One key element of a MMORP is to be able to attract new players and to allow them to catch up ... and of course to allow people to play with different alts (this allow the content to last way longer). You destroyed that possibility on live* which led to a population collapse, and now you do it on Fallen Gate by removing the XP bonus. I advice you to reconsider these choices. * : this was the consequence of many features (ascension, deity, rune grinding, item ranking, epic 2.0 etc ...)
They don't have the staff to produce a decent volume of content, so they make you trudge through swamp mud to slow progression down. Oddly enough, the p2w incentives on live don't help either because people buy progression, then what? Running the same limited content over, and over and over for months. Lots of reasons why the game is on its last legs. I feel the same way you do, but the chances of getting the staff required to make the game great again are slim to none. It what it is.
I don't even know how many characters I've leveled up in EQ2 through the content over the years. I don't like PLing or skipping ahead, but it can get tedious doing the same stuff a dozen or more times. I was playing another game running a second character through a story and I realized I had new side objectives that had opened up. Apparently this dev team had decided that people like me deserved a bit of a switch-up. After I ran one character through the story content a bit of extra content opened up for my next run through. Not only that, but I got achievements for doing it. Little things like that are nice and keep people engaged. If it doesn't fall within the goals of the people in charge and the dev team doesn't have the resources to make it happen, though, things like that will never be.
