Questing…
Questing is there to be protected – the problem being that people so frequently feel compelled to complete content at the endgame level in a game who’s player power curve progresses over time. The threat of being outrun and becoming irrelevant keeps people in a constant motion forward even if there’s something else they’d rather be doing.
Which is why you scrap this whole business and start with fresh servers. Place players back on a level pedestal completing wholesome content together in comfortable spaces that are pervaded by fulfilling gameplay – even if that’s time sensitive.
You know?
You get bad eggs trying to circumvent having to play the game cooperatively and honestly, I would’ve tried harder to curb that behavior early on. At this point people are altogether too invested – mentally, monetarily, philosophically, etc – into playing a video game at a level well above and beyond what’s reasonable. Some sort of “Mania,” if you will.
And it’s not the player’s fault, really. Like they can’t necessarily be blamed on account of basically having responded to a circumstance imposed upon them by the developer(s); and that was never right, even if it was thought appropriate at the time of its conception.
A mistake isn’t a ‘mistake,’ until people fail to acknowledge it as such and make the conscious decision to make the changes necessary to correct it.