The game tried to be too mainstream, but it didn't have a mainstream playerbase. WoW did and succeeded with that model, but it didn't suit Everquest. EQ was about the spirit of the game, the world and the community. It's why people tolerated sitting in the same camp for six hours at a time, day after day. It's why people accepted that some levels could take weeks. It's why it was okay that others could interfere with your ability to raid. Then they took away the reason why these things were acceptable, so they had to change those things as well, and in the end the game just wasn't recognizable.
Instances were good because the game needed it at the time, but it would have been better to keep the game like it was back when instances weren't necessary. I think they started to approach this problem even in late Velious, though - raid gear was too far ahead of tradeable gear, but only a tiny percentage of the population had access to it. There wasn't enough content for the whole server, but it was no longer possible for those with access to it to spread the rewards around.
Suddenly there was only one way to be someone: join a serious raid guild. There used to be that, then trading, and finally being good at playing the game, since gear didn't make quite so much of a difference. As the endgame gear started to become vastly superior and available only to the elite, the majority lost their reason to play the game. Instead, SoE tried to make everyone an elite, but it just made everything feel so underwhelming and pointless. By then, the game had lost the integrity that makes people care about it, so most left.
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