This game is ruined by a lot of people who endlessly camp and/or steal kills for a variety of quests in this game, especially when the spawn time is something ridiculous and those people know it - thereby exploiting the rarity and turning it around for money. Maybe you'll think "This is Everquest, get used to it", but how about "This could easily be the reason why this game is just barely hanging on and everything since has surpassed it in numbers and income". Spending hours, days, weeks camping something should have been a thing of the past and long changed by now. This does not include raids, or creatures with numerous items that have a chance of dropping in place of something else. If the spawn time is something reasonable, then there isn't an issue... we're talking about very specific things here. For example; I was trying to spawn the Minotaur lord and some came in and sat on the hero's spawn location while I killed all the slavers, no doubt intending to take the kill if he did spawn. He was also 16 levels higher than me and I would never have had a chance to get what I worked for, so I was forced to leave. For something that apparently is not easy to come by, this is such a stupid thing to have to deal with. And the worst part about it is that likely no one cares about this particular instance, but of course everyone will throw a fit if some group moves in on your prime dungeon camp and just starts pulling what they want.
Just curious what server you play on? If I had to guess it is a TLP server. If this is the case join the dark side aka Live. While these things are still possible on Live they happen much less frequently. You have players who have been at this game for 18+ years without a break on the same server. People actually care about their reputation on live for the most part. The only nostalgia a TLP server brings is in content but if you want old school players live is where its at. Yes the game has changed but a lot of us still follow the old school "rules".
You should have said "the FUN in this game is ruined by... blabla... FOR ME". What you describe there is bad, yes. I am sure though that you have had experiences with overpulls? Sometimes we have to put up with idiots like this in static zones, yes. Or People (or chinese farming teams, taking turns on their characters) "monopolizing" a spawn/camp. If i need it for hunter and they are uncooperative, i might leave and come back or resort to methods like you described, depending on my mood at the time. MOST of the time i found that if i talk nicely enough with people they are fine with sharing the camp or passing on the next named for me. Things are a bit different of course, if both parties involved are after some drop. But even then, i have had it happen that camps were shared. The original camper got "his" drop first, and sometimes even stayed around longer to help on subsequent spawns as well. Human interaction is the key to a solution in such cases i think, not adjustments to spawn times or game-mechanics. Even on the "very specific" things you refer to.
I play on Agnarr, so yes, it may be more prevalent on the TLP servers than the older ones. Unfortunately, I started playing EQ at launch when I was 14, never really had the patience for it even though I liked the game, so I never got to experience most of what it had to offer at that time. The nostalgia, for me, is firmly embedded in this timeline. I tried playing EQ many years later and just couldn't get in to all the new changes. Agnarr is the only place I can play and enjoy this game, so I'll likely have deal with this type of thing.
