Wall O' Text incoming:
There is a slew of issues with an old game like this, none of which would be solved by a server wipe. If you wipe the server, the dedicated power gamers that return will do what they do best, power through to end-game and farm it endlessly. Sure, they will be low level for a bit, but not for very long. As they will be busy working on their main toons, they won't even be messing around on alt that might group with these new people. So any new people you gain will still be left to their own devices. At the same time, you will lose many casual players who have no desire to "go through it all again". (I am in that camp.) And then there would the loss of tradeskillers, many of which are more than happy to throw together low level equipment for free or cost of materials only. And what about the people who keep toons in DB just to give away low level equipment to new players and such? even if they continue playign, they will be busy gearing their own toon, so won't want to give that stuff away any more.
And just where do you think you are going to draw these 250+ new players from? Even with a wipe, do you think you will draw others from their established accounts on other emu servers? And how long do you think they will stay, especially after things re-stratify? Or perhaps they will just run when they see the charm plat sink, compounded with the low cash drop rate. Or when the "power vets" tell them about tomes, perhaps? never mind the slow leveling, which hasn't been faster than "live" in years.
Or maybe you think you'll advertise a bunch, and bring in new players. Ha, that is a good joke. There isn't much call for a 15 to 20 year old game and its out-dated systems compared to modern games. Who ever said about trying to find the 35+ year olds to market to them, that may work. Except, most of those people have families and jobs now, and this game has a huge time-sink element to it. Getting buffed takes time, getting spell components if you need them (why is this still a thing?) takes time, getting to a "camp" takes time, finding raid targets up takes time, getting to and killing them takes time. Then there is the time spent farming cash to get the charms, they aren't the plat sink they were thought of, a place for excess cash, now people farm cash just to buy the next big one.
Most new games don't have all those time sinks involved. They keep you involved in the action for the most part. Most games these days don't even bother with stat buffs like EQ, they rely more on auras supplied by party members. Or, if they have a longer lasting buff, it is a relatively minor effect that is a nice boost, but is far from required (unlike haste, hp/ac, regen, damage shield, etc is here). For example, a couple other games I have played.
In Star Wars: The Old Republic (SW:ToR), each of the four main classes has a different minor buff (5% to stats, crit chance, etc.), that lasts for an hour. In Marvel Heroes, you may get auras from your heroes skills, or from others in your group who have them. Or, being near people not in your group that have them. But the moment you are out of range of others, those minor stat boosts are gone. Again, these are minor effects that are nice to have (boosts to defense, hp, accuracy, damage), but are by no means "necessary" to do the content. And other spells/abilities are used in combat and have very short durations, whether a buff or a detrimental. You log in, go fight stuff, use what you need, and move on to the next fight. When out of combat, both health and mana/spirit/force (etc) regen extra equip, either naturally, or by activating a special ability that exists for that reason. And most of the games take advantage of instanced content being available for solo/group, and for raids. SWtor has flashpoints (4-man group stuff) and operations (raids 8/16man). Marvel heroes has terminals (solo/group of 5), and raids (10-man). Both of those games have plenty of quests for leveling, open world fighting (for xp, and leveling), and open world named to take down. And since raids are instanced instead, they limit the farming by using lockouts on them, set to each being once per week. This also limits the effect of "nothing is up, because a raid group in an earlier time zone took down all our targets." You set a raid time that is good for most of your members, log in, go kill stuff, then go do other things.
I have tried to come back numerous times after playing these other games. And each time the reality has hit me, I need to log in buffs, I need to get peridots for Savagery, I need to find a group/load a bot, need to find a place to kill, need to get there... ugh. I don't have tons of time to spare right now though, Screw it, I'll go play something else that is quicker to get in and get going on. The reality is, everything here just goes too slow by comparison now. I don't mind earning stuff, but I despise "grinding" it.
TL; DR:
A server wipe solves nothing if the game mechanics stay the same. Archaic time-sink game design drives away new people in an instant-gratification google-based world. Many of those who played original EQ lack the free time, due to RL concerns, to jump through the hoops it takes to excel here. Newer games lack the buffs (and need for them) in favor of a faster pace, including heavy use of instancing so that nobody ever misses out on content due to spawns and time zone differences.
