Nitpick: the Sleeper is not an end boss, it's an end event: while the sleeper is technically killable, it was not designed to be killed (it's nigh spell-immune, one-shots most end-content Velious PCs, and has something like 2 orders of magnitude more the hit points of velious bosses) and it drops no loot at all.
> one even managed to bug out and kill The Sleeper.
Rallos didn't bug out anything, they designed a completely wonky strategy which worked: SOE didn't give the Sleeper AOE or mass kill abilities, so they zerg-rushed him with mass resurrection as it needed time to cycle between kills.
You might be confusing this with the first spawning of the Sleeper (bugged out at the time, it spawned as a giant human), by Conquest, almost certainly using an exploit (they were also accused of using an exploit to kill the 3rd warder, but there are relatively few solid facts around those events, and SOE didn't cover themselves in glory either).
The server isn't necessarily ruined, but if you're a min/max type of player you'd certainly be upset at not having the chance at some of the drops. On actual EverQuest servers this wasn't that big of a deal as the next expansion with better items came shortly after, on Project 1999 this is a much bigger problem.
You can't normally kill the sleeper, that was never the intent.
The "normal" event is that it kills everyone in the zone, goes from the Sleeper's Tomb to Skyshrine killing everyone, kills Yelinak (the boss of Skyshrine), then it disappears forever (until a much later extension brought it back).
I think the only zone that's permanently changed is the Sleeper's Tomb: the warders don't spawn anymore, meaning their loot (which is the end-game loot of Velious) becomes unavailable. This is what makes waking the sleeper a dick move on Project 1999 servers: progression stops at Velious, so it locks all other players out of that gear (on "official" servers waking the sleeper after having farmed the warders might frustrate the second and third guilds for some time as they'd miss out on getting that gear while #1 would be working and farming Luclin).
Killing him is a thing that you can only do by using a specific strategy, and doing so has no real effect on anything, he still is awake and you still lose the warders, and therefore the good loot. Since this server is pegged to this specific moment in time when the first two expansions were released, the subsequent content with the better loot will never happen, so now people on this server have lost the ability to get that loot, and they're salty about it.
- EverQuest was released in 1999 and has a golden era that many consider to be initial release of the game and the two immediate expansions: Ruins of Kunark and Scars of Velious.
- Project 1999 is an emulated server for EverQuest ran by fans that has pegged the game to the above golden era with no further expansions. It attempts to recreate the old rule set.
- Project 1999 has multiple servers, one of these severs Project 1999 Green, was more recently released, and on this server is where the event occurred.
- In the expansion Scars of Velious The Sleeper is the end boss. It's an ancient all powerful dragon and its lair Sleeper's Tomb has NPCs that drop the best items in the game.
- You awaken The Sleeper by killing 4 minibosses called wardens. The problem is you can only awaken The Sleeper once, and once you do NPCs in Sleeper's Tomb no longer spawn with the best items in the game.
- There is then an unwritten code to kill 3 out of 4 wardens to NOT wake The Sleeper to ensure everyone continues to be able to farm and get the best items.
- The above social contract is what was violated.
This isn't that big of a deal. Back in the early 2000s many original EverQuest servers woke The Sleeper, and as mentioned, one server even managed to bug out and kill The Sleeper. It's mainly interesting because 1) There are people still interested and playing Everquest?! 2) Really just 1.