribute story quests
- 8 companion story quests
- 23 other side quests
43 in total

just comparing Vvardenfell to High isle, high isle has more quests.
you could go in detail comparing each quest and what kind of quests they are but the number of quests seems similar.

Though if we compared chapters more:
Morrowind had lots of quests yes, however it did not release with Tales of Tribute, Companions, Scribing, and Antiquities.
it also doesn't have incursions like all the other chapters.

comparing all chapters at release:

Morrowind:
- lots of quests
- no incursion
- Warden class
- no Antiquities, tribute, companions, or scribing

Summerset:
- lots of quests, including the Psijic Order questline
- Geysers
- Psijic Order and Jewelry Crafting skill lines
- no Antiquities, tribute, companions, or scribing

Elsweyr:
- lots of quests
- Dragons
- Necromancer class
- no Antiquities, tribute, companions, or scribing

Greymoor:
- lots of quests
- Harrowstorms
- Antiquities and its 2 skill lines
- no tribute, companions, or scribing

Blackwood:
- lots of quests, including Companion questlines
- Oblivion Portals
- Antiquities and companions
- no Tribute or Scribing

High isle:
- lots of quests, including Tribute and Companion questlines
- Volcanic Vents
- Antiquities, tribute, and companions
- no Scribing

Necrom:
- lots of quests, including Companion questlines
- Bastion Nymic
- Antiquities, tribute, and companions
- no Scribing

Gold Road:
- lots of quests, including Scribing questline
- Mirrormoor incursions
- Antiquities, tribute, and scribing

not every chapter is the same and whilst quests are awesome, there's lots of new things that make the last 4 chapters more than just another zone to do quests and fight monsters in.
Companions, Tribute, and Scribing like Antiquities take us to zones other than the chapter zone.
Companions and Scribing help us in combat and Tribute gives us an extra activity to do.
Tribute, like Antiquities, gets new content every year.
Plus we get 2 new companions every year since Blackwood which always have their own questlines.

it's okay to dislike chapters and quests obviously

Juomuuri · October 2

I was talking about side quests, I didn't go into companion quests since they aren't side content, they are companion content. What my post means is about the quality first and foremost, as well as length - older chapters/DLCs might have a bit less side quests than newer ones, but what matters is how they're written, what you do in the quest (eg. I really enjoy the occasional breaking and entering that happens quite a few times in Morrowind, nice change of pace) and if it's immersive and interesting. Lots of the newer quests are badly written, short, boring, immersion breaking (due to repetitive dialogue).

And when I say Necrom has no side quests (or main quest) with racism or slavery mentiones, I don't count in companion quests. Morrowind has lots of dialogue from racist dark elves if you play as a non-dark elf (I was replaying as an orc and got called many things), while this is pretty much non-existent in Necrom NPCs' dialogue. It breaks immersion for me since we're in the *Telvanni* Peninsula. We don't even see any slaves, there's one quest that has servants (argonians among them), but no slaves kept by the Telvanni? It's so weird. Not saying slavery is good or anything but compared to Morrowind, it's scrubbed clean, for whatever reason. Sharp's quests don't take place in the chapter zone after his recruitment, so technically the slavery stuff isn't even happening there.

Edit to add: I also didn't count in the other feature quests such as ToT and Scribing. I haven't done the ToT quests aside from the tutorial since I don't know how to play card games, so I can't say if it's good or not. But these are feature quests, not side quests.

MorganaLaVey · October 2

Ah... i remember the god old times when PVP was going downhill and questers made fun of it and said Cyrodil should just be shut down and turned into a PVE zone. And then when endgame PVE went downhill and questers where happy and saying, after the endgamers finaly quit, ZOS can stop wasting money on raids and turn the game in to a casual questing paradise.

But ESO is not the first game that went downhill like that, its just another one on a long list. And none of them stoped there decline at casual questing. So casual questing going to crap was long coming and not only predictable but expected. It could have been avoided years ago if the all players would have stood together to save PVP, but instead they took a "Haha... YOUR part of the boat is sinking, mine is still dry!" aproach.

And here we are now.

Juomuuri · October 2

Yeah, they should've fixed Cyro instead of decreasing the pop cap and all other nonsense. I used to run there back when we had 24 player groups and big pop caps, it was a ton of fun just finding a zerg and helping them capture keeps. I stopped going there due to the decline in perfomance, group size and pop cap. It's true that if one aspect of the game is left to rot, other parts of it will start to rot too, slowly but surely.

AcadianPaladin · October 2

My favorite quest in the entire game is indeed a side questline from the original Alliance zone of Greenshade - what I call the Wilderking/queen saga. Hints of the questline begin in Auridon and tell a wonderful, complex and touching story through Greenshade.

I don't think I'd want too many such involved questlines but sure enjoy this one.

valenwood_vegan · October 2

MorganaLaVey wrote: »

Ah... i remember the god old times when PVP was going downhill and questers made fun of it and said Cyrodil should just be shut down and turned into a PVE zone. And then when endgame PVE went downhill and questers where happy and saying, after the endgamers finaly quit, ZOS can stop wasting money on raids and turn the game in to a casual questing paradise.

But ESO is not the first game that went downhill like that, its just another one on a long list. And none of them stoped there decline at casual questing. So casual questing going to crap was long coming and not only predictable but expected. It could have been avoided years ago if the all players would have stood together to save PVP, but instead they took a "Haha... YOUR part of the boat is sinking, mine is still dry!" aproach.

And here we are now.

Attempting to somehow blame other players for decisions that zos has been making for years now is an... interesting take. Been here long to enough to see they tend to do what they want regardless of feedback.

spartaxoxo · October 2

For me, it started with High Isle. Blackwood's main story wasn't good, but I did enjoy its side quests (including the companion quests). And Fargrave was pretty good too.

High Isle, on the other hand, doesn't really have much in the way of high quality side quests and neither did Galen. I liked the Druid lookswise but it felt lame to have them just be a rehash of the wyrd. Necrom was a slog. And I haven't even had motivation to anything of Gold Road outside of the scribing. I did enjoy the scribing quests but IDK, they basically killed all motivation for me with Gold Road by spoiling the end of Necrom before it even released. And nothing I've heard about it since has peaked my interest.

valenwood_vegan · October 2

As for the topic at hand, have definitely felt that the quests started declining in quality around Blackwood. Western Skyrim / Markarth was the last year where I actually fully completed the new zones. In the newer zones I tend to finish the achievements and move on, without exploring and seeking out all the side quests.

The newer zones generally look big and pretty but feel small in substance; with less engaging side quests, more locked doors and inaccessible areas, and less reason to stay in the zones long term... feels like more grind but less fun in general, like with how motifs and furnishing plans are now slowly released to "entice" players to keep repeating the zone dailies for the rest of the year... world bosses with immunity phases to artificially prolong the fight... quests that imo have more "filler" and less story, etc.

Necrotech_Master · October 2

i think the overall number of quests have been roughly the same, but the length of the quests in general feels a bit shorter on some of the side ones

they usually have at least 1-3 decent quest chains per zone (with gold road there was the outcast inn and the weatherleigh mansion which i found to be the most enjoyable)

i would agree a lot of the other ones felt either repetitive or forgettable (gold road had what like at least 3 different delve related quests to wipe out either bandits or recollection and restore honor to the imperial troop there)

Syldras · October 2

Juomuuri wrote: »

It breaks immersion for me since we're in the *Telvanni* Peninsula. We don't even see any slaves, there's one quest that has servants (argonians among them), but no slaves kept by the Telvanni?

They just call them differently although it's obvious what they are. And it's not a recent decision. The Argonians at the Dres farm near Mournhold are labelled as "Dres farmers", the ones in Bal Sunnar are called "laborers". I agree with your first post, btw.

ajkb78 wrote: »

There are even hidden quests, like the one in Eastmarch where you have to be in exactly the right place to even find the (invisible) quest start, and which leads you into a cool but tragic mini-story.

Does it show in the quest log once discovered? I've been wondering whether I missed it (if it shows in the log, I have not - I have an addon that shows all loggable quests and they're all checked off for me).

Juomuuri · October 2

Syldras wrote: »

They just call them differently although it's obvious what they are. And it's not a recent decision. The Argonians at the Dres farm near Mournhold are labelled as "Dres farmers", the ones in Bal Sunnar are called "laborers". I agree with your first post, btw.

Oh, that explains a lot! I never paid attention to this detail.

DinoZavr · October 2

written below is my personal opinion, and i am not planning to argue with you, when you disagree or criticize.

the best storyline for me is still Orsinium, as it is rich and involves player quite well.
Daerdric wars Arc is also great. Elsweyr Q2 was not so great, though Dragonhold was good (thanks to Caska)
i guess Greymoor was mostly done before the break of COVID-19, still the zone quest is one of the most predictable in ESO and included "placeholder" recurring NPCs which personalities were barely not used and these NPCs could be easily replaced with newly introduced ones and this would hardly change anything storywise. Like good tools just exposed, but not used to some noticeable extent.

Then the COVID had happened. Transition to working from homes, work-relating meetings with barking dogs, crying toddlers, and drilling the walls neighbors have became new normal, and working being distracted a plenty simply must affect pace and quality of work results.

It is just my opinion, but Blackwood is quite forgettable for me, also the zone has a lot of annoying invisible walls, which were completely destroying the immersion and freedom of the "open world" feeling.
High Isle and Galen stories follow the cliche approach.

Of course, the Art Team always do the amazing job, creating recognizable and very impressive zones. Kudos to you, Art Team wizards!

Though in recent Chapters the random houses doors are locked, a lot of containers are cosmetic and not lootable, which, again hints the well designed "open world" era is gone. Side quests are for most of them formal. This points to kind of rushed content.

i blame COVID as the root cause of some content quality decline, as it affected productivity, cooperation and communication of Devs Team tremendously. unfortunately, this was the expected impact, so i can not blame our dear Developers as re-organization and accommodation to them new circumstances were inevitable. i'd like to wish Zeni Team a great health!

Of course, as a regular ESO player i would like to see better content instead of just "more content", i have no idea why to add 2 more new Companions, very much the same as 6 existing ones, instead of just improving already existing ones - adding dialogue lines, romance option, Companion specific emotes etc. Quality over quantity, but it seems this is just mine priority

edit: fixed typo

Jaimeh · October 2

On the whole I agree with you OP, although I do think some of the side quests for Necrom were really good (the ones with Hezehk, and Morian Zenas in particular--and incidentally if ZOS ever decided to turn Morian into a house guest that would be awesome), but the quality of side quests in the base game up to Murkmire was great. I don't think we'll ever get back to that point.

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

My favorite quest in the entire game is indeed a side questline from the original Alliance zone of Greenshade - what I call the Wilderking/queen saga. Hints of the questline begin in Auridon and tell a wonderful, complex and touching story through Greenshade.

I don't think I'd want too many such involved questlines but sure enjoy this one.

I know which quest you mean, and it's one of my favourites too. Very sad, beautiful and touching, and so memorable.

MorganaLaVey · October 3

valenwood_vegan wrote: »

Attempting to somehow blame other players for decisions that zos has been making for years now is an... interesting take. Been here long to enough to see they tend to do what they want regardless of feedback.

"decisions that zos has been making for years NOW". Not back in 2017 (3 years after release).
And why do you think they have been making those decisions for years now? NOT "regardless of feedback", but because people kept playing and paying. Thats the feedback they get! Or why do you think One Tamriel happend ? Because everyone kept quiet and played the game ? Or because players where leaving in droves ?

VDoom1 · October 3

You are absolutely correct.

I noticed the same my first time through Blackwood. I'm concerned about the state of the most recent quests.

I have yet to quest through Gold Road because I fear disappointment. It's a zone I like a lot with Skingrad, so I'm concerned I'll be disappointed that the zone has poorly written quests.

I recall playing the original main quest for the first time. It felt like "oh dear what have we gotten ourselves into....o.o"

Felt like ants fighting against a titan! The way they wrote the story, how it all played out, it was like Molag Bal was this invincible almost unstoppable force. All we could really do was delay his plans.

Nowadays we're vanquishing Daedra and Daedric Princes like swatting flies. We do have some issues with how powerful we are perceived.

They also just don't write characters as well anymore, which unfortunately results in us caring less about them.

colossalvoids · October 3

For me it's all ended with Murkmire being the last ESO dlc that felt "natural", no matter flaws that every release always would have. After that content felt more rushed and way less about culture exploration, whilst Blackwood was the first dlc that went completely off for me that previous releases started to feel good in comparison. And I really disliked what was done with Greymoor it still was miles ahead comparatively.

Anumaril · October 3

I agree with all of these observations, and I'd like to add another: lack of player choice in dialogue options.

When replaying old zones (and especially Orsinium) I couldn't help but notice you would typically have more than one dialogue option per chat interaction. Sure, they might lead to the same place, but it didn't FEEL like it was arbitrary for me as a player since I could choose how my player approached an issue.

But beyond mere dialogue options, there were also more (red) dialogue choices available, especially in Orsinium. I feel like this has been gradually lost in more recent expansions save for in a few isolated instances, and I really miss it. In Orisinium it seemed like many quests offered you choices, even the main questline(!).

I distinctly remember one of the main questline quests where I had the opportunity to be rude towards Eveli Sharp-Arrow and I leapt at the opportunity since I thought (and still think) she's an incredibly annoying character. It felt glorious, even though ultimately I'm pretty sure it had no impact on the story. The choice felt really nice since not every player character is the same happy-go-lucky person that's nice to everyone and blankly curious about things they should already know about.

Necrotech_Master · October 3

Anumaril wrote: »

I agree with all of these observations, and I'd like to add another: lack of player choice in dialogue options.

When replaying old zones (and especially Orsinium) I couldn't help but notice you would typically have more than one dialogue option per chat interaction. Sure, they might lead to the same place, but it didn't FEEL like it was arbitrary for me as a player since I could choose how my player approached an issue.

But beyond mere dialogue options, there were also more (red) dialogue choices available, especially in Orsinium. I feel like this has been gradually lost in more recent expansions save for in a few isolated instances, and I really miss it. In Orisinium it seemed like many quests offered you choices, even the main questline(!).

I distinctly remember one of the main questline quests where I had the opportunity to be rude towards Eveli Sharp-Arrow and I leapt at the opportunity since I thought (and still think) she's an incredibly annoying character. It felt glorious, even though ultimately I'm pretty sure it had no impact on the story. The choice felt really nice since not every player character is the same happy-go-lucky person that's nice to everyone and blankly curious about things they should already know about.

to go along with this, ive also noticed a lack of choices, theres almost nothing in new content that makes use of the "persuade" and "intimidate" options of dialog, to be honest its kind of annoying needing to use skill pts for the ability to even use those dialog options, especially when most new content doesnt even make use of them lol

twev · October 3

To me, it feels as though some of the later chapters are added as just a place to acquire some new skyshards and add new sets while looking at a new map/scenery layout.

bantamguar · October 3

Seconding the opinion that there was a noticeable decline in quality even before Blackwood. For me it was actually Summerset. (Though just the side quests - main was solid)
But it was with Greymoor that I started seeing many end-game & PvP players leaving (my own guild included). As someone who adored both the casual and competitive side of the game, I thought I'd at least still have questing to look forward to. We all see how that turned out.

I really wonder who the target demographic is when the writing feels so sanitized in this franchise of all things. And that extends beyond sensitive topics - lack of impact from choices, dialogue that treats the player like an imbecile and where the morality of characters is spelled out for you.

Such a disappointment after playing Murkmire, which feels like it was made with such love for TES. Everything from the architecture to the added lore was fantastic. Baffling what they've done with Greymoor onwards..

Zodiarkslayer · October 4

I think the problem here is much more complex. The most common sign of the times we live in is a general, widespread cultural decline. This encompasses all sorts of art: Music, theatrical arts, including cinema and TV series, literature, comedy and even the finer arts, like sculpturing and painting and such.
And I personally think that ESO for a very long time has been moving against the trend. There have always been interesting characters to find and help. And even if they weren't as complex themselves, their challenges were.
Sometimes the outlandishness of some characters has been juxtaposed to the banality of their problems. Which in itself is a juxtaposition to the typical hero trope of the common guy facing the most insurmountable challenges.
Just thinking about the Gold Road chapter, I remember at least three side quests that have been outstanding. I mean the ones at Valente Vineyard, the Outcast Inn and the one where you help the old marauders facing their past.

The overall cultural quality is declining, because cultural creators are incapable of imagining anything more complex than flat lining, stereotypical personalities and the (non-) challenges that they face.
My theory why that is, has two aspects. Firstly, the writers themselves live in a society that heavily favourites superficiality and meaningless social interactions, even if they themselves are not. They are heavily influenced by living in such a society. And so what they write is just a reflection of this.
And secondly, those artists and creators have very tight confines in which they are allowed to move creatively. Meaning there is always pressure to be as mass compatible as possible. And the higher the financial interest in a cultural product is, the more restrictive these confines become.

I think in ESO the writers are facing those same challenges. But in the end they are handling them better than can be expected.

grizzledcroc · October 5

This might be esos version of WoWs writing slumps though NOWHERE near problematic at least for the universe , I think they def might be rediscovering themselves a little

Syldras · October 5

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

Just thinking about the Gold Road chapter, I remember at least three side quests that have been outstanding. I mean the ones at Valente Vineyard, the Outcast Inn and the one where you help the old marauders facing their past.

While I agree very much with the rest of your post, I partially disagree with this (sadly). While I found the vineyard and the inn quest very entertaining (and also the murder mystery, by the way) and while they were certainly among the best quests of this chapter, they were hardly original either. Yes, I know that that every artist is influenced by what they picked up during their course of life, and that it's probably hard to come up with something really new in this era, especially since the amount of media releases is bloated as it never had been before in mankind's history (it's a pity I don't find it anymore, but I read an interesting article about the yearly book releases some weeks ago, comparing the number of releases over the last decades - and indeed through things like self-publishing and book on demand services, it's really a huge mass now - most of them of lower quality, which certainly also influences the overall reading culture). But I'm digressing.

While I don't expect ZOS' writers to write something absolutely novel and groundbreaking, I found the inn quest quite trope-y (in general, the parallel dimension topic is extremely overused in mass media right now, for several years already). And the route of events during the wineyard quest wasn't exactly surprising either. I'm not sure if it's neccessary to put spoilers anymore 4 months after release, but let's just put it short: The moment the woman showed up I knew how the whole background story would look like. I also found the quest horribly constructed, because it would be absolutely implausible why that lady should show up there of all places, never having had any connections to Cyrodiil before. And there are a few more details like that in that quest. Anyway, I found it really entertaining to play, it was a nice little narration, and I'd be happy enough if ESO would be on that level all the time - but I wouldn't exactly call it outstanding.

TaSheen · October 6

I'm to the point where I just will not do any quest which "resurrects" NPCs from previous content. Most of them annoy me to begin with (Lyris? Eveli? Jakarn? Fennorian? just.... NO....) and the ones who didn't annoy me I was happy to leave behind in "their" content. I want new NPCs, not regurgitated ones (some of whom don't even seem or act like their previous "selves").

Irritating.

[Caveat: I didn't EVER like Lyris - the only companion I enjoyed was Abnur because he was/is a snarky ass. Eveli was "okay" (yep, damned with faint praise) in Orsinium. Jakarn is a sleaze from the word go, and that's just not "cute" or "funny". And Fennorian? Eww. I don't DO vampires AT ALL.]

Amottica · October 6

It seems that much less effort, which means less money, is being put into creating content overall. That is true of both the number of releases of meaningful content and the amount of content each of those limited releases contains.

Two factors that lead to the decline of a game's player base are a decline in quality and quantity, so it is not surprising that the game's population has diminished as a result of these changes. What is stunning is that Zenimax has not made a course correction.

Syldras · October 6

TaSheen wrote: »

I'm to the point where I just will not do any quest which "resurrects" NPCs from previous content. Most of them annoy me to begin with (Lyris? Eveli? Jakarn? Fennorian? just.... NO....) and the ones who didn't annoy me I was happy to leave behind in "their" content. I want new NPCs, not regurgitated ones (some of whom don't even seem or act like their previous "selves").
Irritating.

There are a few characters I do like (who mostly don't happen to be the typical "fan favorites" - who are mostly "flirty" types that only seem obtrusive to me) and I'd find it interesting to learn a bit more about them. Character development (real development, not writers getting a character wrong) would also be interesting to see, in some cases. It wasn't possible so far since ZOS wanted all chapters to be playable in any order, but who knows, maybe they'll give that up one day.

Anyway, although I'd enjoy to see how the journey of a few selected characters continues, I'm also no fan of bringing back old characters all the time and at the most nonsensical places. I feel it has been a little overdone in the last few years. It makes the continent seem horribly small if one encounters the same people everywhere. And of course if it's a character I dislike, it's not exactly fun either. A new character means at least a chance to be more interesting.