What "made" EQs endgame feel epic?

[azeth]

Consider also the majority of us were teenagers when we first experienced EQ content. We were younger, as was using the internet as a gaming platform.

A lot of the reasons cited above I believe are contributive to the larger reasons which is -

Almost everything about EQ was new at the time

If you want to claim Ultima Online did MMORPGS first, go ahead. But it didn't remotely come close to the scale of EQ.