For quite some time a number of us were active in voicing our opinion, that when the game crashes or reboots, it should come up as much as possible in the state it was before the crash. Thankfully the imms listened, and Teker implemented some changes. However those changes were not what was proposed, and instead they went further allowing mobs that were up without items before the crash/reboot to load items on restart.
When this change was implemented I was surprised because it went to far. Initially, most the players including myself, kept our mouths shut and exploited it. Over the course of frequent reboots I've gathered the cp's for a lot of difficult forges without cycling. I remember Whatta negatively talking about this "new evil" over gossip, and although at first I thought I wished he would have shut up, I now feel that he was indeed right. This new feature is changing the game for the worst.
Each reboot now looks like this...
Hardcore players develop lists of items they need.
They wait for reboots.
They locate said cp's and rush around scooping everything up.
Already, last night I bumped into Taron when we both discovered war greaves had popped... did we both need it? No we were just being opportunistic. Another thing I've seen happen is smaller players locate items they need and then "claim" those items despite being unable to kill that mob themselves. I'm frequently begged after a reboot to help people claim things they can't kill themselves. Locating something first seems to have become a right to ownership. When I logged in later today I saw nearly every cp I had located earlier had already been scooped, even mystica cp's which not a lot are interested in. I suspect someone is hoarding, and look I admit I was doing this myself for a while. Cycling used to be a big part of the game, but now all we have to do is wait. The changes will also effect eq prices as things become more available, or the hoarders try to increase prices.
Whatta is right, take this evil from us. It's already bringing out the dark sides in ourselves. It's a great thing for players, but a bad thing for the game. Mark my words there will be some incidents in the future over this. If a mob is down on reboot, sure give it a chance to load something, but don't give mobs that had nothing a chance to load.