So what you're saying is, the playerbase as a whole shouldn't be punished for the actions of certain specific players? And instead those certain specific players ought to face increasingly severe punishments as a deterrent? This only stands to reason. The game ought to allow for varying playstyles, as long as the individuals involved are not interfering with others, but offering a compromise or a solution when interference does occur. That is part of the social game. Preventing one, removes the other. Example...
A small number of raiders wanted to play EQ their way and staff went out of its way to ensure that was possible, announcing it in so many words, even though these players were actively disrupting zones full of players in the process. Despite these strategies having resulted in complaints and petitions, it was still endorsed, condoned, even celebrated as new and creative (even though it was done in classic), all part of legitimate gameplay, experimenting with low numbers.
Meanwhile, a larger number of individual players AE kite, disrupting fewer players in the process (xp zones are virtually empty nowadays), yet aren't allowed to experiment and play EQ their way. An entire class has been prevented from making use of its designed features while soloing, at a time in the server's history when there are fewer groups than ever.
Players have long been allowed to take mobs from bard kites exceeding 4 mobs. Then, dots were even made to have a 25 mob limit. Now, the number of zones has been restricted.
The reasoning behind the most recent rule change isn't logically consistent. It is however consistent with the history of the server. Example... Both nec and shd have had an unclassic feature working against their design, with lifetaps seeing 100% resists by all but a few raid targets. Why? Because, long ago, certain raiders were experimenting, playing their game, hooping down raid targets.
The antosocial, extreme end of raiding and soloing just has not been punished adequately enough on an individual level. Instead, the general community and the classic game itself has been made to adjust.
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