Can the concept of an expansion be changed?

[MiiiMiii]

There was a lot of mayor downsides to the concept of Expansions in MMORPGs. These downsides are not new, and Blizzard was merely doing it the same way Everquest and other MMORPGs did it.

So what did people not like about the release of TBC?
- All their time investing in gearing at 60 was nullified. If you had full Naxxramas gear, the gear would be replaced in Karazhan (but this problem has gotten way worse in later expansion). This meant people 6- months before the expansion felt like it was a waste of time to gear up, it will soon be irrelevant.
- All the reputations/recipes that had been farmed is useless.
- All the gold they had earned became way less worth, so it felt unfair that gold was that much easier to earn so much quicker.
- The world became bigger - making it less likely you would run into others leveling / world PvPing etc.
- Leveling to max level takes even longer. "Fixed" by reducing amount of XP required per level (and later RAF, heirlooms, way easier to kill mobs etc.).
- Other changes to core of the game like the concept of "heroic" dungeons, flying mounts, class changes, 25man raids, PvP system etc.

Could all these problems be avoided?

For instance, what if every expansion gave a set of new "TBC" servers. These servers had the new races, talent trees, zones (they could for instance make it "Outland only" (removing Azeroth completely) etc. Living as a completely seperate game. Could that work?

Could an expansion be made where there was +0 to max level?

Could an expansion be "more raids and dungeons" only?

Or is the way Blizzard has done all their expansions the only way that would really work in the long run?

[Lochton]

From a business perspective, this is quite a bad idea. Jaylock actually made a thread almost like this, just less information, and still - bad idea.

[Venziir]

Can it? Of course it can. Will it? Nope.