Welcome to iRO! It has been doing well and hasn't closed like other RO things, so they must be doing something right. 
Half the seal characters required on a server with 3-4k population (Renewal) and it was that way since Renewal was "prerenewal".
Twice as many seal characters required on a server with 300-400 population, including all of the bots, venders, a-_-, ect (Classic).
Common sense is all that is needed to figure this problem out.
Some of those other servers closed with a much higher population that iRO has now. Your argument is invalid.
Also, here's some logic for you. The smaller a server is the bigger the impact of god items, thus, they should be harder to create based on the impact they will have on the population.
For example;
High population server
A SinX with 2 megs walks into a fort and gets fibered and fisted repeatedly whilst the precast stays up because a larger population server guild can do that. The Sinx might get a couple of kills off, but it won't matter because the guild has 20 people.
Classic:
A sinx with the same gear kills the whole 5 man guild. Takes the castle. Defends it solo.
Thus megs are more powerful here than on a larger server; ergo they should be harder to make. The beauty of this whole scenario is that as the population rises, the items become easier to make. It balances itself.
People want to play the game. Doing four different quests 100 times each isnt playing the game. Therefore nobody wants to actually do dumb seal quests, it's not a good prerequisite to make items.
We did seals instead of mvping. What's the difference between killing dumb miniboss or mvp X times, or spamming seal 2 X times (it takes 5~7 mins per run)? We prep our characters in advance over time. Like, just do a couple per week. It's not that bad.
Especially when you consider that VH are probably going to always have at least one set of quests completed so it's unlikely anyone else is going to make items until anything happens with that.
Now imagine if the seal count was less 
we wouldn't even have to try. But yeah, I think my tactics against this new seal setup have been pretty solid.
That said these regular drop events are dumb, there didnt even seem to be a good reason for this one. We still have that 2x exp event that I think we're just going to have permanently at this point and we've got more exp events on top of that. While exp events dont really have a direct effect on the economy, every time they leave the server loses some activity as people have to get used to the slower rates. It feels a lot like the server's pretty active right now but I'm not sure the trade off is really worth it.
We are about 2 pieces from completing another set, giving us 5 to continue to blocking the seals with. What is Oda gonna do about it? Ask me to NOT make my guilds items which they have earned? Why make the pieces drop if we're not allowed to create? Oh, I understand there's a problem, but I don't want to be considered duty bound to fix it.
I'm really not sure the main point in your post is definitely the not pissing everyone off, it'd have to address the following:
- Existing god item pieces/sets
- Future treasure drop rates (find a way to make them static and not affected by gum/vip/drop events)
- Item creation seals/the quest event thing
It'd be hard to justify doing anything about items that had already been created.
I do agree though, population increases are going to be the largest help for the server. But there's still this underlying problem of god items/drop rates etc that is discouraging some people from joining.
Also yes, I'm sure some people do enjoy the questing, but not 400 times even divided 10 ways it's a lot of repeating the same quests (if we were a real server with real sized guilds this wouldnt be a big deal, splitting 100 quests 30-40 ways isnt that bad at all). If the RO interface wasnt so bad I'm sure it would be less of a problem but it's pretty miserable to do a lot of these dialog based quests. If there was an option to create god items through actual gameplay I'm sure a lot more items would get made, but the seals are an unfun mechanic that only one group on this server wants/is willing to do on the scale that it currently requires.
- Last I asked, your guild had more than 10 sets sitting around. How is that collection doing? Is it bigger now? How deep does this rabbit hole go? I have 5 and I create constantly. I got 2/3 of a belt set in 2 weeks after completing the last gleipnir. I don't know how to explain how ridiculous this is without pissing off the peons who think we had it easy making our first items.
- Future treasure drops should have god parts rewarded via an npc related to economy. No gum, no problem.
- The creation is bs, I wish people had listen to me when I spelled out the potential abuse and how it would play out.
The more gods/mvps we gain in the server downtime, the less people will want to join. Thus drop events are a terrible idea. +1
Re questing:
Seal 1: Kinda does itself. If you use previously reset characters (the metto section doesn't reset) it takes about 3 minutes to complete. Myself and maybe 2~3 guildies do this in our off time. Some guildies who aren't god ready hunt and donate the fish items.
Seal 2: tbh, I practically solo it. Sometimes I get 3~4 guildies to sit down with me and we race against eachother. (5-7mins per run) I solo hunt the items 90% of the time. People who don't wanna quest assist by hunting the squid ink/feather of birds.
I have 3~4 people who love ACAs and are willing to do seal 3. We create the chars in various ways (to earn access to current gods, as a guild event, to donate/contribute) and they are shared for the questers to access and do in their own time. They leave them on the final npc and we turn them in and distribute the ACAs after the roll. I don't touch this quest.
Seal 4: bribing new guildies with icepicks is amazing. it takes between 3 mins and 15 mins per run depending on sudri. We use characters that don't require a level 4 weapon to expedite and cheapen the process. I have guildies who are seal 4 gods. If it came down to it, one of our guys could solo the whole thing.
It's really not that bad. It's only bad when you do it all at once. If you break it down and divide the responsibilities and make sure that people see the reward, then its easy. The same thing applies to us with supplies. (I also have people who supply hunt to get out of seal questing hahaha)
