To add to the points that Qaedain made:
Sony killed EQ by pursuing the guide program instead of paying unbiased individuals to administer the daily requests that occur as a course of normal business. Sony had a runaway smash success. A cash cow. A money machine that, even today, is still generating positive cash flow. Sony got greedy and, instead of supporting the paid GM positions, they opted for the Guide System. It was cheap (free!) labor to them. The repercussions, however, were devastating the instant an alternative became available.
The guide program killed EQ, plain and simple. Every single time a new MMO would be announced, the hard core gamers I knew would publicly state their displeasure with the way Sony ran the game, and would bail for greener pastures. When the new MMO proved to be less of an EQ substitute than they would willingly accept, they returned. Eventually, one MMO proved to be an adequate substitution: WoW.
WoW is, in my opinion, a very weak and watered down version of EQ. It is enough, however, to satisfy the EQ addiction for the majority of the discontented EQ playerbase. When Sony saw that WoW was soaking their player base, their first reaction was "lets be more WoW-like". This did nothing but accellerate the deterioration of the EQ player base, for obvious reasons. Why stay around and deal with the bullshit when you can get a similar game experience without the favoritism crap dished out by the unpaid guides that infested every Sony server?
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