Will 1999 ever happen again?

[JurisDictum]

I wish games would be more like old EQ and make the entire game based on Grouping and Raiding. But there is a huge push to make most the game (content-wise) solo. This is partly because WoW has created these monsters.

WoW planned for a pattern like this:

Phase 1) You level solo to 60, grouping here and there optionally (it was actually never worth the time during Vanilla until you got to Sunken Temple or so). This allows you to learn your class, the story, and get hooked.

Phase 2) You group and start being more social and making friends around your playtime. This is the first step of keeping you around long enough to get raids looking appealing

Phase 3) You join a guild and raid. It becomes a kind of social organization that keeps you playing for years.

Over the years though, Blizzard kept giving into people that liked phase 1, and thought the other 2 were stupid because they were gods gift to gaming and didn't need to put up with any sucky person dragging them down.

Maybe their original model worked for building community. No regional instances allowed a community to grow even in the presence of so much instanced content. Grouping was more difficult and -- in fact -- it is routine for wow to nerf group content after the expansion has been out a few months to let the bads do it. Almost no one used "leveling specs" that were separate from their "group spec," so your solo experience mattered a little more. Raids used to take 40 people -- later deemed much too high.

Now any potential for community building is dashed. WoW is a single player game with a public chat (Orgrimmar or its equivalent) where people join little micro-gatherings of people like you would in FPS. You aren't even sharing a world with others, let alone interacting with them.

Edit: My point: Every. Game. Since. WoW. Seems to try to replicate their model. They also replicate the biggest weakness of WoW. They are selling people on a game (solo leveling) that is very different at the endgame (raiding with 25+ people). They basically attract a fanbase that is going to hate their end game and demand it be more like the leveling phase.