I have to respectfully disagree on most points. Now, I am using Grand Creation as a example. We have decent numbers, the average on at a time is around 60. To be truthful, for any emulated server (save Mangos or Antrix) those are pretty good numbers. We offer no free items or spells, no zone commands, etc. About the only thing we do offer are your bot vendors on PoK. Since that does cost the player currency, and it gets around the lack of player buffers I don't consider that a real freebie.
The main player type I find on PEQ are the hardcore players. They know the game well, and they enjoy playing it, even if they've done the same thing over and over again. To them, there is still fun and adventure. EQEmu is no longer the static mess it used to be. There are variables and surprises that keep players on their toes, and force them to use proper strategy. The great thing about this from a development standpoint is these players like things exactly the way they were on Live, and they have no problem offering suggestions or reporting bugs to allow us to make that so. I don't think the EQEmu community as a whole realizes how much work we put into making event scripts or raid events as live like as possible. We don't just recreate the mobs and loot. We attempt to recreate the strategy, the whole experience. Perhaps we bump the XP and loot a bit, but that in no way makes the game easy. I'm constantly nerfing things I feel are too easy, I know players that have been trying to get their hands on the same spell for weeks, even months at a time, PEQ currently has 400 player corpses in the world. The player base I mainly deal with loves that stuff!
I don't feel any work done on the source or in the db is a waste of time at all. There is still a long long list of bugs, missing features, balance issues, etc that need to be ironed out. If anything, we can call it for prosperity sake. The main point of the project is to create EverQuest so we will be able to play it forever, long after Sony has pulled the plug. That's also why I am a huge fan of creating a pure classic server. Hell, I'd love to create a server package for each expansion, using the proper client at the time for no other reason but simply to have it. The other reasons I put so much work into PEQ is for personal gain. Some people collect coins, I build Norrath. Lastly, and most importantly for me, I enjoy building the database for the players I mentioned above, those who enjoy playing EverQuest and appreciate the work all the devels put into it.
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