Let's generate some solutions 

The Requirements are

• Add smilies and quoting options, increase size of comment box and comment text
  

This one is easy, just make it the same way as in the forums

• Give additional information besides title

There are various ways. 1) Show some extra sentences under the title 2) When your mouse moves on the title some extra sentences appear 3) We could put some classifications on the blog like editorial, rant, humour, etc. 4) a subtitle

• Make it so that it is very clear when a new comment is made in a blog
  

1) The comments should show if you have an unread comment, like in the forums. 2) Make the blog that has recently received a comment move to the top, again like the forums. We could do the same thing for reviews

• Make it so that the blogs are better promoted and more people read them
  

1) Make a seperate tab for blogs and also reviews. So you have gaming, off-topic, blogs and reviews. The blog and review tab will lead to a forum like place, but instead the topics would be blogs and reviews. 2) Make something like the soapbox to promote good blogs

Did I miss any possible solution? If not we can mix and match all possible solutions.

One possibility is to make a blog and review tab. This would make it easy to follow blogs and discussion in blogs, because new comments will be raise the blog to the top. It will also be possible to skip to the page you want, something that was not possible before.

The front-page will still be there and the blogs will be shown there in a chronological manner. Newest at the top. But also here it will be possible to see if a new comment is made, the comments will  show how many comments are unread. For extra info you just move your mouse cursor over the title and the first four sentences appear.

We could also do a soapbox like thing to further promote blogs.