Firstly, Kudos to FC for being willing to experiment with new ideas and think outside the box a little. For me personally, hover boards and jet bikes aren't worth playing for, but the actually engine behind it has some brilliant possibilities for extra content.
Beware the danger of having credit card driven toons that encourage those with the bigger bank balances to be too much superior to those without.
I actually have an idea I've been rolling around, and with the announcement of new database engines etc maybe it could become a reality. It involves an expansion of the ARK program, and would fill a frustrating gap in their ability to help people.
In essence, its a Knowledge Base. One of the frustrating issues I have with AO is the length of time it can take to find information, added to the long playtime it takes to achieve various results within the game. Ask an ARK a question about game mechanics and you'll quickly learn that yur question would be a "spoiler" and your directed to investigate the forums etc to weed out your required answer (if it exists).
As the information is most likely here anyway, it wouldn't be that big an effort to have a small team monitoring the forums and entering the base info in a cross referenced library. Ask an ARK, they enter the search terms and can post you a link to the thread(s) that have the info you need. This would be a great tool for helping newbies get upto speed quicker, eliminate much of the frustration of trying to find info amongst all the WTB/WTS/Nerf This posts you inevitably get when searching here, and also improve the ARK's reputation as true game help officers.
Obviously the initial setup would be time consuming, but I believe if your investing in the future of a game then customer support HAS to be included.
While you're at it, lets have a look at the spawn mechanics for some of the RK uniques. While 6 years ago the player base may have been well served by 18 hour spawns, timer camping these uniques kinda spoils it for those who suddenly find a need for an item, and I'm guessing the number of these items available isn't really proportional to the player base anymore. A faster random spawn (for example TK's 20% every 20mins spawn, although those numbers are not suitable for every unique) would give people a fair chance to acquire items without being held to ransom by spawn campers.