Well, one thing I thought of before the game actually came out - time not freezing in any menu except the "system" menu. Not the map, skills, items, favorites, magic, stats or quests menus - only the system menu should freeze time so that (1) people can pause the game to go pee or get a Coke, but pause it without letting you do anything in terms of gameplay and (2) save the game in peace. But if you wanna check your map, and you're out in the middle of the wilderness, you ought to find a safe spot so that a wolf doesn't jump your ass while you're figuring out what direction to head in. If you're in the middle of a dungeon and you wanna read a book you just found, you ought to pocket it to read someplace safe, so some bandit doesn't walk in the room and skewer you while you've got your nose in a book. No more grabbing a bunch of potions to drink and restore your health/magic/whatever while time is frozen in the middle of combat. No more freezing time to change armor or weapons in the middle of combat. Configure your hotkeys to do what you want quickly without going into a menu.
I have to disagree with the eating question, though. I can't imagine anything more annoying than having to carry and/or find food to eat while on a long quest. If they did that they better make some MREs so I can satisfy the requirement while eating once a day.
Now this would require an interface who was practical and not something you have to fight with.
You can not pause WOW at all however it works well as you can assign any spell or item to any key with an simple system.
If you are a bit more advanced you can make macros.
No pausing with the existing system and you would get mad pretty fast trying to sort through you inventory for an potion then finding that you have none and have to exit and reenter the magic menu.
In WOW the action bar show the number of potions you have hot keyed.
Yes I know WOW uses an totally different control system.