[Rooj]

If it's not different, then why do you suppose they've made all these unclassic changes but never done anything about the ENORMOUS class imbalances present in classic EQ?

Maybe the same reason Verant didn't? Because most players weren't playing a certain way back then, so they didn't need to?

Don't you think that many of the normal things that go on on P99 would've been changed by Verant if they'd been normal during era? I LOVE reading through old MMO patch notes and dialogue from developers, and time after time again Verant talked about balance. Whether or not they were good at it is another discussion, but it's pretty clear that they WANTED and STROVE to achieve class balance. And in my opinion, for the most part they did a decent job. In every single patch they ever did there was SOME sort of balance change whether it was a spell, an item, a mob, or a mechanic.

But I can't think of any class imbalance that compares to Charm. Other than that, I don't think that the classes are "ENORMOUSLY" imbalanced. I think that with or without Charm, Enchanter is the strongest and most effective class in the game, but I also think that all of the things it can do including charm are a part of its identity. Enchanters should 100% be charming. But they shouldn't be doing the amount of damage they are doing, on top of all the utility that they provide.

Is there imbalance? Well, duh. This ain't a homogenized modern MMO. I truly believe that having unique classes directly produces imbalance, yet I'd still much rather have unique classes than homogenized ones. I don't really care about imbalance that much, except for in extreme cases like this.

So why did Charm make it so long like this on live? If I had to guess, it's because parsing wasn't really a thing yet even for developers. Might also have to do with the fact that making an MMO is hard as fuck because you are literally creating another world, practically with its own laws of nature. Either way, it only took 4 years for them to finally start nerfing charm, and look at all the things they did to it:
-Charmer gets 50% of the agro of the pet. (I don't see this in official patch notes, only on forums about the test server. it may not have gone through, but players were saying that if they were also the slower, they'd have to delay sending in their pet or they'd get agro)
-Healing a charmed pet now generates an appropriate amount of hate for
the healer.
-Charmed pets now take up to one third of the experience for each NPC
killed. This amount scales down based on the percentage of damage to
the target that the pet does. Dire charm pets still take the same
experience they always have.
-Charmed pets are no longer selected as a monster's preferred target
if there are many players available for the monster to attack instead.
-The resist modifiers on several charm spells (such as Beckon, Call of the Arch Mage, Command of Druzil and Word of Terris) have been removed, making them a bit easier
to resist.
-Changed Charm spells so that NPCs spell use will now be interrupted once the charm has expired. (I believe the point of this was that people were waiting for pets to start casting a spell before attempting to recharming them, removing any chance of being hit before recharming)
-Curious what this means: -The Hole now uses Kunark-level Mez/Charm/Taunt rules
-Most importantly (I can't find this in any patch notes but the QQ is definitely visible on the internets), charmed pet damage was reduced by around 50%.

"They also nerfed charmed pet damage. If you fully buffed a charmed pet, he still did much less damage than he would have uncharmed and unbuffed. Of course, the second he broke charm, he did his full damage to you. I fully admit, enchanters were too damned powerful before. An enchanter who was good at crowd control could turn certain wipes into easy exp as the mobs lined up waiting to be killed. When PoP was first released, a good charming enchanter could solo mobs that normally took a raid to kill. The only way to get through some Gates of Discord content was to build a party around a charming enchanter (the expansion was balanced for level 70, but the level cap stayed at 65, so a warrior couldn't tank the incoming damage. An enchanter would charm a pet, the pet would tank, and the rest of the party was there mainly to keep the enchanter alive on charm breaks)."

Those are the changes to charm within the first 5 years of Everquest, but after Luclin launch of course. Look at how DRASTIC they are. Wonder why...