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

[Bigcountry23]

People say it was the release of expansions every six months, but I think there it more to it than that. Yes, the expansions were buggy as hell and they did not devote enough people to fixing the bugs because everyone was already tapped for another money grab six months down the road, but that was not the root of the problem. The root was story (and the lack there of) and how it was lost with each expansion. Kunark and Velious had great stories (land thought to be lost or unable to be access due to weather rediscovered, and how the rediscovery impacted the continent itself and the rest of the world, including the kidnapping of Tunare's chosen one, FV.). That kind of story telling started to slip away with SoL (hey... we found a way to go to the moon, yay. Why are we there? Um, hey look a cat!) and completely dissolved with PoP (ummm, yeah here, you now have instant access to the whole world, quit your bitching about ports and slow boats). Does anyone even know the storyline for POP and why you were trying to go to the various planes? Follow that up with what had the potential to be a Lorefest (LDoN had the fallen Elvish cities, expanded areas of GUK, Orc and Goblin fortresses within the mountains...). While I hate to admit it, WoW is popular with certain factions because of their ability to tell a story and continue the nutritive thread from expansion to expansion. Something EQ was sorely lacking.