[Danenania]

Yeah... I have never been a "powergamer" in any games. When I quit EQ I had one 59, one 52, and a couple other twinks, and I played for like 2 years. I wasn't in any serious guilds. Mostly just had a lot of fun doing dungeon crawls and exploring zones that had fallen by the wayside with groups of 1-5 RL friends who also played.

Something I've always realized, though, is how important it is in these types of games to have "elite" and high level areas and items that require immense amounts of time and effort to access. Because even though it was impossible for me to ever get to any of those things, they acted as a carrot on the stick for my imagination, allowing me to dream that that might be me someday (even though there's no way I'd ever commit that sort of time). It gave a direction to my in-game achievements. I think the main thing that killed EQ was ruining the distinction of "elite" players, zones, and items by dumbing down the game and making it way too easy to reach the top. Once it became no big deal to level to 65 or whatever the cap was in a month and get all the best stuff, it trivialized all my earlier progress and made me think, "why am I playing towards a meaningless goal?" As if it wasn't enough of a time waster already.