For people with less time I usually recommend necromancer or a class able to solo. Necro is hte best for convenience and ease, but they're also a very complex class that gives you the opportunity to be at your best. They're more limited in grouping situations since they have so many dots. Their versatility is really meant for the solo environment, but I'd say they're fine for groups just don't complain when their pet isn't a good tank or they run out of mana casting dots or they can't heal anybody else in the group or something like that.
But you're different. People like you just want to experience everything in EQ without having to stop to smell every single rose. I see nothing wrong with this. I myself play on projectEQ for this exact same reason. There're many places in EQ (there're tons of expansions and raids) I just will never ever see unless I see them on projectEQ or an easier server. How do you go about doing it if you're wanting to change the ruleset?
I honestly don't think increasing the experience rate will have the desired effect. IMHO, the path to go is to increase the power of the player. Why do I feel this way? Because when you're max level you'll still need a raid force to kill the raid mobs. You'll still need to all show up at the same time to do it. It'll still be painful organizing all of that. It's better just to bump up offense/defense markedly. Then when you're max level, you can do the raid with less people and less strain. Besides, battling a yellow/red con is so much more fun whne you've grown up in fear of them, never able to fight them until they're pushovers and useless to you.
No matter what you do, make sure that players don't feel restricted too much. You want them to feel like anything is possible. Nurse that feeling. If players rush through everything too quick and get the gold then there's nothing more to achieve, nothing more to dream of. So be careful about how you do it. Keep in mind that this is really just an issue of time. If a player has things to do and dream of, they'll keep playing. If they keep doing the same thing over and over and don't make much measurable progress, they'll quit.
A lot of this is just burnout from playing EQ for the past 12 years too. I mean, no matter how easy EQ gets for me, it'll always be EQ and play similarly and look similarly. Only answer is to play something else, ultimately.
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