You have some valid points. Though, you must keep in mind the game is from 1999. It didn't even have a map until 2002 (maybe 2001) with the release of "Legacy of Ykesha".

The combat was very simplistic. Very. But it was met with some interesting challenges. At first it was just hard creatures with tons of hp and hit like a train. But they started to get inventive by adding challenges to raid bosses. All of what you enjoy in WoW raids is entirely due to Everquest's inventive raid mechanics.

There were also no 10/25 man raids. For the first 4 expansions (and the original game); it was "fit as many people as we can!", some raids requiring hundreds of people (see sleepers tomb). Sony figured out that was somewhat difficult. So they reduced it to 54, with the release of "Lost Dungeons of Norrath", and the implementation of instances.

From that point on, raids were usually 54 man raids. Gear was scarce and not as freely available. They managed to tone it down further by have 36 man raids, and I left before I saw it get any smaller.

Being well geared in Everquest was a status symbol. For a while, if you had your epic weapon (or epic 2.0), you were a god among men, because to get it meant a large amount of cooperation from your guild. Some of the fights to get these weapons required multiple raids, and yes with 54 people.

You don't get anything like that in WoW. It was those charms that had me really hooked to EQ, because you had a feeling of actually progressing through the game and accomplishing something. This is something I don't really feel with WoW. As fun as it can be, and as much as I like to PVP, WoW does not quite satisfy me like EQ did.

As for the interface. Yeah it sucked for a long time. You had a small viewport in the middle of the screen, then it was surrounded by a non-modular UI. You had a single chat window where combat text was spamming out vital chat. You couldn't change any of the UI settings. But thankfully this was replaced.

I'm not sure when they pushed their new UI on us, I imagine it was somewhere near the release of Luclin. It was a saviour. We could move windows around, have multiple chat windows, filter chat; it was great.

Loading between zones happened because there was no way to conceivably connect all the zones seamlessly. Ram was limited, computing power even more so, It made more sense to have zone lines way back then.

Having zone lines was a huge help too. Because mobs in EQ never stopped chasing you... NEVER. So you would run to the zone to escape danger, and often shout "TRAIN TO THE ZONE!". Oh yes, the memories of KC. /nostalgia off

EQ was very good for it's time. It was a pioneer in MMO gaming. When they created it, they envisioned everyone gathering around pubs and chatting while waiting for groups, and role playing a bit more. A lot of things fell out of the initial vision the developers had for the game. And it became an entirely different beast.

Sure you can knock it when approaching it with today's standards; but that's not really fair, since it's the grandfather of our current games. Sure it lacks the heavy metal rock music, but there is still some charm in the jazz that this grandfather game enjoys.

I could write all day about the game really. But I shall not.