I think some support for smaller scale battles in 7th edition would be nice.
I hope someone at GW has noticed by now that their main competitors have very successful skirmish level gameplay. The buy in is lower, the learning curve is not as overwhelming and hooking people is easier. It also helps that battles play out faster, making more games possible...or just spending an afternoon at it rather than an all day affair.
Its completely against their "more minis, bigger armies" philosophy, but I still think it would be a positive development if it happened.
On a gameplay oriented note, whenever I have played WFB or WH40K (or watched my friends play it), the thing that always struck me was how non-interactive the gameplay was. Assuming you trusted your partner enough, you could actually just leave the table while he was taking his turn, because there was precious little you could do except be a witness. Obviously the social and chatting aspects are huge in this kind of game, but it has always struck me as problematic that each player takes turns being shackled.
More modern games like Dropzone Commander (if you're a fan of Epic btw, you owe it to yourself to at least check this game out) try to counter act this by switching unit activations within the turn, and using Command Cards. Suddenly it becomes important in what order you activate your units, because the enemy can and does react to you even within the turns. The game is gaining some traction locally, so I'm hoping I will get to do more than just read the rulebook and planning armies in my head.
I'm not saying that WH40K should completely reinvent themselves. But I do think the company would benefit long term from focusing on expanded and updated gameplay options, rather than codex creep and money fixation. They have become the industry standard for a reason, and that reason is the talents they employ and the passion they put into it. Going forward, I think GW needs to put their faith in that as opposed to miniature monopoly and price gouging.
Within the next decade or two, their main competitors are going to be games that publish you the intellectual rights to print your own units/tokens with your 3D printer, providing you the rule sets for a token fee in order to get you started/interested. These already exist on various websites btw, and its only a matter of time as the quality grows and 3D printers become more common before they start taking a bigger chunk out of the wargame/boardgame market.
GW's strength has always been their intellectual property and the people they employ to develop it. Going forward, it would be nice to see their business leadership acknowledge and support this...rather than behaving like extortionate robber barons...