The Daily Grind: How would you design an expansion?

@Bartlebe Horizontal is the exact word I was just going to type. lol Great minds...

But yes, expand outwards, not upwards. I would not only fix the usual annoying problems, but the main thing I would do is introduce a system that anyone can play and get rewards from. Something that would last a long time, is non-combat but still optional. A card game, racing...something fun but still "tweakable" for those who enjoy the math.

Beau

@Bartlebe

Hear hear! *Someone* needs to buck the trend of adding nothing but raids, a handful more levels and gear with almost every expansion and/or major content update. For players like myself, the end game is truly the end of the game, because I don't have the time to raid or grind "epic" gear.

Great idea! Give people something new to do from the start to cap, and give those at cap something new to do that isn't a rinse-wash-repeat system they've done to death years before.

@Shirogetsune City Of has been bucking that trend for 7 years now... where have you been?

@fallwind

Playing... until the Incarnate system rolled out. Which is exactly what I hate in all other MMO's. Where have you been?

@Shirogetsune

I'm all for expanding the leveling process laterally, but prior to i19 COH had the one of the worst end game contents of any MMO I've ever played. Incarnate was desperately needed.

all the levels, from 1 to the upper 40s had been iterated on several times since launch. Lvl 50 content hadn't changed one spec since they added the hamidon encounter.

I19 is just a pass over endgame content, same as other issues were a pass over lvl 20-30 content, or 35-45 content...

If you are going to laterally expand the game, do so for the WHOLE game, not just 1 to (maxlvl-1)

@Bartlebe

You made my post for me. Thank you, sir.

@Bartlebe
I was going to post just about the exact same thing, we need to stop making expansions vertical in such a way that only the new content in the x-pac is useful.
Look at WoW for example,(most people played it and can relate to examples) ya their world gets bigger with the addition of new zones you gain outland, Northrend etc.
But in a way it also gets smaller, you lose just about every location in the previous x-pac, Cataclysm brought back Azeroth which was a nice improvement but in Burning Crusade you lost Azeroth in WotLK you lost Outlands, they became obsolete.

What we need to do is build on the world without making the previous content obsolete and useless, give us some crafting that requires some "old school" mats to make. If you keep some use to the "old school" mats you can make there be certain crafting items you can only make by grabbing a high diversity of items (no 3 items isn't a high diversity) from different x-pacs it would make crafting much more diverse and interesting

StrangleThorn Vale has always been a "hotspot" for PvP, then don't give people a reason to go there less, encourage PvP, put vendors to sell honor with gear there, put daily PvP quests don't make it obsolete build on it.
Cata kind of touched on this, but it still threw too much out the window.
Also don't throw our epics out the window with the first few quests which are something like talk to X 2 feet away from me.

Make our epics useful even when entering the first few raids of the x-pac. Don't grab our gears stats and square them on the first few greens you get.

And lastly don't just reskin stuff and add a few levels. I think it's be simple to have a level cap and don't build on it anymore, just build on the world, so the world will get bigger and the stuff from the previous expansions and the original world are still there to be enjoyed and to flow in and fit well with the current x-pac