I think ultimately having a variety of servers that can all be updated in the same manner, is essential. An all Felucia, an all Trammel, and I think these are necessary for extremes, like World Wars or Giant Spawns.
I think powerscrolls were the cause of the great split because it changed the rules of the game.
The claim that the game is a sandbox, is false. At one time, it was. You can start a game by doing anything and you can add rules. Like, in Britain, you could drop a fireworks wand, then someone could pick it up and fire one into the air, then you could drop it and someone else could pick it up and fire it twice into the air and there you have it, a mini game. A sandbox where you can set rules and the system itself, does not interfere.
Before Trammel, we were small hunting parties and I remember hunting certain spawns, like a harpy, or an ettin, or an orc. I met a small group of friends, 5 or 6 of us would get on the game, together. This started slow, down under the cemetary under Yew. I called it the Y road or Yew Crossroads. The reason I had picked this place was because I came out of Yew and the healer was close.
As we would move around, I realized the spawns, would spawn in the same places and rather than move my entire group, I asked everyone to stay at the Crossroad and I would run to each spawn position and then lead back the spawns. This was our mini game.
A year or so later, I joined a guild and for training we would go into the Newlands under Del and again I became bored with the stagnit, one spawn at a time, walk around and because we hunted there so much, I knew every spawn location. By this time, I had a mage with poison. There's a cliff down there. I asked the guild to stay there and I collected every spawn, in a large radius. I remember the reactions of some of the new players that were in the guild when they saw the army of spawn.
So, up and around to the cliff and before long, all the spawn layed dead. Again, our mini game, not affected by the system but still nowhere near what would be needed to keep my interest. Every spawn coming at us at one time, still did not last long enough.
Then the split. Champ spawns were born and the system dictated that you could no longer just fight spawns because the spawns became necessary for your character and that connection made it necessary for your character to kill. So, people with my mindset, who wanted to hunt together and have fun, did not like this. I don't know why, exactly, but the end game, I think was the reason because when you think about it, the system now dictated that it was not about spawning because if you tried to spawn, what happened was, people would come and kill you, or try to. So, PvM became system dictated PvP and you were forced to protect from people.
So, we ended up with balancing issues for PvP, rather than awesome spawns and new incredible spawns. PvP, should of been seperate from PvM. PvP should of had something like, potions that do extra damage to other players. Repond slayers that work against players, shoes that allow you to run faster. Maybe, even more moves on weapons, rather than 2, maybe you could work on up to 6 special moves for each weapon.
The point is, the essence of the character, his skill, his stats, were tied into PvP. This knot was tied to tightly.