Again, this corroborates my points. You are biased by an end-game perspective. The end-game can still be fun even if the early stages are fun and challenging as well, even more so. Everything is relative. Also, CC; BC; CC, etc. are not necessities for the game to be enjoyable. The most important things are a healthy player base and a healthy economy; one of those we already have.
(Hypothesis: Mu addicts will be addicts regardless of gameplay, economy, or player base. However, most people—the casual players—just want to have some fun distraction. And if the economy and players are alive and kicking, they will stick to the server. But if you immediately give them lots of items to catch up, the grind to the end game abruptly starts and it won't be a fun distraction anymore. So they quit.)
Also, I just learned that apparently Devias is full of jewel farmers. This raises some questions in me. I do think AFKing is OK—because I do it as well, and it has been part of the game since forever (I used to put my wallet on my right mouse button)—but, actively playing should be way more rewarding in comparison. Gaining exp used to be and should be the main incentive to AFK, but not to gather jewels or items. Some people can't leave their PC on, some don't want to, etc. Things will always be unbalanced, but rewarding being AFK, too much, disproportionately increases the imbalance. We 'all' AFK and like to be AFK, but ironically no one likes a server where most people are AFK. As I said, actively playing should be significantly rewarded more than AFKing. The Rabbits event is a great example of that, but there can be more.
For example, back in the day, it wasn't possible for non-cheaters to pick up jewels and zen while being AFK. There still were lots of AFKers, but there was a good balance between AFKers and active players, and economies were usually good. If you wanted loot, you needed to be online and do the work. I admit, I like actively playing about the same as I like the thought of being able to AFK, and it probably isn't possible to go back to how Mu was played 16 years ago. It should however be possible to mimic similar gameplay, even with the auto looting mechanism. I think drastically increasing the price that mechanism is part of it, as I have touched upon in previous posts.
People who AFK 24 hours should get about 6 jewels; 0.25 jewels per hour.
People who play 24 hours should get about 48 jewels; 2 jewels per hour.
I’m just picking arbitrary numbers, but you get the point: those who play actively the most, get the most jewels on average. This way you don’t need helper bots or silly overpowered medals. Hardcore active players are going to play hardcore and no casual player will ever catch up to them. That’s only fair. But casual active players should be able to compete with hardcore AFKers. Just like it was in the good old days.
TL;DR: Play for fun, jewels, and items, AFK for exp.
Addendum: when it is viable to AFK for jewels, it disincentivizes partying, because people will want to AFK alone for the jewels.
Although my posts so far have been largely critical, I do want to state that for the most part this server is remarkable. The custom features, adjusted event locations (i.e. goldens spawn everywhere), web vault; commands; etc. However, if the economy is broken, the stellar features will have been in vain. In any case, OldSquad has incredible potential.