The completely misguided notion of "it's classic, this is how it was back then" with regards to the server's endgame situation.
This is not how it was back then. Not at all. In their efforts to create something authentic, the developers have instead created something completely unlike their goal. Classic EQ had twenty servers for people to choose from, to reroll on if their old server was hopeless, and to dilute the amount of players who create a toxic community so that they don't all congest the same one server and turn it into an utter shitfest.
It has ruined the server for me. A number of things could be done to alleviate the issue, but a complete refusal to acknowledge the problem or attempt to solve it has led to this situation where despite being literally the only worthwhile classic EQ server in existence, P99 has only about a thousand players at peak.
I'm pretty sure at least four times that amount would want to play but have found the server impossible to enjoy because of the aforementioned situation. The endgame content is congested to the point of unplayability, and the only real option is to compete over it by doing your best to exclude others.
The things it takes to be part of a serious raiding guild on P99 is beyond what can be expected of normal people, and it creates an awful community because of how antagonistic the act of raiding zero-sum content is on a server with about five times more players than there's content for.
So this attitude of "we're not gonna do anything, this is classic" has ruined the server for me and, I know, many others. Many more than now play have left because of this situation. It is by far the most frequently cited reason for players quitting the server, by far the biggest source of staff burnout and player conflict and cheating, etc.
All for no fucking reason beyond some philosophy about keeping it classic which isn't even correct, leading to something extremely unclassic. It's a bloody paradox.
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