I don't know whether this has already been suggested...

But: - crowdfunding!
There are loads of requests for x and y - eg better customer service; account transfers; better GM policing of rulebreakers and much much more
We are often told, or folk say, that there is no budget for whatever x & y is this week/year
So how about DBG take a bunch of those requests and ask people to put their money where their mouth is?
If, for eg, to be economically viable to get account transfer up and running it would need 500 people/accounts to pledge $100, then they put up a call for those pledges. If they don't get them then we all know that, actually, there really isn't the demand for that, however loudly some folk shout. On the other hand, it guarantees an income stream to 'get stuff done' that the playerbase actually wants.
Could it work?

their pricing on everything they put out is pretty obscene already for a 20+ year old game. If they wanted to do it they could.

I am pretty sure I suggested it before. I'm glad someone else thinks It's a great idea. Some of us love the game and would donate.
My logic was: Tell us how much we have to raise for specific things.
And open a Kickstarter just for that.
Necro dot revamp
$561 of $25,000 raised
For instance.

I'm not sure about 'donations' to a commercial company (personally YMMV)
I had more in mind the idea that if they raised the cash for, say, account transfers the folk who committed the cash would get 1 (or more depending on how much they pledged) free transfers.
I think there would have to be/should be come incentive/value given

I like this idea.
I also like the idea of actually marketing and advertising EverQuest. Just about every business in the world advertises / promotes themselves in some way.
about 10 months ago I was driving and saw a HUGE billboard promoting World of Warcraft classic or whatever it was. Why can't EQ do something similar and bring in more customer base? I think it would be a sensible business decision to increase revenues / profit and grow the game population.

EQ is dead culturally and WoW erased EQ from the public conscious. Blizzard actually did the smart things and restored the game to as close to its original form as possible.

I'd like to see what their accounting numbers are already before giving anything. $14.99 a month with apocalyptic boxing and an overzealously charged in-game market. They have to be making a killing. What does it cost to host servers in this day and age? Nothing compared to what they are bringing in.

How many people work on their new dev team? 5-6? Don't ask me, just guessing. Money is likely not the issue its whether or not Daybreak wants to expand what is a 20 year old game.

I'd be all for Everquest being re-vamped. I mean what are we working with... the past few expansions have been essentially easy content for developers.

1. Take Kunark Zones, raise the level of mobs, create some new mobs, keep the same zones, maybe add a couple of new zones, call it "Empires of Kunark" and charge x amount for it. Make raids essentially what the hero content is but small changes....

2. Oh wait, that worked really well. Let's do Velious now and call it some sort of "blast into the past" … take Velious zones, raise the level of mobs..

You see where this goes.

Are you talking about WoW Classic ?

Because it's far from its original form.

Layering at 1st (and overloaded/overcrowded servers, and insane log in queues), leeway issues ingame, broken classes (hunter), gimped version (1.12 was not the best decision without any other content balance, which is what most private servers are doing/have done to give at least a little bit of challenge in a not-so-challenging game).

So no, it's nothing like the original Vanilla WoW.

And besides that (but for that part, it's not really Blizzard's fault) the actual community is just ... trash.
A huge trash container.
We've tried Classic WoW, for a couple of months at launch with husband and some friends, and after the leveling, and our firsts MC runs, it was boring.

I know, you said «as possible», but frankly, it's a cheap version of the orginal game.
The balance is out of whack.

And the community ... well ...

The community is probably screeching dothraki children and people who use to play when they were 18 but are now 30 going "why the heck do I have a turtle shield??"

Never played WoW so I wouldn't know. Don't care either. But it would still be nice to see some advertising / marketing to attract some new blood and money to the game. In today's internet marketing sphere $10k could get you some buzz.