That's exactly my point. People say "I want oldschool EQ, but with XP bonus, and no hell levels, and no this, and no that, and give me free loot, etc, etc."
That's really a big part of why I'm asking.
Speaking as an EQEmulator developer...
I'm thinking the biggest problem with the EverQuest Emulator community is that they don't know what they want until they find what they want. And there is no answer to the question "Why do we need more than one emulated EverQuest server?" - it simply needs to support different playstyles between all players. People play the game their way and EQLive pidgeonholes you into a single vision of what EverQuest should be. People turn to multiple emulated servers for different types of gameplay in the same engine.
For the longest time, Elidroth, EQEmulator was on its last legs in 2006-2007 and we were all in a similar position to where EQ1 is right now, asking the same questions you are. What did people actually want?
I made a few servers, none of which held interest until I found a friend of mine, Ailia, who had an excellent idea of making stats simplified. INT increased damage, WIS increased healing, etc. We plopped that server in there as an experiment to hone our coding/database skills. I learned a lot through the experience that made me 'somewhat competent' as a designer, and a coder. Cue 2008 when ClassicEQ was launched and the influx of classic enthusiasts.
When ClassicEQ (now known as EQClassic) launched, people wanted to relive the glory days - this was apparent on the SOE EQ forums, where a 163-page thread was made - and if SOE wasn't going to bring them the product they wanted, they switched to EQEmulator. Myself included; I primarily got interested in EQEmulator development in 2004-2006 because I was dissatisfied with EQLive/EQ2 at that point and wanted to make my own game in an already existing engine that solved the things I hated. But see, here's the thing: I didn't know WHAT *I* hated about EQ1, only that the game was less than desirable to play.
Personally, I think the biggest problem with EQ1 is the amount of time it takes to get relevant, and the amount of content that is simply unused is abhorrently silly. If you cut EQ down to the zones that were only relevant, the client download would be somewhere around 800MB. That's a ton of content that you aren't using, a ton of content people have to voluntarily play.
That being said, my opinion differs from a majority of the EQEmulator community. There's three or four types of gameplay and henceforth server players/ops that exist in EQEmulator:
1) Classic Enthusiasts.These people are classic purists who are either EQMac refugees, people who quit around post-PoP era EQ due to the content direction it was going in, or people who simply want a challenging MMORPG to play in an environment that fosters community. Project 1999, Red99, EQClassic, and Roflon Zek fall under these categories.
2) Custom Content People.These people are coming to EQEmulator in search of making their own server, people who have been outcast from EQLive due to MQ2 bannings, or the occasional player who has played EverQuest in the past who are looking for something new and unique. Most of the people in this category are okay with having programs like MQ2 available, and tend to box 3-6 characters and sometimes more. EZ, THF, Storm Haven, and many other custom servers fall under this category.
3) EQLive/EverQuest purists- These people are primarily coming from EQLive to either contribute to the project of preserving EverQuest, or to have a boxing army that they are unable to perform on live due to SOE's crackdown on MacroQuest 2. A majority of these types box or develop for EQEmulator. PEQ/PEQMac/EQTitan fall under this category.
In terms of what players actually want? They want whatever they are most vocal about - currently, the numbers do not lie, players want Classic EQ with no boxing. This means that you need to remove all the content without any bells and whistles such as augments, downgrade the UI to the old one prior to the XML based UI, and essentially have the game in a pristine state as it was in 2001 with Velious, Kunark, and the original box set.
With a close second being custom servers that they can create their own armies and take down content with - I would say the community is split in that regard, some players like that kind of thing, and you need to support all types of players. Different players like different types of gameplay. I can't stand playing more than one character, so I play on servers that support playing one character only like Project 1999 and Enlightened Dark.
In terms of what EQLive should focus on? If it were me, I would recommend focusing on the ability for players to create their own content, run their own servers, and have the ability to share their creations with the world. If you provide players a toolset to do this (And I'm not talking about EQN where you're able to change the geometry; simply EverQuest mechanics and zones with a scripting engine + NPC placement system) and allow for players to play this content and share their content creations with other players, you'd essentially get rid of the need for a content development team. People could create that classic server themselves by using tools YOU provide to them. Perhaps allow completed zones to be sold for station cash. If there was continuous developer support and interaction between SOE and the developer community, I would guarantee that someone would utilize this. SOE has done the same with EQNext, EQEmulator has already done it to an extent, why can't it be done?
It would require a lot of development time to pull this off, however, It would certainly be profitable by SOE, and would breathe new life into the game in the same way EQEmulator did.
In short, players are unique and don't want one thing; they want lots of things that they can pick from whenever they please. In a sense, EQEmulator allows you, if you don't like the server you are playing on, to spend the time to correct the flaws about the server you are playing on and learn a bit about programming and database management in the process of doing so. That kind of openness ensures that players cannot get bored, and if they do, they can make something that isn't boring to them with the tools provided.
