Fact: EQ was meant to be a PvP game

[myriverse]

MMORPG.com: Ultima Online launched within 2 years of EverQuest – did Origin’s release influence your design choices, and conversely did it give you any cues as not what to do?

Brad McQuaid: Absolutely. First, it gave us confidence that an MMORPG could be commercially viable. It also reinforced our belief that unrestricted PvP was a bad thing. We’d played PvP MUDs in the past and were not fans of them. The wanton PvP in UO confirmed for us that we wanted to make a primarily PvE game.

Heck, originally, EverQuest was to be nothing but an exploration game. Even tradeskills weren't much of a forethought.