Hey, again, Chaos!
I agree with you that the game of EQ evolved over time. Each expansion, and even tweaks between the expansions, changed how things worked and added new content (zones, races, classes, features like in-game maps, instanced zones, etc.)
In general, those changes were made with the goal of balancing out the game, and making it even more fair and fun to play. Whether or not SoE achieved these goals with all of their changes is a huge debate that this thread is probably not the right place for.
I don't think these changes were quite as earthshattering as you seem to make them out to be, Chaos. For example, I don't think that the release of EQ's next expansion will be a complete 180 degree change in the way things work. But that's just my opinion, and I respect yours.
You do have a good point in asking "Which version of EQ are we striving to emulate here?". I'm guessing that the answer is "the state of Live EQ when Titanium Edition was released", but it would be helpful to me (especially if I'm going to help contribute a bit) to have that point clarified by the senior folks involved with the project.
I understand that there are some folks who are interested in setting up and playing on highly-customized servers. Rather than thinking of it as a "them vs. us" situation, the folks who favor customization should support the efforts of the core team to build a highly stable, efficient, and feature-rich emulation of Live EQ, and then build their customizations on top of that foundataion!
P.S. I'm certainly not insulting or acting as the "grammar police", but I think the word you're looking for, Chaos, is "Canon" with one "n". That means "the standard; the officially recognized general rule".
"Cannon" with two "n"s is "a mounted gun for firing large projectiles"
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