On THF we try to balance things out.
Sure, our server has Epic wielding Orcs but imo 1.0 Epics are absolute borderline in quality. People want the big stats on their toys.
Then again our 1.5 quest is a totally different story. You will have to get your stuff sorted or you will not get it. The 2.0 quest actually earns the name epic as it is rather long (unlike some servers were you kill 1 mob and loot it
)
We want to make it easy and get rid of tedious tasks like spells, but on the other hand our Spellscriber only scribes up to lev69. Lev70 spells and beyond are drops from exp mobs. Lev70 Ancient Spells which are much stronger than the Live versions drop off of Raid mobs. The list goes on.
I am also trying to balance classes out - on our Server also Druids and Shaman can heal on raids. Sure no CH, but they have much better patch heals than on Live(Cle also got a better heal). SK and PAL get rare items with long recast Defense Disc. They are not worthless on raids. Each caster has a much stronger pet compared to Live to make up for the power that melee gain with weapons. The benefits of a custom server. Everyone can feel usefull without the restraints which original EQ dictates.
You make it too hard and people will not play on your server. You make it too easy and people will play but also leave again shortly because they already reached everything first try. It's not easy to find the right balance between challenge and spoon feeding.
We only have about 40-50 people playing during prime time but since it's almost always the same players shows that we are taking the right approach.