Thank you for the replies, all. I was happy to read all your points of view, even though the discussion took a stranger turn than I expected.
In my opinion, what pushes the players away, besides the bugs, are the heavy donation systems most of the servers have. Actually, I’ve never played on a server with a fair, not pay2win in mind System. Like hell, even the official server is a p2w and it‘s probably still full with bugs too. I understand that if you look at the bigger picture - it’s just a business.
And @Kara`, you can’t be more right (maybe?). What we’ve seen over the years were ideas and different views of “This is how I’d like it to be”. Thanks for the Dion Theme. :)
@xdem Yes, this is something that has always bugged me, but I’ve seen videos with tons of players, and still smooth gameplay, even though it was recorded at the same time. And games like WoW have surpassed L2 in terms of gameplay, optimisation and even better graphics. Maybe it’s a limitation of the Unreal 2 Engine? (Or just bad coding?)
@Anarchy, I’ve always though that L2OFF is better than L2J, but after some experience as a player (never hosted L2OFF), I think that both have their pros, cons and bugs. And this, again, is just my POV on “how the game should be”. :)
What I’m getting from your replies is that, it’s not the technology that is limiting us, but more like the players’ psychology. And the L2Client too. :D