I played through the launch of original EQ through to Luclin. It had its charm in PvE which mainly came down to the sense of competition between guilds for targets. Dark Age of Camelot drew me away in a hurry because its promise of PvP between realms seemed pretty tight. For a while it was. I would claim that it was City of Heroes that drew away a BIG stake of the PvE player base of both Everquest & Dark Age of Camelot when it offered a lengthy Beta test. Don't kid yourselves - CoH broke some stupidly massive ground for the PvE MMO scene for its time.
World of Warcraft did have some cartoony graphics and it also had spoon fed leveling on the rails. From what I recall at the time, those were the two key elements that drove people away from it. Well, the ones that were seeking something else that felt more challenging. But I don't know. On both the EQ and WoW based forum boards I didn't really see a fair number of posts from upset players that said something along the lines of "I'm heading back to EQ, this is dumb."
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