This is far from the the truth. I was there from a week after launch in '99 - '06.
Luclin didn't have a lot of content for "casuals". Most were still in velious / kunark era with a few still in Classic at launch. There's a phenomenon described as "catching the train while it's going somewhere", and this was true in Everquest before zones/expansions became ghost towns. There's a finite amount of time before even casual players suffer beyond repair.
Luclin brought in the bazaar, killing the Gfay/EC markets, and port scions diminished druid/wizard classes. Yes, it was "better" for a lot of people because they didn't have to sit there and manually sell items. However, it removed that crucial human interaction. Paludal Caverns was implemented and no one ever leveled anywhere else from 1-20 in all of the previous expansions, thus killing any sense of adventure in the previous and future timelines for all lowbies/mids. This is the expansion where the cracks started to appear, yet for raiders it wasn't a big deal.
PoP didn't really have anything for the casual players outside of Bastion of Thunder. Add in port stones to completely remove druids/wizards from porting, etc. Adventuring for casuals was essentially killed.
LoY had a few QoL improvements (shared bank), a few spells, and another component that was detrimental towards human interaction again, the LFG tool. LoY is when we all knew "something was wrong" as the expansion dropped in 4 months after PoP launch. No one really went there on Xegony, it was always a ghost town. /who all friends went the way of the dodo bird as you just hit the LFG tool if you didn't find anything in guild chat. True friendships were sacrificed for expediency and a few minutes of time.
LDoN was probably the first expansion aimed at bringing the "casual" player back into the fold and it wasn't all fun and sunshine either. Instancing, implemented. Players stopped communicating with each other during those runs. They'd que up the instance, maybe toss a hello out there in the first couple weeks of release, then they stopped doing that altogether after a month while continuing to complete the missions.. over and over again. It sucked donkey balls, yet we had to do it for the augments. Cracks widened into fissures from all perspectives outside of the hardcore raiders.
GoD released Feb., 2004 - 0 casual content and this was the last chance for "casuals" on Live and too broken for raiders, solidifying the plummet from the top for Everquest Live, never to recover again in the same magical capacity it once dominated.
OoW released Sept., 2004 - meh, not a casual oriented expansion and had to give the raiders something to do. The last true gasp of Live.
Wow release Nov., 2004
It did work.
This was the natural order of a time locked emulator until Galach implemented bag limits. Historically, P99 had two competing top guilds. Guild #1 was on top, while Guild #2 was hungrier and coming for them until they eventually became the top guild.
No one ever told any "casual" guilds that they couldn't participate. No one was stopping them. All they needed was the will and ambition to do it. Instead, they misconstrued everything they've ever heard about raiding into the most negative aspects their minds could conjure up: "poops socking, 16 hour windows, toxicity, etc". They just had to try and they would find success. Instead, it was easier to make excuses and continue the charade "it's too hard". As a result, members from casual guilds would leave to raiding guilds to seek the opportunity at gear and an experience they possibly missed out on during Live. Rinse and repeat, yet no longer...
Here comes the draft, which limits human interaction as a whole to only which humans you wish to interact with, and we see the rise of instancing all over again and reminiscent of the downfall of Live. Evidence of further disruption to the natural cycle of a time locked emulator increases. Players from casual guilds no longer have to leave their guilds to raid or acquire raid gear.
Add in quake meta: devalues and disrespects everyone's time and sacrifices put forth for the entirety of the project, does the same for all items, and further propels this Project towards its doom.
Some individuals have expressed their "fun and enjoyment" with the current setup. I suspect those same individuals are the ones incapable of stepping back to view the larger picture and they're the same individuals that have always made excuses of why they refused to try in the past. The death of meritocracy is celebrated, history and traditions along with the longevity of Project 1999 be damned.
Perhaps, Rogbog are tired of running this project and are simply winding it down via these methods. If that's the case, then that's the case.
Long rant complete.
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For those incoming "TLDR" folks, continue worshipping the God of Illiteracy and believing your status is somehow increased from it. We all know who you are already and there's no need to remind everyone.