the games simply are no longer large enough. we have systematized every possible avenue for progression in game, and we veterans are good at mastering those systems quickly, making the game worlds seem smaller and smaller.

the beauty of EQ and WoW and many other 1st and early 2nd gen games were that they were so large, you could easily play 2 or 3 alts to end-game and still not see every piece of content available. you could very easily get "lost" and the games very much felt like what they were intended to be... "virtual worlds".

with the neater, cleaner, more tightly designed environments (not to mention thottbot, allakhazam, etc.) that ability to lose one's self in the game world has been slowly eroding.

i'd like to see an era again where i can talk about quests that i've done with someone and they didn't even know they existed, or i had to explain in detail where to go find them. i'd like to see so many armor drops that you could play for weeks without seeing another player in the same duds.

essentially, "massive" just isn't massive enough anymore.