I'm not sure there's really all that many revolutionary ideas that can be done these days. At least not practically, successfully, or with current hardware constraints.
I think where the "revolutionary" lies, if it lies anywhere, is in the implementation of unrevolutionary ideas into a whole.
The way I'm reading it is that whereas in Ultima Online there's a lot of emergent behaviour that the game allows, he wants to create a game with a wider spectrum of "game".
In UO, the game mechanics for PvE are broader than the mechanics for crafting, and then for things like rares collecting it's little more than an emergent behavior which can happen in the game.
My take on Richard's plans is that he wants all corners of his game to have "game".
Really, I only came here to update the thread that Part Two is here:
An Interview with Richard Garriott – Part Two - Stratics
And the discussion's in the same place:
An Interview with Richard Garriott | Stratics Forums
And curse whatever it is that's substituting my "-"