Sorry but this guy COMPLETELY misses the boat on EQ2. The ridiculous machine spec to look anywhere close to decent pushed out a ton of players (ironically we made the same mistake again with Vanguard, too). It wasn't designed to be like WoW at all. It was just flawed in many ways from the beginning. It also didn't FEEL like EQ, so it alienated people who wanted to come over from EQ1.
SOE also didn't fuck up SWG.. that was primarily directed by LucasArts. So many of the NGE decisions happened outside SOE, but Smed took it like a leader, and accepted blame, even though it wasn't really his fault.
I've detailed ad nauseum why EQ Next died. It angers me to think about it, so I really don't want to go over it again. The fact that Ponytail hasn't been able to find a job in the industry since getting canned from SOE should tell you all you need to know. EQ Next not being fun was 100% the fault of EQN leadership. When SOE employee testing sent feedback saying combat was awful and boring, the team responded by ignoring feedback, and ultimately they just stopped asking what people thought. They couldn't grasp the possibility that they were wrong, and ignored any criticism of their ideas, arguably the worst trait in game development.
Smed and Russ are both people I would work for again in a heartbeat. Ponytail, never again. DBG is rumored to be working on an EQ game again. I'm REALLY hoping they are.