yeah Stormlord is right, this is how and why thigns went that way.
The only way to preserve old content, is not to add better zones that compete with old ones. But they did it starting with Kunark - it gave you all new 1-50 content all over and it was better than the old world. AND it had a convenient hub city right in the middle of the continent, with any level zone just 1-2 zone lines away. Velious was a bit better, it only added competing zones from 35+, and was mostly high end/raid oriented. Then Luclin repeated Kunark pattern to even greater degree. PoP again followed velious approach etc.
The way I would do it, when adding new expansions:
-if I am adding new races/starting town, only add for that specific race newbie zones, and then merge them into existing world - think how WoW added Burning Crusade - Blood Elves and Dranei got personal 1-20 newbie zones, but rest of expansion zones were strictly 60+, so NONE of the old world content 20-60 has suffered from mudflation.
Another inherited problem with old EQ - too many starting zones - people already scattered around the world way to much, yet places where you actually go to XP, quickly run out of play room.
For example Qeynos-Blackburrow-Everfrost was a good combo. 2 newbie zones connect to a teen zone, where 2 races meet up. Bb was however painful small for all those people. West Karana on other hand was a gigantic waste of a land, it was same range as BB, but hardly anyone ever went there other than for medium pelts, and bandit farm.
Faydwer was badly designed on other hand: they stuck 3 starting zones onto tiny island, 2 of which were right next of each other, and only a single teen level dungeon (CB) even smaller than Blackburrow
Some of the problems, specially zone devaluations, EQ suffered from, lie in their inherited design, that wasn't thought through very well in the beginning
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