What caused the decline of EQ as the #1 MMO?

[Tsuken]

I think Luclin and beyond ruined Everquest. I quit in the Luclin era.

As to why I quit I think... I played a bard. Selo's required an outdoor zone, but the indoor zones many. So going to Luclin often meant walking slow like everyone else. Except for the people who cast SoW before entering the zone. There was no obvious reason to not allow Selo's in those huge indoor areas, in the old world it was obvious, but some of these luclin indoor-zones were as big as outdoor-zones.

Oh and then there was the dreaded LFG and waiting for a group. Horrible. It eventually got to me.

And I didn't like corpse runs at all by the way, never have. But it did add the element of taking risk to the game.

After I quit EQ I didn't dare to pick up another MMO like WoW and waste more of my time.

I did play WoW, but not until the burning crusade expansion. I quit WoW soon after jumping through the burning legion portal though (or whatever it was called).