EQ had a permadeath server as a limited-time event. It's mentioned in the Wikipedia article, which is likely where the author skimmed all the EQ background information.

What's really sad is that the author didn't check the forums or EQ blogs to discover the real controversy surrounding the decision.

Worley's odd phrasing underscored that the folks at SOE deliberately excluded the input of ex-players who might return for certain kinds of servers. There was also a fair amount of controversy on how a new progression server -- one of the choices -- would improve upon the play of the previous two progression servers.

There is so much that could have been written about this decision and what it means for SOE (EQ was, pre-Free Realms, SOE's most popular MMO, even above EQ2, from what I understand). It could have linked back to last summer's Living Legacy event and the player feedback from the previous two progression servers, or what it means for SOE to introduce the first new non-transfer standard rules server since *2003*, but -- we got this instead. A couple of lightly rewritten paragraphs from a dev's blog, an out-of-context line from the Wikipedia entry, and an article from someone with no more love for EverQuest than for the latest Korean F2P import.