Is EQ worth investing money into in 2016?

Well, it sounds like it is time for you to try something else, even if only for a period of time.
However, I recommend you avoid World of Warcraft. I found the customer service at Blizzard Entertainment to be dreadfully Tool-O-Rific! I played WoW for a few years, and recently left to come back to EQ.
Here are some other options that I looked into that you might consider: Guild Wars II, Lord of the rings online, Elder Scrolls Online, and as someone else mentioned EQ2.

There is also supposed to be a new MMO releasing called Pantheon, by one of the original Devs of EQ.

Anyway, very cool you stuck with EQ for so long, WOW! I am excited to be back myself.

You left WoW because of customer service and you returned to eq?

You can always cancel your sub, not play for a few months and see how it goes financially and mentally after your sub ran out. Costs nothing to do that. Costs nothing to come back again. We cannot tell you how to make your decision since we all play different. I have been playing many many years as many of you have and was a super hard core raider back then but after coming back I do not have any char higher than 90! I quest, tradeskill and get caught up in helping other folks. Some folks have to do it all, some don't. Just cruising along here

Haha, yeah, I take it you would not have made that decision
Yet, I played EQ for three years back in the day and I never had problems with the customer service, so that brought me back. I'll see how it goes

I have to hand to Daybreak on petitions. They are answered within a day and the Bristlebane GM is really helpful...

I've never had an account issue to contact them about, I must admit. My experience has been customer service is non-existent in other MMO's but EQ helps as they can. OMG other games it's so bad! I got an e-mail back from Devcat (Vindictus) a year after I had stopped playing the game - so like a year and half from the ticket submission

I logged into EQ today. I had retired from the game in March of 2014 and was very surprised to find that after over 2 1/2 years, only 5 levels had been added. Doesn't look like it's moving very fast.

I had an issue the other day where I had accidentally deleted my arms due to a quest rewards/shawl aug lore issue, and they were very helpful with getting my arms and the augs that were in it back to me. It was totally my bad too.

The choice to stay or go really depends on if its the game you are bored with or how you have been playing? If its the game itself then there are several suggestion mentioned already that are great. If its more your gameplay you are bored with there are several things to consider in EQ if you have not tried them.

Non combat experience:
-Build and work on houses even if the EQ house building experience is limited. Some people have done amazing things with their houses
-Tradeskills. Yes I know this is a bad word in many circles but it is one way to help pass the time and if you set a goal for yourself like I have of trying to max out the base tradeskills on every race it adds another element to the game.
-Economics. By this you focus primarily on the bazaar keeping track of items, buying low and selling high. This is like the EQ version of the stock market.

Combat Experience
-Try one of the TLP servers out and experience old EQ
-If you want a "TLP" experience but don't want to play on one of those server do it on your current server. You can do this by setting your own rules and unlock content when you want. For example you can only use original zones until you are level xx or have killed mob xx. Also any defiant or new world items will be destroyed or left on corpse. Since you set the rules the experience is truly yours.
-Working through older progression or quests/raids that you have not done or maybe only spent limited time doing.

Personally I have found myself in your boat debating if I should quit or not and that brought me to a more balanced EQ where I spend my time between tradeskills, current content, old content, the market and such to keep things fresh. For example I started progression in HOT working through TDS. My goal was to do all the T1 zone missions and quests. This has made the game more interesting as I don't spend to much time in one expansion content and get more variety.

It's not even in pre-alpha yet and isn't funded, they are still getting some crowdfunding but are looking for real investors, so you are going to be waiting a while.....or ever. If you think WoW has bad customer service (they at least has a CS department which has been great for all my issues), just wait until need customer service for something serious here.

If my income was that limited, I would avoid EQ Live and other subscription MMOs, and instead try to maximize my gaming for as little to no money as possible. Emulate games on older consoles. Play older MMOs on emulated servers. Find niche game development communities of hobbyists who make stuff just because they want to instead of trying to make a living from it. Look for content mods for games you might already own. There's plenty of gaming enjoyment to be had on little or no budget - you just have to go out there and look for it.

To get back on point of the OP, it really isn't that hard to make enough pp to buy 3 kronos, or come up with $12 a month or whatever a single monthly sub is these days. Especially if you have 3 toons at your disposal. Let them all go silver for awhile and go find another part time job for a bit. We're not going anywhere and will be here when you come back....

Thanks for all the suggestions and advice everyone. Much appreciated.

I'm actually on a break from EQ right now, and am actually playing WoW. To preface this, there are a couple of people in the thread who know me in game and can attest that I'm the hardest core kind of non-raider that EQ has.

I'm really enjoying WoW. There's variety in the missions in Legion. For some reason, I love manasaber races. I like kicking fish back into the water. I even like foraging and fishing in WoW, which is the absolute worst slog in game in EQ. I like doing things that aren't inevitably reduced to go here, kill this. I got a ilevel 855 breastplate for kicking fish back into the water. Didn't kill a thing while doing it. There was an option to complete the quest by killing things, but I took the opposite path. (Sure, a lot of WoW quests do end up being go here, kill that though, but even those have some variety. I got credit toward completion of one go here, kill that by bandaging the guards that were under attack.) I like being able to do things that don't involve finding and coordinating my play time with five other people for a multi-hour instanced slogfest sitting in one place, killing trivial mobs with way too many hp where the only actual difficulty is hoping that you don't get bored and miss a heal or that the RNG doesn't screw you and you fail by no fault of your own.

Still, with all of this, I compare it to EQ, and I think that I wished EQ did this, or EQ did that but stayed firmly EQ while it did it. The group version of Herald of Oratory in Veil of Alaris is the only thing that comes to my mind where EQ took the chance to step outside of the usual EQ mold, and I loved that mission. I'd love to see EQ do something like the world quests in Legion - can you imagine a massive fight, everyone helping people NOT IN THEIR GROUP to complete the tasks just because it helps them too?

Also, Pantheon is never coming out. If it somehow manages to slip out the door it's going to be a mess. There's a reason no one gave Brad money in the Kickstarter, he has a reputation post-EQ of having a lot of good ideas, but being completely unable code those good ideas into a coherent game, especially when he has no managerial oversight or impetus to meet goals like the situation Pantheon is in now.

And if three boxing you can get away with just a tank on all access if needed or just one toon for a a j5 merc.

A bit late but my suggestion, prep for a move to FTP for a while. I would say buy EoK, and get a set of T1 group gear, and then go FTP. This way you can come back and mess around if you feel the desire without losing complete access to good gear. Play when you feel like it and can afford it; and always can build up plat and go the Krono route for subs.

For 3 boxing, I agree with Corwyhn; just one toon all access can get buy with that. If all of your toons currently are in Prestige gear, I would look to moving them as I suggested above to move them into TDS/TBM/EoK non-prestige gear before going FTP. AA up as you can as you can buy Krono. I think that will get you a long way to saving money.

These things I think would let you keep playing when you feel like playing, and allow you to take a break if you are feeling burnt out, without regretting money management.

Honestly, I've not really had any issues with EQ's CS since they changed from the original /petition system to the email correspondence system. Now, I've not liked some of the changes to what they will do for players, but I accept why they changed some of them.

I got a 3 day suspension in WoW for hosting a contest. Blizzard didn't even give me a reason, I was giving away 200k gold on my server (30k third place, 70k second, 100k first) for a "song writing contest".

They didn't even give me a reason. I was infuriated. I haven't seen the worst of Daybreaks CS yet, but WoWs is definitely terrible.

And i had a hacked account locked and restored within about 30 minutes of getting the notification that the hacker was trying to transfer my character. My experiences with blizzard CS have been incredibly positive, better than any other of the games i have played including this one. I recommend playing a game because it's fun and i don't dissuade people from trying something out (quitting maybe) because i have had a bad isolated experience with their CS, i have played a couple of other games for years without ever having to deal with CS.

Without a level change and inflated AA, this might be harder than you think.

Not sure what part would be harder than it would be currently...

I have to agree, any issue I've had Blizzard CS was very quick to respond to. Legion is probably the best expansion WoW's ever had between the first major content patch only 2 months after the expansion launched and just looking forward to everything they announced for 2017 its can't hurt to look into WoW if your getting burnt out in EQ. When I start to feel burnt out I take it as a sign that it's time to go to another game, I usually bounce between EQ, EQ2 and WoW.