What "made" EQs endgame feel epic?

[sox7d]

P99's wtf raid scene aside, how come

this:
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feels so much more real and epic than this:

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It may be purely nostalgia bias, but there's just something so sterile about the second one despite much better visuals.

I was walking through ST on an emu server this morning and just took in the atmosphere that such emptiness, exclusivity and scale provided.

Maybe games now days are trying so hard to make every single zone feel wondrous that it negates from the capstone zones? Perhaps a game needs to have banality in early levels for contrast to obtain that feeling.

However, on the emu server, ST was the same zone, but they had since added in many more trash mobs and some quest NPCs which were probably for some sort of story/adventure. It really showed how less can be more when it comes to atmosphere. The giant empty corridors were now heavily guarded. The long tedious spiral staircase had sets of three wraiths on every landing a la world of warcraft instance pulls. I kind of wonder if the original developers of velious considered placing more mobs in that zone and what their rationale was exactly for keeping it desolate.

Maybe I just haven't given them a shot, but I haven't seen anything similar in an MMO in a long time and wonder if there's even a market for another EQ-style game amongst people who never played. My guess is that anything unappealing at low levels will just tank and the only reason EQ got the opportunity to pull it off was their first-mover advantage. But perhaps not, EQ gave freedom, openness, fear and wonder, which are prevalent aspects shared in Minecraft and M&B... maybe there is hope for an MMO like that.

These are just my early morning ramblings. Thanks for reading "EQ nostalgia wow-sux circlejerk soapbox #834202."

IB4 "When did THIS become more attractive than THIS" image macro