I've been playing off and on for about 5 years (off now, but on next month) and yet my home nation of Bastok has not grown one bit. They are still doing construction (it looks like) on Port Baskok, no new mines have opened up (you can count Movalpos if you want), and for a town that is 6 yrs RL (who knows how many in game years) not one new guild has opened up?
If square can add new areas and modify existing ones for events why can't they grow? With all the commerce us "Adventurers" put into each town should they have more people and new shops and guilds?
How about Bazaar Market in each city were you are encouraged to peddle your goods, and depending on how many people join in, it lures NPC peddlers to pop and sell goods? You can click an NPC and he can give you an Overview of goods sold in the market and the people selling them (for those of us who have full AH)
Expanding towns with new businesses ( i.e. guilds/item/weapon/armor/etc.... shops ) And a battle arena in each town where people can duke it out just for kicks (Ultimate fighting FFXI style or something)
Traveling bands that hit the towns and change the music, that offer extra quests for gil errr something like that.
New flora, waterways, buildings, NPC's .... something to show that the cities are growing.
It seems that once SE has moved to a new expansion the old stuff just gets kicked to the curve. I thinking spicing up the old stuff and making it interesting again would be nice. Make some of the old stuff people used to do interesting again by adding new items and intriguing challenges. Just some ideas, if anyone has anything else to add I'd be interested. I personally like the Star Onion Brigade quests thought them Hilarious and fun. Some more quests for those funny little Taru's would be cool.
"Permission to speak freely, sir? I'm not sure you know what you're doing." Marine Starcraft
"Oh my God, he's whacked! I vote we frag this commander..."
Marine Starcraft
