I have played in spurts over almost 10 years now. I have been working my way through progression the same order it was released in. Currently in ST and VP. I have not done anything in T11 as of yet.
On the topic of Bane Weapons, I was in T7 when UW was introduced into the server. I was 18 boxing at the time and by the time I had all the armor, spells and accessories. I had bane weapons for my crew to kill Floating Skull and complete the tier. I did not find any problems with needing them to kill a targeted boss.
Expeditions is something a lot of people do not look at. Sure, the end goal of hive shards for UW things is not worth it till you can do the T10 Old Blackburrow but they do offer other things for toons within that tier.
I could see adding HoH token drops to Catacombs of Dranik being an option that might bring people to have more interest in them. The Charm Prism Upgrades that drop and can be purchased count for both v1 or v2 charms. I used to do them daily as it was a easier source for essences then attempting to farm bosses. They can also be turned in for 1 hive shard each so I do not foresee their drop rate being increased.
I do not know if its possible to bring back the T5 expedition (the random boss spawns was a nice alternative from trying to get them to spawn in zone). I know it was disabled due to an exploit but that is about it.
On the toon count, currently I have a 30 box. Tracking who needs how much of what has been interesting but that has also caused me to dig into the macro side of EZ. Creating the macros I have has helped a lot with item tracking and other random things that have come up.