I used to say the same thing, and I still agree with you in principle, OP. After having looked over other expansions to games that were well received, I think the real issue is that MMORPG designers are approaching their expansions with the wrong philosophy. An expansion should never "build over" what is currently there. An expansion should be a soft reworking of the whole game so that the old and new material work as a seamless whole. FFXI's model isn't perfect, as others have pointed out, yet FFXI's model is much better at maintaining a symbiotic relationship between expansion material than WoW's model. WoW broke its old content beyond repair, yet FFXI's content has remained far less damaged by time. While Path of Exile is a slightly different genre, it's recent expansion, PoE:Awakening, follows a design philosophy that is far more benign than the philosophy used to produce Heavensward. I think they could learn a thing or two from how GGG chose to do their expansion.