I don't want to sound particularly pessimistic, or that I'm for the removal of buffers, but one thing to consider is that people are used to this system now. When you reinstate buffers, many players are going to find the game extremely slow paced again and that may affect their willingness to play. Maybe I'm wrong, but something like this happened when we had WAR up and running, there weren't many people who came back to playing just regular Darke (yes, I realize there were other factors too). If buffers are put back in, making the lower levels slightly easier might not be a terrible idea, since simply cycling 5 spells every so often isn't exactly enjoyable, or running to kill 3 goblins, sit for 2 minutes, run and kill more goblins, sit...