A worthy sequel to a bunch of my favorite games. Something to base a new game off, but new enough ideas that it seems like a different game.
Freelancer - Same as before only add joystick support (I found the mouse to be easier but some folks prefer it), let you keep the ships you purchase at either a planet or a space station. Let you get bigger and better space stations, purchase an even wider variety of ships, along with either gunners or computers for the guns. MUCH deeper missions, with a good variety of goals.
I wont make this too long basically what I want is the depth and freedom of Morrowind, the graphics of Oblivion, the gameplay of Test Drive Unlimited, and the action of TIE Fighter.
But try to keep it all a fun action game, dont let it become a complicated flight sim.
I know its sort of been done before with EVE but I dont want an MMO, I want The Elder Scrolls in space. I want a good, solid campaign, a specatacular ending (like any good space shooter often has), and plenty of interesting side quests to keep the game alive after you've finished the main part. In Freelancer the only reason to keep playing was to get the Titan or the Sabre. Once you aquired either of those and a bunch of class 10 weapons there wasnt much reason to go on.
Deus Ex - The story and missions were damn near perfect. I dont know how you could improve on it. My only suggestion would be to get a bunch of Hollywood-quality writers together and put together a script of equal caliber. Then let some top notch game developers take the script and make the protagonist in the story into the player character.
After all that is done, let the artists and graphics designers come in and make it pretty.
They are the least important so they should come last. At no point should eye-candy ever come before content or gameplay.
In fact you might not even need a regular Hollywood script writer. If the past decade of movies is any indication, those guys would much rather release crap to please the lowest common denominator and make easy money.
Pick some good sci-fi book writers instead. If you've ever been in a Barnes & Noble and browsed through the fiction racks, you have probably seen enough raw material for a hundred hi-quality Deus Ex clones.
The game system could be updated for modern times, but it should keep its simple interface and RPG roots. Deus Ex 2 was downright painful to play.
Rifts and/or Fallout - Most of us know Fallout, I dont know how many people here have played Rifts or even heard of it. Am not sure where Fallout 3 is headed but I would really like to see an Elder Scrolls style game set in the future. The only problem is the game world would have to be HUGE because of the fast vehicles and long range weapons. Making it small would defeat the purpose.
If you were to set it in the Rifts universe, the main game would have to be North America. Expansion packs would be made for South America, Europe and so forth. Maybe they could expand to Phase World and the 3 Galaxies but those would be even more monumental tasks.
Plenty of MMO's have tried to create universes with that kind of depth, but they always have lame missions and uninspired settings. No real depth.
I guess what I really want in an MMO with much better storytelling.
Dungeon Keeper - Make a real dungeon builder, like we used to do back in the table top D&D days. Make something that almost has the power of AutoCad, but a lot more streamlined for easier mayhem. Give us all the creatures from Monster Manual 1, and expansion packs should include Monster Manuals 2, 3, 4 and the Fiend Folio. You would probably have to work out a deal with Wizards of the Coast to make this work.
Failing that make a quick & fun game like the other Dungeon Keepers. Evil Genius came close, but wasnt quite there.
I like the OP's idea of a Fantasy Total War. There was an old DOS game from Mindcraft that was very similar, called Siege. It had about 200 different fantasy units, and was also a buttload of fun to play. Only had 4 maps and they were all castles. The idea was one force had to defend it and one had to invade it. You didnt need to purchase or create units, you just had to pull them up from your reserves and send them out. They always went out in groups and thats how you controlled them. The only thing lacking in Siege was the ability to remake your squads after they were out and moving around. You had to send them back in and remake the group from scratch.
Along those lines (and the lines of Dungeon Keeper): some of you may recall the glory days of PC gaming when you could fill out a mail order form and purchase games for a dollar a disk. Buck twenty-five if you wanted them on 3.5" disks.
Back in those days I found a neat little game called Castles. It had a comprehensive castle building system and every so often you would get attacked by roving bandits. As soon as they were done you would start building again. I was pretty cool and I'd like to see something along those lines again.
The stronghold quests in Baldurs Gate 2 and Neverwinter Nights 2 got me thinking about that.
Sidescrollers/Platformers - Jets'n'guns is an excellent game. We need more like it. We need a buttload of modern games based on the NES/SNES classics. And for the love of sweet jesus, dont charge us 60 bucks a pop for them. They could even be rendered in 3D but should probably have the camera pulled out with a fixed perspective, so as to give us the classic 2D feel.
Baldurs Gate - End the name, but continue the series. I've played AD&D and D&D 3rd, the continent of Faerun is HUGE. We need a lot more adventures and stories away from the Sword Coast. There are assloads of sourcebooks out there. Get some of the better writers for TSR and WotC and make some high quality role-playing experiences. Similar to Deus Ex, they should focus on story first and graphics second.
Heck, theres no reason they couldnt go 2D and just make them better quality.
Star Wars - Again, like Deus Ex and Baldurs Gate, find some of the better writers and get them to work on a story. Get some game programmers to adapt a book over to an interactive experience. It could be in any time period, the Old Republic, the Empire, the New Republic, go all the way back to when the Sith race was still in power, go through the Mandalorian wars. Theres about 20,000 years of adventure in the books already published. How can they not make more games?
Guild Wars Single Player - I hate MMO's but this one grabbed me (probably because its free). They still charge 50 bucks for the game and dont collect a monthly fee, I see no reason why you shouldnt be able to turn off the internet connection and still play.
Its practically single player anyway, if you dont hook up with a team in town. Do it like STEAM. Require people to hop online and get patches every two weeks, but let the game actually run with no internet.