This is a little on the "off topic" side but I think it is spot on target to what we are all doing; game design.
I wonder how many of you have seen this talk by the lead designer of Magic the Gathering on how to design a fun game. I think watching it you will have several "aha!" moments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHHg99hwQGY
I heard about this on a pokemon-go youtube channel. I never played pokemon go but I watch this person's channel daily because he is very insightful and you can learn a ton about the game cycle in general from watching his daily vlogs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMcsSpm-3oI
Let me know what you learn!
My favorite lesson is that in order to make something that people love, some people have to hate it. P99 being difficult fulfills this and it works because this is the most popular way to play eqemu. That's not to say other ways won't work, but as long as it fully explores a certain niche (like EZ server) it can work. Some people are going to hate an ez server, but some people will love it.