Short answer: P99 has a maximum AoE limit, added roughly a year ago; live did not.
Longer answer: while live never had a limit, most players faced a technical limit. Remember, the classic era of EverQuest was 1999-2001, and back then the majority of players were on dial-up. Even if you weren't on dial-up I'm pretty sure the Internet in general had greater latency issues back then.
So while there were certainly people playing on a T1 who could AoE large groups (I know for a fact that a friend of mine who played at a game center with a T1 did lots of AoEing), it was a riskier proposition back then (I also know that it wasn't uncommon for that same friend to die from lag problems) ... and again for most players it wasn't even viable.
Finally, there's the pragmatism reason. Even if none of the above was true, AoE players on modern connections were extremely disruptive before the AoE limit was added. The Overthere was all but owned by Bards, and Chardok was basically off-limits for non-AoE groups, even though neither zone was like that in the classic era.
So, even if it's not exactly/precisely classic, the P99 AoE limit definitely makes the server overall more classic.
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