re constructing the game for the sake of the 'high end' is to erase the existence of all the people who don't raid and dont like high end repetitiveness
EQs design is obviously deeply flawed. when you say you want to play 'classic' you're saying you want to play a flawed and broken game.
if you try to fix EQ and make it sensible and well-designed you would end up with something that is nowhere close to Classic, because Classic is NOT sensible and well designed
There is an ISSUE: Players don't use many very fun zones such Dalnir, Paw, CT.
But the FAULT does not actually lie with game design. The fault lies with the psychology of the people who play this kind of game. Most people who play EQ have some kind of pathology that makes them exceptionally boring, dull people. Even when they're in a fantasy world of dragons and wizards they want to grind away at a machine in a very repetitive manner in order to "receive" something. They feel they are receiving something.
They're either somehow fooled by a fairly simple illusion, or they enjoy the repetition itself.
I think for some people they really do just believe on an emotional level that pixels are worth accumulating. For others they enjoy the boredom and repetition in the way that autistic kids enjoy rocking back and forth.
Anyway there is nothing that can be done from a game design perspective to make these dullards into adventurers. If you raised Dalnir's ZEM to the point where it was mandatory to camp Dalnir to have a competitive XP rate, these people would find a way to turn Dalnir into a boring campfest grindfest slog anyway. They would either do the content at a level that is high enough to be boring, or insist on groups that are strong enough so the content can be trivial. Anti-caster clickies and classes would become mandatory and the whole thing would be made routine.
Unrest is fun when you crawl it with a level appropriate group. It becomes boring when the whole place is on farm mode by twinks and people buffed with L50+ buffs and so on.
No amount of game design issue will solve the fundamental problem: this game selects for people who are extremely dull and enjoy repetitive simple tasks.
Imagine how great all these players would be on the assembly lines of Henry Ford. They'd be perfect employees and would actually LOVE their job.
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