I won't bother everyone with a long list of complaints, anyone who played this game for a while knows what they are anyway. Would be pointless to repeat all that yet again. But I just can't quit without saying anything, I feel really cheated. Read on if you're interested...
==== possible spoilers ahead! ====
==== adult innuendo too, btw ====
I've been playing on computers for a loooong time. I mean, there were games I played even before I played rogue on my 'nix terminal back in 1985, but I just don't remember what they were. Throughout all those years, I have had a special fondness for RPG-style games, they are my favorite kind of game, except perhaps for C&C but that's another story.
I played everything including Zork and Enchanter -- for those of you not old enough to remember such games, they were text-only (yeah, that's right, no graphics at all) adventure games that managed to create an experience not unlike the best RPGs seen since, you just needed some imagination. Dozens of games up to... well, this game is the latest. There were most of the Ultima series, with specially fond memories of the huge universe of Ultima Underworld II. And so many more, not to forget almost a year in Ultima Online, one of the very early MMORPGs (the first?). All good fun.
What I want to say here is that I have never before quit a game before seeing the end of it. I mean, some games are by nature open-ended, like rogue, you literally can't see the bottom of it. But I quit playing because the game got old and better games came along, not because the game made me angry. I repeat, I never quit a game out of frustration. Until now.
As I mentioned, my party is currently at level 177. Been bored beyond description for some 50 levels now. But I kept grinding, telling myself that things should/would pick up when I got to 150. Got a whiff of fresh air with the recent update, as that gave us something else to work with. I even laughed out loud when I realized that I was grinding spray-tanned mostly-shaven [censored by mod]... man, does that description ever sound worlds better than the actual thing!!
Got to 150 and ventured in the new dungeons only to get my backside whipped by monsters I couldn't even think of defeating. The worm wasn't even funny, btw. Bah.
So I went back to the original plan and started the Houses quest. Almost quit right there and then when I realized that I had to get ANOTHER Mithril Club. AND a Swamp Bow!! AND a Diamond Staff ???!!? -- heck, I had given up on that one because I couldn't face the boredom of the task and now I needed one to give away?? Worst part of it was that I had sold my mithril club just hours before that to make room for a map, rope, candle and ring, for all the good that did me.
But I sucked it up, and earned all the items. It was a painful experience and I just have to say it: drop rates of 1/1000 ARE JUST PLAIN STUPID. My worst fear was that the item would get dropped at one of those moments when I dozed off out of total, absolute boredom. Yep, I kept falling asleep!! But I kept at it, even sold 24 Steel Bows after I finally got a Swamp Bow, to give you an idea - that's a boatload of Ghost Archers right there. Persisted until I got TWO Diamond Staves -- I'd be darned if I was to give one away while my mage didn't have his own!
So I got all four required items (hard to believe that the easiest by far was splurging 15M gold on a sword) and delivered them to the rogues, who gave me access to their respective houses. All fine 'til then.
As instructed by forum posts, I performed every quest I could find before trying to enter the houses, because one has to do well, ya know. I mean, I had pained enough to get to that point, there's no way ever that I would start over because of some technicality. EVER. And thanks to the limited (let's keep it at that, if I am to remain polite) saving capability of the game, and the (recent?) change preventing from backing up save files, one has to be damn sure he's right before moving on. So I did everything I could and then some.
Well, I can't find my contact in one of the houses, searched everywhere, up and down. Tried entering the House of Houses having made only three contacts (could the game be like that?), but I get kicked to the curb when I try that so something's not right. Even went back to the mage tower but the monkey there has nothing more to say, so that's not it.
I did pray at all four altars, done well at only two of them, one of which didn't give anything so all I got in the end was a (second) Gold Plate. Big deal. Not that I care anymore, but I kinda wonder what more I could have done before entering the houses to fare better with my prayers? Or make them less expensive, man that church is greedy!

Now what? Well, I'm fed up. As I said, no way on earth am I ever starting over, that will never happen. There's nothing else to do other than aimlessly grinding, and I had my fill of that for two lifetimes.
So, congratulation to the game designer, you got me. After more than three decades of play (yup, that's over thirty years for the math-challenged ones), I finally quit a game out of... I would have to call this disgust. It's not frustration -- I've been frustrated countless times before by dozens of games, this one not making exception. But I am downright disgusted at myself for having wasted that much time, for having sucked up that many frustrations to get to a point where I have to admit that it was a total loss after all.
Funny thing is, I'm not even pissed at the dev(s?), only at myself. The sloppy programming should have been enough warning in itself, sort of a flashing rotor saying "stay away, these people can't be bothered to do things properly". Don't get me wrong: I've been paid for many years to provide programming assistance to faculty, grad students and other talentless hacks, so I know a poor coding job when I see one. I think those now actually have a distinctive smell for me. Don't have to see the source code of this one to be 95%+ certain that the reason why characters teleport at random while traveling (among other bugs) is due to poor IPC implementation (that's Inter-Process Communications, FYI). And so on. Should have used my head and quit weeks ago.
There are a few more things I'd like to say to the dev. Don't know what kind of a childhood you had, but it feels to me like your daddy was a dentist and his idea of quality time was experimenting on you. Or something to that effect. I can't possibly imagine any other way by which you could have gotten your conception of fun, I almost feel sad for you (but not quite). There's always the odd chance that you have a doctorate in mathematics and thus deserve no compassion. Those people are unique in that they are both smart enough to always identify the worst way of doing things and dumb enough to insist on doing things only in that manner. No pity for those.
Anyway, as I said before, drop rates of 1/1000 are just plain stupid, there's no fun in that. And since you don't seem to have figured that out yet, we play for the fun of it, not to conform to your vision of how the game should go. I once found a sword of incredible power that gave me a severe case of hiccup (and prevented critical hits, but that took a while to figure out). I have no words to describe how annoying that hiccup curse was, and yet I kept using the sword. That was over 20 years ago and I still smile when I think about it, that was so much fun even if the sword turned out to be so much trouble I was almost glad when it broke.
My point is, I'm absolutely sure that the devs of that game never even gave a single thought to the possibility of upsetting the precious game balance with that item: IT WAS FUN. Who cares if a player gets a free ride every once in a blue moon? That's what makes a game worth playing, not the sacrosanct math ensuring perfect balance.
Why do your dungeon chests remain empty once opened? Every visit to a dungeon should find chests closed and containing something new and random. Don't be afraid of upsetting game balance, with the general worthlessness of the items you put in there there's no chance of upsetting anything anyway. At least, that would provide some reason to re-visit a dungeon every once in a while. More fun for the players at little to no extra effort for you, how's that for a good deal?
And if a player gets a lucky break every once in a while, like finding a weapon worthy of his level, then GOOD FOR THAT PLAYER!!! There's nothing that will kill a player's enthusiasm like the certainty that nothing interesting is going to happen. That anything he's likely to find or run into will be worthless. What planet do you come from, for Heaven's sake?
And those are only minor examples, there are dozens more things that could (and need to) be done for little work and max return. But get that stick out of your wazoo and chillax, man. Nobody's gonna die from making it possible to play the game out in a finite amount of time. Heck, people might do it again instead of quitting.
And a final word: if you think that ridiculous drop rates will incite people to buy items instead of earning them and thus make you rich, you are grossly mistaken. Ask around. You'll get pennies for every player you disgust and in the end, you'll only kill your game.
Good luck.
P.S. Now, go ahead and delete this post all you want, I don't expect anything else anyway. But if you do, I just might edit it and post it elsewhere...