I'm thinking about going back to EQ1 too, after having a love/hate thing with it for 5 years.
Its odd, but it seems that all the things I hated it for are finally being improved. It looks like they want to limit downtime more, making soloing even more viable and they added a potion belt thingie???????????
My highest character in EQ1 is a 57 wood elf druid, then I have a 46 troll sk and 46 dark elf cleric. I have through lost dungeons of norrath on the two accounts, the cleric and troll two boxed through about april of 2004.
Then I was invited to the beta of COH, played that for retail a bit.. goodbye to EQ1 cause I was bored. Then I was invited to the beta of WoW in july of that year, good bye to COh because I was bored of that. WoW kept me entertained retail for about a year. Now I'm bored out of my skull in wow with two level 60's.
In WoW you level WAAAAAYYYY too fast. Then you have nothing to do at 60 but pvp battlegrounds, which are horrible and slow to get honor in (plus the gear from it sucks.) OR 40 person raid in two instances. Basically you stagnate in wow, an mmorpg made for 2005 - 2006!@@, exactly the same way you did in early EQ1 if you got to 50 when all there was to do was plane of hate and fear. I switched servers in EQ1 though, at a point, so my druid was only 47 when kunark came out; I never experienced sitting at a cap stagnating in EQ1.
WoW I've been stagnating for some time, on two characters. I no longer have time to 40 person raid and its so unrewarding anyway. It is like they took that WORST aspect of EQ1, for me, then made it the endgame of wow. WHAT THE HECK? The crazy thing is that 1-59, and just after 60, WoW is the best mmorpg out there with more cool worthwhile quests to do than any mmorpg. For a long time I was saying "everquest is a misnomer, World of warcraft is the first real "everquest!" Then I got to 60 on two characters. Then I stagnated, having done all worth while quests. Then I stagnate more. Then I read burning crusade, which gives level 70 but STILL NO ALTERNATE ADVANCE, won't be out until july 2006@!!!
So even if I'm only back until July.. it looks like EQ1 is the only real playable mmorpg still, in 2005.... ahah that is so sad.I went back to EQ1 after Daoc, after anarchy online, after FFXI and now after COH and WoW. No one can beat it since they all just try to MEET it; Blizzard pretty much made the same mistake with WoW, "hey, EQ1's problem is that you level really slow and there are not always cool quests. So lets make a REAL everquest where you level really fast and have tons of cool quests, up to 60." They forgot the important stuff, though, like alternate advancement. They forgot tradeskills that actually made okay stuff. They forgot giving people more to do at 60 than basically raid "fear and hate." Its like they made an mmorpg, developing it for years and years, to only beat EQ1 for the six months to a year average that was about the best they could hope to "hook" someone.
Its just so weird that blizzard took the genre so far, came so very close, but then just totally missed in the end. I truely think that mmorpgs are meant to be played 2-6 years after their launch. The problem with me is, I always try the "new" one when they basically suck. Then I'm jaded by the time they are "fixed." Maybe I should wait two years to go back to wow.