There are any number of things that different people disliked about EQ as time went on. The odds are that any two people will have some things they both disliked about how EQ evolved, and some things that one liked and the other hated.
Fundamentally I think the biggest flaw is that Sony's priority with Everquest is making a profit. As competition heated up, they saw the revenue starting to drop so they panicked and forced the developers to water the game down. Their goal was first and foremost sell boxes, so they pushed out expansions at a high pace. To justify the cost of these expansions, they had to introduces lots of new areas (much of which ended up sitting idle) and features that watered the game down to try to appeal to players that wanted things easy.
Yes, over time any game that continues to grow will have some of the growing pains that we saw in EQ. Mudflation happens. That is a simple fact. What doesn't have to happen is gear ramping up so rapidly that items that were adequate for players last week or month are now rotting or given to pets. New zones don't have to be added by the dozen (with most of a new set ending up idle).
As I've stated before, I think it is possible for a game to continue to evolve and provide new places to explore, new quests to complete, new challenges to overcome and new treasures to be won, without ramping things up so rapidly that everything that came before is now considered "worthless" and ignored. But doing so requires the game be guided by developers with a passion for the game itself rather than managers trying to meet quarterly sales targets.
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