No dis, but from a player going WAY back, you're falling into the rosy retrospection fallacy. In the "golden Acclaim" times the game was trash, what made up for it was the people and that it was "new". And you say can that pretty much about any MMO in it's prime. The key take, if there ever was one, is the old "nobody wants a power drill, everybody wants holes"
With that out of the way, and because i did start something similar that had to be put on hold because of work and health issues, let's address some points.
Experience rate:
Acclaim was base rate 1.25x. Anything bellow 5x is trash. Ain't nobody got time for that (now). Not because it's hardcore but because it's pointless when you don't have a fully populated server. You could mitigate it better by having a lower overall multiplier and manually adjusting the xp curves past GB and HM where it gets really trashy, your choice.
Skill rate:
Most shameless cash grab ever. Make it 1000x as a basic QOL improvement.
2nd role:
This is where rubber meets the road. It's trash. Not by itself but because it messes up with the underlying original design. It was "new bling" to cash in, like clothes ref and other things down the road. The excuse was "new maps, new mobs", but that could have been dealt with by adjusting those mobs and the old items instead of trashing the mechanics. (Lack of) can be mitigated by reworking items, see next.
Items:
If you go through the existing DB, you'll find LOT's of stuff that would have been major QOL but never got in. Like all sorts of hp/ve leech items, etc... With some care, you can give players great gear without breaking anything. Check the attached file for the stuff i picked. some is temp sadly, and would need to go on a vendor, which is ok, farming incentive.
To further improve, you'll need to edit items to adjust them to "reality". Like say pushing the Jade Plate from +2 to +5, WD Jade Seal from +5 to +10, adding another +3+3/+5 to old relics, etc...
End of day, just don't fall into the misconception that "oldschool was good because it was hard". "oldschool" had a "feeling", and you can retain that while making life more enjoyable for players.
p.s. 9D has quite a bit of leeway on how you can push the (basic) mechanics before it breaks. By simply cutting 2nd role and %dmg items out you can push the basic stats (with items) to the point where it still feels good/great but is not even close to game breaking.
Concept/Idea of a new unique 9dragons server?
