First of all, I am always surprised seeing a game with maybe 30 players left have the same kind and volume of complaints we had back in 2004. All this fighting can achieve, is to demoralize and eventually make some more players quit.
Second thing, I hate the "you can level a dragon to max in a month or less" thing so much.
Once again, I think in 2005 I had already been forum banned who knows how long, because I was part of the players who wanted dragons to be an epic, challenging experience. We asked for dragons to have 3-4 classes (it ended up in developing Helian and Lunus traits a bit more) and each class would take 6 months or 1 year to level up. This way, Adults (there were no Ancients back then) would really have been an epic sight and bipeds would finally stop complaining. Because they were complaining LOUD in 2005 already about how quick dragons could get maxed.
To me, fast dragon levelling has been a curse, not a blessing. After 7-8 years sitting at max level and with everything in game I started taking longer and longer pauses from Istaria. If I had something to aim to, I would not have grown bored. These days I play about 2 days per year, as soon as I log in my biggest fun is to talk with some guildies and oldbies, then I kill some stuff, get bored and leave again. If levelling a dragon had been harder, I'd probably still feel engaged by Istaria.
Last but not least, the "dragons should be weaker / stronger" than bipeds is another 2004 ancient issue. In most games where you can play both, dragons are "special", in the sense they are either hard capped in number and / or super hard to play and / or take forever to level up or take some other huge factor to make them rare. Being rare / hard to play usually justifies dragons being as epic as fantasy books dragons are meant to be.
Sadly in Istaria there had not been any "hard mode" for dragons, therefore we have more dragons than squirrels. Therefore dragons have been made as weak / strong as bipeds are.