I agree with a few of you guys that what made EQ great was the need for community and to rely on each other. The Bazaar turned people into robots. It also eliminated the rarity of a lot of items - much like the Internet did to baseball cards.
PoK books made the world feel much smaller. Running from Grobb to Freeport on a level 1 troll used to be an awesome achievement - now it's a 300 ft walk and 2 clicks. There's also kind of a natural progression to these types of video games. I remember thinking the ghoul lord was difficult for a group of 40's, then I was soloing it, then I was 3 manning Kunark dragons, etc. It cheapens your experience.
I think SOE lost their raiding population when every key became a huge grind, and every fight became a 60 minute epic where one mistake would cause you to spend hours reclearing and trying again. The amount of trash mobs got ridiculous. I remember spending hours and hours clearing trash in Vex Thall and Plane of Earth more than I remember the actual boss fights. WoW gave people a way out, promising to fix every mistake EQ had ever made. Of course it didn't do that, but there were some improvements and the PVP element drew a lot of people towards that game.
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