Add killable "spymasters" to all New Frontier zones that give out intelligence buffs about enemy groups for each zone.
As an MMORPG with team-based player vs. player (PvP) combat (referred to as RvR for Realm vs. Realm) as its main endgame content, DAoC's continued success depends on its players reliably finding enemy groups of appropriate size to fight in RvR. However, the New Frontiers (NF) RvR area is large and the population is now much smaller (and shrinking) than when NF was introduced, making it increasingly difficult for groups to find each other.
The endgame content for DAoC is mostly focused on RvR combat, where player forces of different sizes face off in open-field, siege, or dungeon-based combat. The best player experiences arguably arise when the opposing forces are more or less evenly matched, leading to prolonged and varied engagements where each individual player faces an appropriate challenge depending on their ability. In other words, in such situations the challenge is neither too high, making a loss inevitable, or too low, making a win all but assured. Such superior player experiences will yield a positive reinforcing loop, i.e. players will continue to come back and have even more positive experiences.
Most often, evenly matched means equal numbers, i.e. where the two or three opposing forces have approximately the same number of players on each side. Unfortunately, fights between even numbers can be difficult to achieve, and thus the positive reinforcement is easily broken. There are essentially two distinct problems in this:
Uneven fights: One side outnumbering the other side may mean that the challenge becomes insurmountable for the underdog and trivial for the superior force, rendering continued fighting pointless and unrewarding.
No opposition: A group may be unable to find an enemy to engage, thus losing the incentive to continue playing.
One of the main draws of DAoC is the organic open-field PvP, where instead of using specific arenas or battlegrounds, players roam the large New Frontiers area to find enemies to fight. However, the drawback of this "open RvR" approach is that the large area may make it difficult to find an appropriate enemy force (same numbers, same balance of classes, same player skills) to fight. This problem is becoming more prevalent today as the current game population is considerably smaller than the New Frontiers was designed for; the region is basically too large. Furthermore, with this shrinking population concentrated to one server cluster, time zones have an even greater impact; instead of separate U.S., European, and Asian servers, the player base now hails from all over the world, and thus there is no common time zone to unify the population.
The overarching realm vs. realm warfare of DAoC means that there is limited leeway for providing information about enemy groups while staying true to the original theme. Nevertheless, Mythic Entertainment, now Broadsword Online Games, have provided several measures to help groups find an enemy to fight:
Crossroads and thoroughfares: The design of New Frontiers means that there are central thoroughfares, funnels, and crossroads where groups can be expected to converge, such as the central Ellan Vannin island, its milegates, the land bridges, the siege objectives in each homeland, etc.
Battle, siege, and force indicators: Enemy groups passing a friendly siege objective (such as a keep or tower) will "drop a hammer/tree/cup" (depending on their realm affiliation) on the realm war map. Furthermore, larger fights as well as besieged towers or keeps will also add crossed swords and flames, respectively, on the realm war map. The size of the swords and force icons also indicate the size of the group.
Portal buff: Most recently, the new obelisk porting mechanism to let full groups port to a random location on Ellan Vannin also provides any group with 6 or more players with a regularly refreshing "portal buff" that provides intelligence on enemy groups on the EV island. This lets the group know how many full groups from each realm are roaming the island, thus informing them of whether they should continue roaming or leave.
I propose adding an "Eyes and Ears" spy network to each individual zone in the frontiers that is modeled on the new "portal buff" that is only active on EV. Having the E&E buff will provide regular intelligence about enemy groups in each zone, making it easier to find a fight. However, instead of merely acquiring the buff when you port into or enter a zone, it is more consistent with the DAoC theme to make the "eyes and ears" spy network an actual warfare objective; one or several "spymasters" from each realm that are either roaming or in special locations in each zone. You acquire the E&E buff for that zone by right-clicking a friendly spymaster. Killing an enemy spymaster will drop all E&E updates from that zone until the spymaster is respawned within 5 to 10 minutes.
The consequences of the E&E network will be to make it easier to find an appropriate enemy group to fight. The spymasters themselves will also become valid siege objectives---an enemy BG may want to send a group ahead into a zone to kill the spymaster so that they can move undetected through the zone. Furthermore, the spymasters could potentially become valid solo objectives similar to the current doppelgangers by yielding appropriate realm point and bounty point rewards when killed.