I'm torn, instancing removes the need to poopsock CT spawns for 24 hours, but it also removes the raiding competition which is what makes EQ so much different from other MMOs.
There is still raid competition with instances, just not classic type of competition, which no longer works, particularly on these ezmode progression servers. With the server wide announcements of raid targets dying, that is plenty competition. You can't tell me that if your guild was just now working on beating Dain Frostreaver for the first time and you saw a server wide announcement that another guild has just killed Aaryanor and was moving through NToV that you wouldn't feel competition, envy, a desire to do better and catch up, etc. That's all competition really brings, at the end of the day, is bragging rights and loots that other people don't have yet. That principle applies just fine with instances. I remember in the beginning of PoP when Plane of Time wasn't instanced yet and then after it was instanced, being in there and killing shit. The fact that it was instanced did not take anything away from how amazing it felt to be one of the very lucky few that was there. Running around with my Time's Anithesis and having other Shamans drool over me. The fact that they could get their own instance took nothing from that sense of achievement and competition.
I used to be hardcore team anti insances, and I used to think how some of you and some of the people on these servers think, but I was just dead wrong. Instances are just necessary in today's MMO environment. It's not like WoW where you only have 5 people in your dungeon, so it still feels like a community and still feels like an open world. Particularly with the channels and trading environment etc. There are just too many experienced people playing on these servers with a much easier game than 1999, when things were far, far more spread out even in Classic because of people's inexperience and a more difficult game. Insances/expeditions are the only way to go. They just need to figure out a way (at least for now, while raids are so easy) to limit the number of raid bosses a single guild can get, but even that isn't that big of a problem.
Fuck we just really, really need Kunark. Kunark is when this game really starts to kick off. For me I will be playing the most in my favorite expansion, Planes of Power. And it'll simply be a disastrous ugly mess without instanes, which will really sadden me.