I will wholeheartedly agree with both the "2014 competence and twinking" and "1999 ignorance towards race/class experience penalties" comments being very much a real thing... but that's about it. I don't at all see a lack of grouping, nor all too much shunning of penalty-heavy players.
I'm on my second stint playing P1999 right now. The first was in 2011/2012, and once again as of about two months ago. All of this time has been spent below level 30 (it's a syndrome, I can't help it!) and the only thing that has really changed in that time, that I can tell, is the amount of twinking. Though I am twinked fairly well myself, I still see plenty of people who are completely new to the server. This is an observation that is further reinforced in the time I spend in EC, as a tailor. In buying HQ Bear Skins, I can't even begin to tell you how many people come up to me positively giddy at the prospect of getting that 32p for spell money, or their first set of banded.
Additionally, the supertwinks aren't even shunning groups altogether. In the past two days, I've had not one, not two, but FIVE different people pass through my groups sporting a Fungi. Last night, when I was looking for a tank to replace my SHD before logging out, I found one in a guy sporting a Fungi/CoF/the whole nine.
To me, a far more serious problem... one that definitely breaks the "classic feel" completely... is the amount of PLing going on. PLing itself doesn't bother me at all. Rather, it's the fact that it so often takes place in some of the most contested group camps in the game, rather than any of the countless zones that are otherwise completely barren.
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