I have to disagree here. I have been an end game raider since the beginning. I have always been in a guild that beats CURRENT end game content, pushing against other guilds for server wide firsts.
A lot of things went wrong with EQ over the years. A lot of bad decisions were made in terms of developement. The things that people fell in love with, made the game magical and immersive, steadily were removed as the game because less challenging.
Mudflation has completely elmininated a lot of the ultra fun play in the game, such as ultra social mobs....
I had the same thought process prior to rolling on one of the progression servers....
Why would I want to go back and beat content that I have already beaten when it was NEW content and the THING to be doing... I found out a lot of my old retired guildmates were coming out of retirement to make another run so I decided to roll a toon for shits and giggles...
Turns out, the magic is still there. The game had just been slowly hosed over time that you forget what it was exactly that hooked you.....let me tell you...a lot of people are remembering again.
The Fear factor....fear of death penalties...fear of corpse runs....fear of faction hits.
Starting from scratch, even the most trivial thing on a regular server has meaning on a progression server.....the components for that spell you have been wanting to reseach is BIG SHIT all of a sudden.....
I think over time, not only has the game changed but the gamers who play the game. I see a lot more people wanting to play an easy mindless game that isnt very challenging. I see people wanting to plow up levels and go 1-70 in a week.
Back in the day, people spend a MONTH of hard grinding trying to get lvl 60 because lvl 59 was such a bitch ass level....lets not even visit the pre-50 hell levels.....
I dunno...i sort of see it as the "WoWification" of everquest to the point that EQ is becoming a shitty dumber version of wow with obsolete zones that are ghost towns. I love that every zone I visit is populated with players. I like that there are no instances and you ahve to compete and team up to be successful.....
i could just go on and one about how the magic of EQ has been eroded by poor decisions by the dev teams caving to the squeaky wheels.
I mean, sure there are some aspects of the game that are huge improvements like the in game maps, find, etc... the are some aspects that were removed that were cool too though.....corpse runs, the importance of faction, research, player crafting (original and current EQ only) and class interdependence.....(too much over lap these days)
anyway, ill jump off the soap box now.