Any indie MMOs similar to EQ?

[Talgurin]

I played one of those free MMOs once, like one of those annoying ones that you see ads for that pop-up everywhere. It had hideous anime graphics, but it was very similar to WoW and the gameplay wasn't *that* bad.

What I'm curious is if there's any indie MMOs that are similar to classic EQ. By that I mean: challenging, death penalties, extremely rare spawns, no instanced crap, and a long time to get to the top.

That would be pretty rad and I'd play it. Any thoughts? I'm guessing probably "no" as only masochistic EQ gamers like us enjoy this type of stuff.