There seems to be a HIGH preference toward everyone just going to the zones that are closest to their favorite city for their daily.
I know the Krytan/Maguuman/Shiverpeaks killer sort of dailies are SUPPOSED to encourage players to go to new zones, but it isn’t working. Everyone piles into the starter or end zones. I personally rarely find other people in 30-70 zones unless there is some huge event about to spawn soon.
I saw this suggestion before (I don’t recall if it was here), but I think it bears saying again. Featured maps over a LARGER period of time is a MUCH better way at solving this problem. The map (or maps, you may want to do 2-4 depending on how long they are featured for) should be a “featured” map for a week at the least, and provide some sort of passive bonus for being there.
The bonus doesn’t have to be huge. It could be a slight bit more karma from events, maybe some bonus magic find. It should be something that will ENCOURAGE level-cap players to be in a zone with their 80 that has already HAS 100% map completion there. The biggest wanted things to MOST players I have found is Karma and rare drops, so bonus magic find or karma (or both!) seems like the best way to accomplish this.
The time frame and level of bonus needs to be very well selected. If you make the bonus too great, and the time too short, then you are going to have tons of players flooding 1-4 select zones, and players who don’t want to be in those zones for whatever reason feel left out of the bonus. Make the bonus too big and the time too long, then you have players tiring of the zone and wishing you would change it more frequently. Make the bonus too small and the time too short and nobody will even change the zones they prefer to go to for dailies and farming/questing because the zone will just be changing soon and it may or may not be one they feel like doing at the time, but the bonus isn’t enough to matter.
However if you make the bonus JUST good enough that high level players will WANT to be in those zones, but not feel like they HAVE to if they don’t want to, then what you have accomplished is more players using more of your game instead of creating dead zones.
Players should feel rewarded enough to be in the featured zone that they would take their 80’s there to grab karma or better loot chance, and be happy having an alternative to ONLY running their 80’s around in the high-level zones of the game, but not feel its something they are missing out TOO terribly on if they don’t want to. It should last long enough that players don’t feel like they should be on top of it EVERY day, and the rewards should stay CONSISTENT from featured map changes so that players aren’t all clogging a few select zones just because this week is the “super drop chance” week. It just should be there as a slight nudge to people who are looking for something to do, to do something a bit different that day, and to maybe stick around a little longer than it takes to complete a daily, because as it is right now. . . people hop in the low level zones and get their daily done in an hour or two and most of the other zones are barren.