I'd mostly agree - except to say anything after PoP should be written out of EQ.
I don't want to kill space aliens, I want to kill dragons and demons and Gods. I want simple story arcs with loads of lore and special events, places and people.
And EQ mostly delivered on that up to PoP, even including SoL, which was horrible and ruined the sense of community with Nexus/Bazaar and don't get me started on those horrific new models, but EXCLUDING LDON - instancing destroys what is central to EQ (or at least to EQ's playerbase), which is contested content and the shared experience. More to the point, you cannot have a hero without a villain, and all those contested points of contact provided just the right stage and just the right amount of friction to make it all work.
Why are lguk and os so much fun? The frogs? Well, yes in part - but the lore is only part of it - think of all the ways shit went bad in those zones, and how much a part of your player experience was built on those memories - the good ones.
The subculture which formed in that communal experience was amazing - grinding out hell levels, camping rare spawns, ninja/ks'ing named, and all the /ooc magic in groups filled with a rotating cast of characters are what made it fun - not getting yet another disposable piece of loot.
Anyhow, I'm not sure how VI/Sony lost their way afterward, however - or why they cannot seem to get the train back on the tracks. I understand GoD and OOW were linked in development, but they'd have been so much better off to have taken a mea culpa, halted development and turned out something the players liked and enjoyed - because given them what they thought they wanted (yet another piece of disposable loot) was completely unsatisfying in the long run.
Speaking of long run, I might as well throw it out there Nexus and PoK helped ruin the world by making the world too small - part of EQ was being swallowed up in it. The run to NTOV is epic - doing CR there is painful, but rewarding... how utterly forgettable is it so click on a book?
I'd rant more, but I'm sleepy exhausted - suffice it to say EQ, even with its warts, had the right formula - if people see analogues in WoW, good.
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