If EQ is soley about a bunch of bros getting together for the satisfaction of slaying dragons - make your own server.
Not trying to come off as a typical "lol if u dont liek it leave" response, however, this is what people ultimately seem to want who "don't want to put up with the drama and have a life but still want to do endgame content". I think that's a fair statement, especially if you're running around espousing that people who say they want competition must not really want competition if they're actually competing or want to split an 800 pop server
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Make whatever you want. Classic, not classic, however challenging you want, without any drama or BS from those pesky other players who aren't playing how you want them to. The files are out there, the stats, everything you could ever need to recreate just about any specific encounters you could ever want. Raid dragons with your bros whenever you feel like it, completely at your discretion. No sitting around stupid camps wasting your life for gear or keys, either.
Oh, wait, you're still here. Say what you want, at some level, even in PVE, this game IS competitive. Take it seriously or don't at all, it's all your choice and that's one of the main points of the game.
Because the truth is, the original Vision was that it did not give a shit about what you want, what you thought was fair, or what you deserved. Want a real classic experience? The original devs outright stated that you are not entitled to see everything and do it all if you weren't willing to put the time in. And even if you put the time in, you still may not get it. That is a "classic EQ experience". Not everyone was going to get to do everything. Sometimes you had to put in a lot of time, sometimes you just had to be lucky, and more often or not you were just shit outta luck.
Feel free to say it's bad design or whatever, but that was the way it was. If you want a "classic experience", there isn't any tap-dancing around it.
Now that isn't to say that stuff like huge mob windows that "force" people to go above and beyond what was originally intended in EQ is ok. Who would have imagined that, though? A non-classic mechanic creating a non-classic experience
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As for the GMs, I said it in another thread. If you want to take the pressure off GMs, you're going to have to make GM intervention ... undesirable. A worse option than working things out than the other guy. Otherwise, so long as it's the "better option" ... guess what? It's always going to be used. Constantly.