If EQ wants many more players to come back, they need to make the game more casual friendly. This is the secret to WOW and somewhat the secret to EQ2. Thus, EQ needs to implement the following:

1. Less time sinks: Get rid of experience loss on death. Implement some armor damage,which can be repaired and maybe some exp debt that can be eliminated over time.

2. Faster leveling especially for pre level 70 characters. This is crucial for casual players. Also, it will enable folks to catch up to the existing player base

3. More solo contect. Casual players don't have lots of time. They need to log on for an hour and see achieve some measurable results.

4. Make raid content shorter: Few casual players can spend 3 hours or more on the game at one time. Raids should take no longer than 1.5 hours at most. Notice, I am NOT recommending eliminating raid content. Just make contect shorter to achieve maximum results.

I have my doubts as to whether former players would return to EQ.  I returned to EQ once myself and would not do so again.  While I enjoyed over 3 years of playing EQ, my average subscription time for the MMO's  I played afte EQ is about 6 months.

I think SOE should look more at trying to attract new players.  I  have been playing some of the older MMO's.  These MMO's altered their content to take into account that new players on old servers will have to solo until they reach the maximum level because almost all of the population is at the maximum level.

SOE, if they have not already done so, need to make it feasible for new players solo to the maximum level fairly quickly so they can become a part of the EQ community. 

It is also unreasonable to expect guilds to waste time backflagging new players, so SOE should ensure that new players are not left high and dry. 

EQ has a huge number of zones as a result of the many expansions.  This has left a lot of old zones and content  that contain few if any players.  I am not sure  what would be a practical solution.  Perhaps some of the zones in unpopular expansions should be removed.  All of the  underpopulated lower level zones on all the different servers should be moved or merged onto a single "virtual server".