@Kiddles : I didn't quote because that's a lot of text, but...
I can kinda see what you're saying on one hand, but yet on the other hand, I feel that there could be more side-paths to the progression. Yes, you mention the EoC and how we've all killed the EoC hundreds of times.... but does EoC have to be the only boss? I remember when the EoW was the only boss.... until BoC came along. I remember how we all were amazed when 1.2x came about and brought the Crimson, and the alternate ores along with it. It was awesome. It added variety to a game that was sorely needing it back then.
The suggestions I suggested above, I don't think would change the game to where it would no longer feel like Terraria (the map suggestion I mean), but yet it would open doors for countless expandability options (especially for modders). Modding is what is keeping Terraria alive; if tModLoader hadn't come around when it did, I would hazard a guess that Terraria would be nearly dead by now. I don't see videos on Youtube of anybody playing Vanilla anymore; it's always one of the most popular "big content mods" like Calamity, Thorium, and similar mods.
What do these mods do? They add more bosses, more armor, more biomes, more crafting materials. Do all of these exist after Moon Lord? No, in fact, very few of them do from what I've seen. Most of these mods (I know Tremor, Calamity and Thorium were this way) add several paths of progression through Pre-Hardmode and even early Hardmode. Some of these mods do indeed add Post Moon Lord content, absolutely.
And these mods, are what is keeping Terraria alive, so what does that teach us?
To make Terraria fresh enough for people to play it, you simply add more content. It worked for those mods, why would it not work for Vanilla Terraria?
Yeah, sure, I think killing the EoC for the 5 millionth time is boring. Killing WoF yet again is boring. But you know... what if there was an alternate progression? What if there was another boss that wasn't WoF?
I remember Isabella's Biome ideas that she posted, and one of hers was the River of Styx or what-not as an underworld replacement. Instead of Lava, it was more soul-themed with blues and greens instead of everything being red and orange. Instead of WoF, you would have fought a giant ghost ship with a huge skeleton attached to it, and ghosts everywhere, etc. That'd be awesome. Just like the Brain of Cthulhu was awesome when it was an alternative to the WoF and the Corruption.
But then, after 3-4 Crimson playthroughs, I was like "Let's do a Corruption this time..." and it felt good to go back to old familiar roots after seeing the new several times.
Though, one teensy mistake Re-Logic did, was they made the Crimson stuff outright superior in every way to the Corruption and vice-versa for Tungsten vs Silver, Platinum vs Gold. Not sure why they did that... they could have made, for example, the Blood Butcherer do slightly less damage per hit but swing slightly faster than the Light's Bane. Or maybe Platinum Armor has 2 more Defense than Gold Armor, but yet Gold would have some other perk, maybe it sparkles in lower light conditions to help you see your surroundings faintly. Who knows. Something.
But I still feel that map suggestion of mine that allows us to do what STW does, would open up a ridiculous number of possibilities for modders. STW itself is a pretty good showcase of what is possible with that kind of system, if it were made part of vanilla Terraria natively. And I could only imagine what a builder-minded person could do if he were capable of making maps like that within the game.
It'd still be Terraria, but with a huge new side-game open that you could choose to play with when you wanted more things to do. More dungeons spawning at worldgen, maybe underground houses that are more than 10x10 blocks, maybe instead of a simple round room hornet nest, we could have a small mini-map of a complex maze of hornets. Maybe the underground desert would look more like an ant colony with mazes of tunnels. Who knows.
But the core gameplay would still be Terraria, as it's always been.
EDIT: And I'm not saying we
shouldn't do a Terraria 2 at all, I just still feel that there's room in the original to expand some more. Hopefully some of this stuff is done/explored in 1.3.6 or later...