Black Tower exploration would be cool too ... I actually think this and exploring the changes in the WT could be incorporated into the Nynaeve in 100 year story too. Perhaps her son is an important Asha'man.
Concerning Nynaeve & the Asha'man, if everyone in charge among them wasn't a total dick, I'd like to have seen them give her the Dragon pin and make her an honorary Asha'man. Considering she discovered how to Heal gentling, helped Cleanse the taint on saidin, and Healed the effects of the taint that still lingered, she has done more for the cause of male channelers than anyone short of Rand himself. He didn't do that much more than she.
I wish that had been developed more, instead of pretty much being forgotten after Egwene's proposal to Romanda. I think it was another issue where RJ was exploring the effects of belief in contrast with reality, but nothing ever came of it.
I think that's a no to the last question, given how each book keeps insisting that it's both an Age long forgotten & yet to come. But that doesn't mean the Fourth Age moves back in the direction of the Second Age. I don't think the AoL was ever supposed to be some sort of ideal to be re-achieved, merely just that old, hindsight-idealized time period that people look back on.
Yeah, not exploring some of these side plots was a bit of a let down. I guess I was expecting that to be what Egwene's rule as Amyrlin was going to be all about. Really didn't see her death coming to be honest. Expected her to survive and go on to help bring about peace between the Tower and the Seanchan and help integrate the various cultures channeling organizations.
I'm not sold that Rand really did do more for them than Nynaeve. All he did was give an amnesty and cleanse the taint along with Nynaeve and would have failed at that with the aid of Cadsuane and her group.
I think RJ made it obvious that the AOL was this ideal time for channelers, if no one else, a golden age of working both sides of the Power to maximum effect. I wasn't getting at a full recreation of a dead era so much as a mimicking of the specific organization the Aes Sedai had during the AOL