WoW did and continues to do plenty of things right. They catered to all types of gamers ranging from the casual, few hours a week housewife to the hardcore poopsocker. When I was still raiding I always heard the hardcore people going on about how easy everything is, yet none of them quit. It still takes skill, coordination, and leadership to down hardmodes. I spent many nights wiping over and over again. Your casual lvl 85 may be able to use looking for raid and get some purps, but they will never be equal to the end game gear of hardmodes. That was the great thing about WoW. Everyone could obtain some degree of epicness.
WoW is still very much a social game. You pretty much have to be in a guild to progress through hardmodes or even become good at PvP. On my server there were even plenty of guilds for non-raiding social players.
Yes, WoW has plenty of 14 year olds compared to EQ's prime, but the ease of access to the internet, increased number of the younger generation on the internet, and tons of other factors are also responsible for this. Comparing the two eras is apples and elephants.
I enjoy p1999 largely for the nostalgia it invokes. Running through MM or unrest brings back many memories of when I was in high school holding a pillow over the back of the computer after my parents went to sleep to muffle the 56k modem and log on. It's still an extremely fun game for me. I love camping spawns and getting to know a group, waiting and waiting for that awesome item to drop, and the thrill I still get from difficult fights where I know if I die I will lose a lvl and have a very difficult corpse run ahead of me.
*shrug* Just my 2 cents. I only read through the first 2 pages of the thread so it's likely that I'm repeating a lot of what others have said. I'm just bored now that the server is down.
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