Its a philosophical debate between what makes someone skilled, how much of it is ability or intellegence, natural or learned.
If you look at professional athlete, they usually practice over and over to be considered skilled. Is it their muscle memory or repetition or is it what they learned and how they apply it? Was Michael Jordan good because he was naturally talented or because he practiced his ass off? How much was experience, how much was repetition, how much was natural talent that played into his skill.
I like eq because there is alot of game knowlege to know and master, and even though you may know everything there is to know about the game and its mechanics, it doesnt mean you will take that knowlege and apply it correctly.
The reason eq pvp is so good vs other games is that there is this level of complexity that overwhelms people. Its like starcraft 1 or 2, easy to learn and difficult to master. The difference between world class players is not that the champs know more about the game, everything they know is availible to others. What they have mastered is timing and applying that knowlege to get them to win either by comming up with great strategies or just outright making quick decisions on the fly that are informed and correct, and there is always a little bit of luck involved.
Things in eq that take skill that other mmos generally dont have:
Jousting - Your characters positioning in reference to your target is important and ever changing.
Huge List of unique spells and abilities - The spell system is full of counters, you tash me, I cure poision, you cast a 4 second nuke, I cast my 3 second stun and interupt you. The fact that there are so many spells that do so many different things increases the difficulty. In wow for example you would have multipul classes using the same spells, like fear or stun or interupts.
Terrain - The world is a filled with enviroments that are dynamic and varried. There is always a place to run behind a wall or a tree or a hill that you can line of sight people and use that to your advantage.
Class synergy - Understanding how classes work together and play off of eachother is also skill based, the difference between a bad enchanter and a good one is knowing when to mez, when to tash, when to debuff, when to run and that all changes depending on if you are rolling with a wizard or a monk or a druid or whatever other class.
Dont be fooled by illusions of skill such as zergs, "tricks aka exploits (looking at you hillbug)", and gear.
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