Has anyone else noticed...

[Secrets]

...that every server seems to be offering:

1. A hub zone for people to start out in, and gate back to at any time
2. Epics at level 1.
3. Times whatever experience.
4. Spellscriber
5. Buffbot
6. Actual Bots
7. Insane stat items that disregard balance for Titanium-Era EQ
8. No drop flag removed
9. Lore flag removed
10. Free gear
11. Raids that do not scale to amount of people
12. Group content that people end up raiding
13. Solo content, with no incenitive for grouping it
14. Insane AA XP rate

Hell, I think I just described every custom server on the list, and if I advertised something like this, it would be the next best thing, because people have this mentality that more is better.

Does anyone see a problem with this? More isn't always better, especially when servers are tuned to EverQuest as it is in live, yet, people end up with +5000 HP on items, and content progression is out of whack, which leads to stressed serverops frantically rushing content, making subpar encounters almost every time, with no thought process involved for the encounter itself. There is the rare case where you make enough subpar content that your server survives and has a population, and you can focus on advanced content that way.

The mentality of serverops is more is good, as well. Nothing beats epics at level 1, especially when we're coding around 36 delay 6 damage short swords. It seems to be every server on the list, and I am quite sick of it. Nothing offers a unique gameplay experience from another server other than content.

Does anyone have any feedback on this? I've been curious to see what the community thinks about it for a while. I have not seen a custom server done something other than the aforementioned above, minus Shards, which is not a part of our community presently.

It would be very intriguing if someone started a project that was unique, ya know? None of the things mentioned above. A server with the feel of classic without the content of classic.

I would do it, but I cannot do it alone. In addition, I am not motivated enough to do something such as this. If a team of people assembled I would be more motivated to make this. I do not want to end up doing anything or everything alone. Everything should be a team effort, not an arguement or bickering like I see so often in the communities here.

And that lack of team effort often leads to unbalancing content. Nothing gets documented, everything gets put in. And that leads to Dev A making content with, for example +5 str for a tier 1 content NPC and Dev B makes a tier 2 content with +2 str, and the items are identical in stats besides that.

I could go on and on without naming servers, but a majority of them I have seen and been involved in, have done this.

My question that I mentioned above... Would anyone have any suggestions on how to prevent this from happening in so many of our private communities? Obviously, you cannot force people to change their ways, however you can influence them to modify them.

I just want to see some higher quality stuff, instead of the 'more is better' mentality. This is in no way attacking anyone, I am simply questioning how we can improve our community, and I believe that a discussion is the best way to do this.