Tbh I was told "If you want to leave then go" by staff when I voiced my opinion on the server. Nothing changed, I left. I didn't enjoy a single moment playing the server other than seeing old friends again. I couldn't give 2 sh*ts about balance as long as it's fun, I could deal with limited content as long as it's enjoyable. If it's good enough I'd even grind for all characters and isn't that how you keep people engrossed in the server? Grinding your ass off for random drops isn't enjoyable. I feel depressed and frustrated trying to farm new gear and getting the gear you farmed days for on the wrong character feels like a slap in the face with the rare 1% chance to feel accomplished for something I feel like I've long deserved only to notice little to no change since I got my last 3 pieces of gear and even with the full set the dungeon is just as hard as it was when I started. I don't like saying old ice was better but I think people are saying that because anything that they remember as being fun on the server was scrapped, or the fact that they're upset about the progress they had already made is now gone, but the latter doesn't bother me nearly as much. Personally I had a lot of fun finding broken quest items and just having fun with anything I could get my hands on, I don't see how it could be harmful to the server but that seems to have been disabled on pf as I noticed a lot of quests that i would think had broken items are just gone and unobtainable (about half the quest items I looked for).
This may not be the best comparison but I honestly feel like it can relate to a lot of problems I see with private servers in general: Think of everything as it's own economy system where frivolous spending makes for healthy business. People love spending smaller amounts of money on the little things that will bring them joy (like vote points, or even make dungeons drop a currency item that can be used for gear and even other items like transmog gear or anything really. The more the merrier). Lastly, if there's one thing the staff will please take from this post I'd like to say it's the little things that count.
-Sincerely, Banns