Why wasn't the game designed like this?

[Yoko_Kurama]

but why bother investing in HQ stuff when in a couple of hours you're already high enough in level to equip the next set?.

That is something i've wanted to touch on for a while, I think that you have 2 possible paths to solve this based on my experiences with other mmos. You could either make each level require insane amounts of exp via grinding hundreds of mobs per level (which many people wouldn't want to do) or, you create check point incentives at various levels, for example one of the old mmos i played had 3 distinct pvp areas, one was at level 15, once you got to level 16 you could no longer go to that level 15 pvp area, the next was level 30, finally was the max level pvp area. These 3 areas caused people to purposely go out of their way to get the best possible gears for the level they wanted to hang out and pvp at for a few days/weeks. Some people in that game never even went to max level because they had more fun at level 30 or they'd make a max level character specifically to farm for money to afford lower level pvp gears etc..

But this is not a pvp game, it's a story driven game, and with that method in mind the only way to make crafting viable at lower levels is to create a system that somehow causes players to be at lower levels a lot longer than they are.