Take the quest "The Crucible" and burn it to the frelling ground.
Remove (or radically alter) Dungeon Alerts/Harried.
Give every quest about another 2 levels worth of use before it starts to incure -% penalties for just stepping into it.
Reduce the -% hit that comes from level disparity of character compared to quest. (There are certain quests that are only approaching being *fun* as i'm 6 levels over them... making that 99% hit to xp disheartening to say the very least.)
Change wilderness zones so that the mechanism is not a -50% to the xp for drifting just one level over the arbitrary, random level "cap" for the area.