[moklianne]

A combination of GoD and WoW.

I remember many top raiding guilds left during the GoD expansion to WoW. GoD was a horrid expansion that had the bar set way too high for the time with the only intent of SOE delaying raid guild progress with difficulty instead of type/amount of content. They 'retuned' most of the encounters, made the AA's cost less, etc, but the damage was already done by then.

That and then over the years other fantasy based mmos kept coming out, chipping away slowly at the remainder of EQ's base. Dark Age of Camelot, Lineage 2, and Horizons (?-may have been a different one) were a few. All had better graphics at the time.

WoW also appealed (even more so to this day) to casuals, which EQ never did. People just got sick of spending an entire day camping one mob for a chance at one item.