The first wave of MMO ' s weren ' t done with the recipe that Blizzard perfected a few expansions into WoW . Absolutely . And even if they are different from WoW , like GW 2 , there ' s a level of polish and cohesion that just didn ' t exist in EQ . You were never sure if the next zone over was going to have a map , or if you were even going to be able to survive it , and just getting around was an adventure itself . I remember making my first journey into the Faydark from Freeport truly feeling like a voyage . I got stranded in the middle of Ocean of Tears because I fell off the boat , until I came across the island that the boat stopped at then I had to journey across the Butcherblock Mountains and got lost more than once . Then I finally found the Faydark , and explored the zone until I was surprised by Kelethin . Not to mention that you had tons of spellsskills , and they weren ' t just handed to you , you had to find them . PLUS you had to actually have the appropriate skill level to successfully cast a spell , the skill level in that game weren ' t just for show . I LOVED that shit , and any MMO that can adequately recreate that authentic sense of exploration , and discovery , and a wilduncharted frontier will automatically be a favorite of mine . The really sad thing is that EQ Next seemed like it was going to inject some of that uncertainty and exploration back into the genre , but it just ended up fizzling outheh . fizzled out . .