How much nostalgia plays a role here

[peterpal]

I had an awesome time in Meridian 59 and never had a better PvP experience than any other MMO. But even when it came out the graphics were horrible and sub-standard.

The community of like 200 players per server was even tighter knit than Everquests. Guilds could rent guild halls and if you beefed with another guild you could go to war with them and even claim their hall.
I remember we actually had bat phone events when someone attacked the guild hall in the night and we had to defend it.

It also had 3 different factions you could join that made a major impact on the gameplay - not like horde/alliance in wow. - it's really strange that things like these don't even exist in modern games 25 years later.

Eventually EQ came around and the general MMO scope shifted to PvE content.