Both sides of this argument are bunk. The game, regardless of its features moves the genre forward. What your grand vision is and what the genre's vision is are different, unfortunately. I too enjoy a hard, unforgiving, Gritty game - sometimes though we are not the demographic the developers are looking at.
If you don't like something, dont buy it. Money talks in the sense that when people don't like what they play they stop playing it and stop paying for it.
Case and point: Warcraft doesn't boast it's 11 million subscriptions (source:
http://wow.joystiq.com/tag/wow-subscriber-numbers/ ) this tells me, as a general consumer - that people just aren't buying the same ol' song an dance anymore.
You can't deny that World of Warcraft has changed the genre; either for good or bad. The companies are driven by money - but then again who isn't?
EQNext is a vehicle to hopefully push us into the next generation of gaming. In my opinion every game put out always has that potential. Will it happen? who knows - so far, they've introduced a few things I'm excited about (navigating the world via parkour, destructible environments, no level system) and things I'm terrified about (multi-class system makes it easy to simply solo and not need other players, cartoonish models, the unknown UI system, the perversion of the world/lore just like Everquest Online Adventures with the only thing in common are names)
At this time I believe it's a little early to have all hopes crushed. I think they have a few solid ideas that are going to be great depending on implementation. Once again the best way to tell the developers how you feel is with your dollar.
Once more into the breach dear friends, Donkey punch the night away.