I should of worded it differently. I think it lead to the destruction of the genre. And why is so? Because the last great hope is fucking Pantheon, lol.
Ill give you a few of the many reasons.... Solo questing. This was such a fucking breakthrough at the time. Most of us old EQ folks were like FUCK YEAH!! Finally I dont have to LFG to advance... Except you know, this was a mmo, you know, mut-iplayer? Of course this solo quest grind led to one at lv 60 now relying on groups and raids to advance further. Most of which did not have a fucking clue how to play in a group setting. In fact, in the beginning days of WoW, it was actually detrimental to your progress when you had multiple people in your group questing together because you were actually competing for those boar ass drops. I think at its core, this was a wrong move to take the mmo genre down that road. And everyone basically copied this solo quest thing from then on. Of course this is not to say that there should not be any solo type shit in a mmo, of course not, but when your entire 1-60 game relies on it, save a few dungeon stops along the way which were entirely not needed, youre setting this up for fails. the game basically turned the lv1-max game a fucking chore only to get to the "real" game.
Oh and the dungeons. Yeah those linear, one path cave crawls with the same mobs, same shit, no real danger, same drops time after time. In fact speaking of, the entire worlds felt sterile. No mysteries, no where to explore, no wondering whats in that hut or cave or building over there, is that some named badass red con dude? I wonder what he drops? No danger, only where that next exclamation mark took you for your next collect 10 cow hooves quest. Of course instancing was cool, your own little playground that no one could fuck with you in, steal your kills, ninja loot your shit, etc. But again, at the cost of some real world people to people experiences, good or bad. Of course EQ could of profited with some instances here and there, like in the raid scene, certain boss areas of dungeons, etc... Im not no purist here, its just that when you look at the world Blizzard created, it was devoid of any charm, any feel, it was all the same shit, just different level and different rocks and trees around you. No buffs anymore, no helping out noobs with a nice DS and Temperance that made their next hour of play a fucking joy while you were running by.
