Originally posted by Venekor

I remember it as a game of time to get gear, not skill lol... you could type while in combat it took so little skill. Infact SOE wanted to WoW up EQs combat years ago and people hated the fact that they had to move while in combat and couldn't type lol. 

That said I wish MMOs were as harsh as old EQ (Pre Luclin and PoP)

it does require skill if your a wizard or some sort of strong dps, If you pull the guy away from main tank you mess up the raid. so it requires skill of knowing what spells to use at the right time to  finish up the raids and plaining what to do. Also to play your toon good it does require skill because  you have to know what skills to use and what not. So yes it does require skill i played the game since it came out in beta to say games dont require skill then what are you learning while playing O_O. it may seem like a simple game but its not you have to know your class well if your grouping soloing and what skill your have and how to manage them.......

it was a breahing harsh world so people worked together in order to survivve. If Soe didn't mess up this game maybe I'd still play it. Best community ever, knowledgable people and pure fun.

Log in do a camp search and ask some random people if you join them, have a nice time slaying some mobs together and do TEXT chat.

Get the aggro from a warrior well...you die play safely next time.

no stupid badge gear one of the worst ideas this genre has ever come up with.  If your gear drops it drops if not, than not, period.

Rewarding adventure/exploration no matter what you did at maxlevel you got xp for AA points progressing everytime you logged on, despite raiding I loved it so much, great system.

custom stats

best PvE I've ever seen in a game:

- forgot your debuff? wipe ->next try play more patient

- mezz broke/resisted? wipe

- train deep in the dungeon? wipe

This game actually thaught people how become better in order to survive and rewarded those of us, who worked together.

I'd pay 25 $ a month for Everquest Preluclin with only updated graphics and NOT made by $oe.

I miss some things about old EQ

- No faction locks as such. If I worked hard rnough, my high elf could stroll into Neriak and be accepted.

- HUGE world to explore with few instant travel options. 

- Boat trips that actually feel like you're going someplace, and you can jump off and explore the islands any time

- CC meant something

- Buffs meant something.

- Pulling was a gosh darn art form (I played a Monk primarily, lemme tell you I was a master at the feign pull)

- Less emphasis on the Trinity model

- You had to work to get quests, actually talk to the NPCs and try different things.

- Pug and Guidl groups with lots of socializing and (gasp!) fun

- Punishing deaths made you think carefully

-The insanity of accidently biting off more than you could chew, getting trained, etc and managing to survive with luck and improvisation.

Now for the bad

- De leveling

- Corpse runs into places you could accidently get into, but good luck getting out

- Disconnecting in the middle of a dugeon and coming back to your party gone and a thousand angry mobs- see above.

- Incredibly slow pacing

- Healers could not level without help

- Buffers (Enchs, Shamen, etc) had a difficult time levelling without help

- Solo play discouraged

- Limited spawn camps for any level range; lots of competition

- Non-instanced raiding meant other guilds could steal from you, train troll you, etc.

- Karnor's/Crushbone trains

- "It's heathens like you that ruined your won lands, A_Large_Rat, you'll not ruin mine!"

Originally posted by Sythyfys

There was some skill required in EQ, its Clear to me None of you played a Iksar/shaman out side of Kunark  (pre PoP)  or in a high end raid/grp setting. 

 

If ya dont call what it took for me to be the shaman i was SKILL then i cant find the right word, Been all up in the dictionary cant find any better word than SKILL to discribe my play style and what was needed to play that class/race combo.

those of you that want to say difrent its ok to be Wrong, You wont die for being wrong

Raids required Skill 

Cleric required Skill

Monk was very skillfull

Bard = Must have skill or die

Enchanter was a skill class

 

I can keep going as you can tell I know what im talking about (im not sure anyone else here does) After 10 years of playing EQ and retireing my Iksar shaman at 85 i learned a bit of MMO Skill's along the way thats right *SKILLS* Those Skills alow me to plug into any MMO and roll through it no questions asked Any class any style any game all because EQ was harder and more skill was required to play the rest of these girly MMos like AION (what im playing now) and the biggest sissy game of all WoW LMAO i got 40 levels in 1 day solo HAHAHA

 

Every MMO out there is EAsy mode Exept for 2 that i know of (there may be others) Original EverQuest and Vanguard  and Vanguard was still pretty easy but raid were very Skill'ed

 

 

I apoligize if i offend anyone it just seems some people dont know what Skill in an MMO really is and therefore didnt come off like you know what your talking about 

I cower in the presence of your awesomeness...

To all of you that say EQ doesn't take skill I bet not one of you could make it to lvl 60 on a certain server I will not mention the name of right now. Good lord, the children complained about the original WoW untill they made it mind numbingly boring to play and it was casual to begin with.

Yeah, I'm gonna go with so many of the other responses here.  EQ wasn't about skill, it was just a skill bar button masher with hellacious amounts of downtime and unbelievably slow pacing even by the standards in its day.  The whole EQ experience may have been 100% made by the community, which is great for players who are into people, but all I remember is god awful gameplay mechanics.

In a way, it defined the concept of the asian grinder before people even had a first-hand concept of what an asian grinder was.

To quote an earlier response: "tedium is not a measure of skill."

I am with the OP on alot of this.

Even though i am in the school of people that loved EQ... It had its good and bad moments thats for sure.

I think in alot of ways EQ did require alot more deterimination and patience... Things were not handed over to the players on the silver platter. When you achieved something in the game you actually felt like you did some awesome.

Yes it was definately a skill oriented game, and a gear oriented game.

If you grouped with a skillful healer you would know it. If you grouped with a great puller/tank (that was me hehe) people would commment about it. Same with Crowd contro. DPS.. well unfortunately DPS is DPS, Now DPS that knows how to manage their aggro thats something.

Skill could be offset  by having better gear.. IE a tank with better weapons would draw more aggro innately... had better mitigation with better armor. More hitpoints etc.

However I will say EQ was definately alot more hardcore than alot of the garbage games that are being fed to the MMO community these days.

The more you played the more you learned your class and were able to use that class to help the group. People could pick out which players 'knew' their class.

Example: I, playing as a bard, was in Karnors castle with a group. And we were pretty deep in and down. It got a little hectic with too many mobs at one point. I used my charm to charm the extra mob and a couple people in my group were like "Who is doing that?" and "Wow! you really know what you are doing!".   

-Only the people that played in the beggining are going to understand the pace of combat and the fact that it took more than just pressing a charm song. It took making sure that my charm didnt resist through obtaining my wind instrument, swapping my instruments out, targeting the proper mob, charming, and sending the pet into the mob we were all focusing on.

Times have changed. Rarely do MMO's even put in bard instruments anymore(which is sad) and mobs are dead in 10 seconds anyway, tanks are AOE tanks and groups get pissed if you are CC'ing mobs. Where in early eq it became almost neccasary for people to do this. Individual fights took longer, the pull had to happen flawlessly, everything was communicated with the group and most of the time you were impressed with what your groupmember did for the party.

Originally posted by twodayslate

Yeah, I'm gonna go with so many of the other responses here.  EQ wasn't about skill, it was just a skill bar button masher with hellacious amounts of downtime and unbelievably slow pacing even by the standards in its day.  The whole EQ experience may have been 100% made by the community, which is great for players who are into people, but all I remember is god awful gameplay mechanics.

In a way, it defined the concept of the asian grinder before people even had a first-hand concept of what an asian grinder was.

To quote an earlier response: "tedium is not a measure of skill."

 

So true

Originally posted by Tyvolus1

Originally posted by Homergdog

I still play ole EQ after going to soo many MMOs. I really do think it will be the last MMO I play. Its slowly heading to the grave and has a couple more years left in it. They have had to adapt it to the current market of MMO players and is much much more casual now than it ever has been. The group game, is more like the solo game. The raids are still quite epic (54 players) and even with dated graphics it still has a big draw for me. 

Your point I think is a bit off though. EQ is very much a RMT, Microtransaction game on top of a subscription model. The difference between EQ is its not in your face, because your paying a subscription. With the huge wave of F2P MMOs now, I think you remember EQ before these things were introduced. Sadly, most if not all MMOs have adopted RMT and microtransactions. It takes me back to my original statement, that EQ 1 will be the last MMO I play. I know they will never convert the original to a F2P model (it would work because of its age) and I can't stand all these things. 

On the up side, I have started playing Console games again after 15 years. Xbox 360 isn't bad and has a great social interface. I believe MMOs are all starting to fizzle out. WoW subscriptions are probably declining, and all these F2P crap MMOs put up a bad name for the MMORPG community. The last great hope is SWTOR, but I don't see it being as big as a success as everything thinks. Most of its concepts are essentially polished old gameplay. I'm tired of that crap, and the MMOs of old are dead or dying. RIP...

have fun on your xbox.  Its just a dumbed down PC with a joystick.

The market for console development is far more lucerative than the dwindling pc market. 

Have fun with driver conflicts, aging hardware (always gotta upgrade$$$), random freezing, driver updates (which can create more problems), installing new software (which can create more problems with your game)........have fun wondering what problem will occur whenever you click the game icon......have fun with pc headaches.  I'll be playing my ps3.

Originally posted by Venekor

I remember it as a game of time to get gear, not skill lol... you could type while in combat it took so little skill. Infact SOE wanted to WoW up EQs combat years ago and people hated the fact that they had to move while in combat and couldn't type lol. 

That said I wish MMOs were as harsh as old EQ (Pre Luclin and PoP)

What are you talking about? In newer mmos you can run out of trouble after a few seconds, eq the mobs pathed all over the damn place and would chase you across the entire zone.

Originally posted by UnleadedRev

Tell you what.....after playing almost 12 years of different MMO's and now all the BS regarding MicroTransactions and Real Money Stores/Auctions...I can honestly tell you that the best MMO ever made is also the MMO I hated the most...EQ....the ORIGINAL EQ.

Here is why....despite its grinding of passive MOBs, lack of story, ancient graphics and animations, and a hundred other things, EQ was still the best MMO because not of what it did have, but what it DID NOT have.

No stupid F2P stores or Real Money stores...you want the gear you EARN it.

No Grinding for TOKENS, you either get the drop or you didnt...PERIOD.

The game took SKILL, class knowledge, and the ability of players to get along and cooperate...it was not solo friendly.

NO PANDAS....

No GEARSCORE

No stupid Group or Raid finders...you organized them the old fashion way.

HARDCORE DEATH......my oh my....even Age of Conan's "Deathwish" server which is hardcore PvP cannot hold a candle to EQs dreaded CORPSE RUN!

ALL of your STUFF..on your corpse....you had better find it...MUHAHAHA, and dodge the mobs with only what is in your hands!

Yeah I hated it....it got boring fast...but the players made EQ...unfortunately as the quality of MMO players declined to its present day a$$hat, WoW kiddie, L33t level, a game such as EQ that mandates player cooperation cannot survive at the head of the pack.

Still....it was a game for REAL players....HARDCORE players and with no hand holding ....and required SKILL across the board including Social Skills for without a group your Dungeom or Raid would be FAIL.

Remember the Auction House? It was great in its simplicity and its player generated economy.

How I miss the game I hated so much.....which compared to the way MMO's are these days such as Age of Conan with its banging rocks in Bori grindfest and WoW with its grind for token fest, and their PvP and PvE armor flavors of the month...I say BAH!

Someone at Sony Verant release a hardcore game with great gameplay and graphics, that somehow screens the a$$hats and WoW kiddies out from playing.

Nowo that would be a game...RANT OVER....

RANT induced by Age of Conan....another ruined MMO by mindless game directors and a$$hat players as well as flawed game design.

Skill huh?  Auto attack and 1 or two other buttons takes skill?  I remember doing the following on multiple occasions.  Step 1 - find blue mob, 2.  Hit auto attack, 3.  Leave computer to make a sandwich/go to the washroom or watch movie.  4.  Step 4 look at screen, mob is dead.  5. Find another blue mob.  Dungeon runs were a bit more interesting than in most (not all) modern MMO's but a bit too long IMO.

When I started I had fun, and when I return every once in awhile it is still fun.  However after awhile (now that while is a few weeks) the monotony starts to set in and I know it's time to leave.

There was no skill involved - it was just long.  Corpse runs just involved patience or a buddy. 

Actually the only point I will agree with is the players made it good - and to that I will attribute to a smaller, more like-minded community.  Thats it.

Venge

edit - however bards were the exception.  Man I loved my bard, twisting songs, yes you had to be on your toes.  To the peson that charmed a mob in Karnors  phftt.  Try charming 3 mobs, cycling your charm song through all three mobs and still keep a buff going - that was fun :)

Originally posted by Neanderthal

Go try the project 99 emulator.  Most of the people there are pretty nice and it's as close as you'll ever get to old EQ.  The biggest problem with it in my opinion is that everyone knows what they are doing so well it takes some of the fun out of it.  A lot fewer trains and and a lot less chaos which makes it a bit more dull than it was back in the day.

There's also many new players joining, plenty of trains in Crushbones so far ;)

Originally posted by UnleadedRev

Tell you what.....after playing almost 12 years of different MMO's and now all the BS regarding MicroTransactions and Real Money Stores/Auctions...I can honestly tell you that the best MMO ever made is also the MMO I hated the most...EQ....the ORIGINAL EQ.

Here is why....despite its grinding of passive MOBs, lack of story, ancient graphics and animations, and a hundred other things, EQ was still the best MMO because not of what it did have, but what it DID NOT have.

No stupid F2P stores or Real Money stores...you want the gear you EARN it.

No Grinding for TOKENS, you either get the drop or you didnt...PERIOD.

The game took SKILL, class knowledge, and the ability of players to get along and cooperate...it was not solo friendly.

NO PANDAS....

No GEARSCORE

No stupid Group or Raid finders...you organized them the old fashion way.

HARDCORE DEATH......my oh my....even Age of Conan's "Deathwish" server which is hardcore PvP cannot hold a candle to EQs dreaded CORPSE RUN!

ALL of your STUFF..on your corpse....you had better find it...MUHAHAHA, and dodge the mobs with only what is in your hands!

Yeah I hated it....it got boring fast...but the players made EQ...unfortunately as the quality of MMO players declined to its present day a$$hat, WoW kiddie, L33t level, a game such as EQ that mandates player cooperation cannot survive at the head of the pack.

Still....it was a game for REAL players....HARDCORE players and with no hand holding ....and required SKILL across the board including Social Skills for without a group your Dungeom or Raid would be FAIL.

Remember the Auction House? It was great in its simplicity and its player generated economy.

How I miss the game I hated so much.....which compared to the way MMO's are these days such as Age of Conan with its banging rocks in Bori grindfest and WoW with its grind for token fest, and their PvP and PvE armor flavors of the month...I say BAH!

Someone at Sony Verant release a hardcore game with great gameplay and graphics, that somehow screens the a$$hats and WoW kiddies out from playing.

Nowo that would be a game...RANT OVER....

RANT induced by Age of Conan....another ruined MMO by mindless game directors and a$$hat players as well as flawed game design.

 The thing about how EQ was when it began was that it was basic you got out of the game what you put into the game. If you where a casual player you had average gear and weapons. If you were a power player you got the better gear, and weapons. You earned everything you got. And the leveling was such that you knew if you were with a lvl 50 (max level at the time) you were playing with someone who knew there class and knew the content that you all where in.

The biggest failing with EQ is everyone wanted to be "end game" players so the complaing, B$%&^#$@ and other rants and raves caused the developers to be forced to make changes.

example--1: EQ always had the "duel" and "guild war" ability now remember when Jboots were a drop not a quest the arguments that came from one guild camping the mob vs another and rotating your guild memebers in so everyone could get the drop? well rather then have the players solve there own issues with the for mentioned commands SOE and Verant listend when people said they would cancel there account and made the drop a quest .

example-2: remember when the 2 top guilds would argue and fight over the "raid" mobs and the complaining started? rather then telling the top guilds use the "guild war" command to decided who would control the server SOE started working with the instance zones for there next expansion. (instance Zones was the beginning of the watering down of the game)

example-3: remember when POP came out and people got tired of flagging new guild memebers so they could raid time, well complaining started and the threats started so they allowed the change in the rule so for every 5 people 1 person could get in. SOE should have told the people so what quit if your going to we arent going to water down the game just so you can raid. then they should have started mergeing servers if sever population was going down to those levels.

EQ should have stayed true to its original intention, but I guess the bottom line really matters more then anything.

I played EQ from 7 days after the game was released (had the flu) until about  years ago, Awesome game but its so watered down and so not what it use to be. Now you can lel from 1 to 90 in what a month if that?

Found this thread and felt compelled to reply because of all these posters claiming EQ didn't take skill.  I guess it's true that calling your buddy for a corpse run doesn't take as much skill as say getting it yourself.  I rarly if ever needed help getting my corpse, even when my corpse was deep in a dungeon.  Knowing agro ranges and safe areas of dungeons took skill to use correctly, but if I didn't have the skill then yeah call on a friend.  Training enemies without getting 30 people killed in the process took skill to manage.  Kiting multiple mobs around in dangerous zones took skill and patience.  Knowing a mob would eventually win an enounter took skill and understanding, then escaping that engaged mob took skill.  Sure the combat was kinda bland and was simpy an autotattack with maybe 1 or 2 abilites used, but there were so many tactics you needed to understand and use correctly to get a successful kill, knowing fear paths, kiting or just managing agro.  These things are lost in today's MMO's for the most part it's jump in and spam abilites till mob is dead, if your going to die either let yourself die because there is no penelty or just click your ultra speed buff and escape, the mob is leashed anyway and will give up in 2 seconds.

I hope one day there is game like EQ, an MMO that is for the millions of loyal subscribing niche players that don't want this mindless crap anymore, Vanguard was probably the closest thing to a playable MMO for me and I'm pretty sure SOE can be blamed for ruining it.  That's my 2cents, now go make the damn game.

---

Originally posted by VengeSunsoar
edit - however bards were the exception.  Man I loved my bard, twisting songs, yes you had to be on your toes.  To the peson that charmed a mob in Karnors  phftt.  Try charming 3 mobs, cycling your charm song through all three mobs and still keep a buff going - that was fun :)

---

Originally posted by AlBQuirky

 

---

Originally posted by VengeSunsoar
edit - however bards were the exception.  Man I loved my bard, twisting songs, yes you had to be on your toes.  To the peson that charmed a mob in Karnors  phftt.  Try charming 3 mobs, cycling your charm song through all three mobs and still keep a buff going - that was fun :)

---

I miss playing my EQ bard. I have not found any other MMO that even comes close to the EQ Bard playstyle. (sigh...)

 

Same. Twisting to be highly effective, awesome in groups, a beast solo... but a VERY high skill cap... Loved it... Miss it...

I loved the feel of teh necromancer and shadow knight as well. Shadow knight seemed more evil and dark than Death Knights anyday.

Originally posted by kitarad

Knowledgee by itself is just information but it takes skill to know when to use the knowledge you gathered. 

But knowing when to use a skill is also just knowledge. The word 'knowing' in the sentence kind gives it away.

Now I realize the meaning of the word "skill" can be debated, but I'm sorry, I can't call an activity that requires nothing more physical than clicking buttons as a skill.

Originally posted by UnleadedRev

Tell you what.....after playing almost 12 years of different MMO's and now all the BS regarding MicroTransactions and Real Money Stores/Auctions...I can honestly tell you that the best MMO ever made is also the MMO I hated the most...EQ....the ORIGINAL EQ.

Here is why....despite its grinding of passive MOBs, lack of story, ancient graphics and animations, and a hundred other things, EQ was still the best MMO because not of what it did have, but what it DID NOT have.

No stupid F2P stores or Real Money stores...you want the gear you EARN it.

No Grinding for TOKENS, you either get the drop or you didnt...PERIOD.

The game took SKILL, class knowledge, and the ability of players to get along and cooperate...it was not solo friendly.

NO PANDAS....

No GEARSCORE

No stupid Group or Raid finders...you organized them the old fashion way.

HARDCORE DEATH......my oh my....even Age of Conan's "Deathwish" server which is hardcore PvP cannot hold a candle to EQs dreaded CORPSE RUN!

ALL of your STUFF..on your corpse....you had better find it...MUHAHAHA, and dodge the mobs with only what is in your hands!

Yeah I hated it....it got boring fast...but the players made EQ...unfortunately as the quality of MMO players declined to its present day a$$hat, WoW kiddie, L33t level, a game such as EQ that mandates player cooperation cannot survive at the head of the pack.

Still....it was a game for REAL players....HARDCORE players and with no hand holding ....and required SKILL across the board including Social Skills for without a group your Dungeom or Raid would be FAIL.

Remember the Auction House? It was great in its simplicity and its player generated economy.

How I miss the game I hated so much.....which compared to the way MMO's are these days such as Age of Conan with its banging rocks in Bori grindfest and WoW with its grind for token fest, and their PvP and PvE armor flavors of the month...I say BAH!

Someone at Sony Verant release a hardcore game with great gameplay and graphics, that somehow screens the a$$hats and WoW kiddies out from playing.

Nowo that would be a game...RANT OVER....

RANT induced by Age of Conan....another ruined MMO by mindless game directors and a$$hat players as well as flawed game design.

what auction house? I had to sneak through sewers to avoid being KOS by guards in Freeport. Life sucked as a Dark Elf.

Originally posted by UnleadedRev

Tell you what.....after playing almost 12 years of different MMO's and now all the BS regarding MicroTransactions and Real Money Stores/Auctions...I can honestly tell you that the best MMO ever made is also the MMO I hated the most...EQ....the ORIGINAL EQ.

Here is why....despite its grinding of passive MOBs, lack of story, ancient graphics and animations, and a hundred other things, EQ was still the best MMO because not of what it did have, but what it DID NOT have.

No stupid F2P stores or Real Money stores...you want the gear you EARN it.

Unless you bought plat off of ige.com and bought your gear upgrades in the bazaar

No Grinding for TOKENS, you either get the drop or you didnt...PERIOD.

In other MMOs, you either get drops or you don't, which is the same as it was in EQ.  The only difference is everyone gets a token which they can later use to purchase comparable gear once they've saved enough of them.  I find it hard to believe that's a bad thing.

The game took SKILL, class knowledge, and the ability of players to get along and cooperate...it was not solo friedly

It took very little skill unless you were trying to solo.  I could practically chat with my guild, chat with my group, and have a privte conversation with a buddy via /tell all while holding aggro on the one mob that's pulled at a time.  There were no quests that you were forced to finish to progress.  You just sat in one spot for hours while the puller brings mobs to you one at a time.  If he aggros two, just get the CCer to put one to sleep.  Combat was extremely slow paced, and you could only have a certain number of abilities on your hotbar, so you had little use for memorizing 20+ keybinds.  Raids were not all that complex, and you had little reason to study a fight unless you were the raid leader because they were so easily explained.

NO PANDAS....

 

Giant Frogs > Pandas?

No GEARSCORE

WoW wouldn't have GearScore if it wasn't for gear gating which was invented in games like EverQuest.  Don't have your epic weapon?  You're missing 100 AAs?  Sorry, you're not geared enough for this raid...

No stupid Group or Raid finders...you organized them the old fashioned way

I bet you still enjoy riding to town on horseback...

HARDCORE DEATH......my oh my....even Age of Conan's "Deathwish" server which is hardcore PvP cannot hold a candle to EQs dreaded CORPSE RUN

Here's a solution: Never go anywhere without a cleric.  On the rare occasion that you dare venture off somewhere where a cleric can't rez you and you can't get to your corpse, just ask a necro in your guild to summon your remains at the zone line.  That's hardly evil stuff there...

ALL of your STUFF..on your corpse....you had better find it...MUHAHAHA, and dodge the mobs with only what is in your hands!

Unless you're buddies with a necromancer or a cleric with a 98% rez...

Yeah I hated it....it got boring fast...but the players made EQ...unfortunately as the quality of MMO players declined to its present day a$$hat, WoW kiddie, L33t level, a game such as EQ that mandates player cooperation cannot survive at the head of the pack.

There was a lot I miss about EverQuest, but video games are just that -- games.  EverQuest was one hell of a soul sucking, life stealing monster that I don't think anyone could reasonably progress through without devoting more real life time than is reasonably healthy.  I'll gladly trade community building, making friends, and cooperation (all of which can and should be done primarily in the real world) for a game that I can sit down and play for an hour and feel like I accomplished something.  At least dungeon finders now allow me to do all that with a full group of other real life players regardless of whether or not we do much talking. The fact that WoW became so popular is a testament to the fact that I'm not the only one who feels this way.  Your EQ community still exists among WoW, LotRO, SW:TOR and other games; however, it's mixed in with a much larger group of people because quite frankly, MMORPGs appeal to a much larger audience.

Still....it was a game for REAL players....HARDCORE players and with no hand holding ....and required SKILL across the board including Social Skills for without a group your Dungeom or Raid would be FAIL.

It takes zero social skills to shout, "65 paladin LFG" over and over again until you're banned from spamming a public chat channel.  It required little skill as mentioned above, unless you count actively trying to play the game against the way it was designed as showcasing your skill.  I'll give you one thing, EverQuest certainly was for the hardcore.  Of course, that's not really a good thing either.

Remember the Auction House? It was great in its simplicity and its player generated economy

The bazaar was amazing until World of Warcraft came along and popularized the Auction House which blew away the bazaar.  No longer did players have to leave their computers on all night long in order to sell an item or no longer did they have to buy a second account just to keep up a bazaar mule.  Of course, EQ's bazaar system is working wonders in FFXIV right now.

How I miss the game I hated so much.....which compared to the way MMO's are these days such as Age of Conan with its banging rocks in Bori grindfest and WoW with its grind for token fest, and their PvP and PvE armor flavors of the month...I say BAH!

Grind for gear, grind for tokens?  I dont' get the difference.  World of Warcraft was the spirtual successor to EQ, and its endgame is almost exactly like that of Everquest only designed to appeal to a larger number of players due to far less of a time commitment.  That doesn't mean raiding in WoW is easy.  If you think it's easy, by all means link your achievements for all your heroic raid boss kills.

Someone at Sony Verant release a hardcore game with great gameplay and graphics, that somehow screens the a$$hats and WoW kiddies out from playing

They would and then you'd be the first person wondering why you can't find a group.  The answer would be because no one is playing.  The a$$hats and WoW kiddies pay the bills for these game developers which allow them to keep the servers up and to add new content.  Deal with them and play in a thriving, ever changing game world or go hide in a corner with the other self righteous whiners.  

Nowo that would be a game...RANT OVER....

If you go subscribe to Vanguard right now, you might just be the 161st person logged into the game world once your download finishes.  Go check that out.

RANT induced by Age of Conan....another ruined MMO by mindless game directors and a$$hat players as well as flawed game design.