NB: I played it for only 6 months, and I quit before the first expansion. I tried a lot of different classes, but none of my characters were remotely close to reaching the end game.
It was balanced on time. While a little downtime is ok, a downtime/uptime ratio of 2/1 isn't. And with my playstyle, the ratio was a lot worse than that.
It supports only one playstyle. One that is not compatible with mine. I got so bored I started reading a book during downtime. Once I realized I could keep reading while fighting without it affecting the outcome of the fight overly much - I quit. I won't pay a monthly fee to read a book.
There was a complete lack of diversity. There wasn't much difference between my characters, there was one way to play the game that was way more efficient than any other way. And it was the same for all classes.
It had a lack of gameplay. Camping was the only way to play that was rewarding. Doing quests? Those that weren't broken gave a laughable reward (sure there were working quests with good rewards, I never reached a level that would enable me to do any of those though). The worst probably being the "defend the wall" quest outside rivervale, to get the faction high enough took me from level 4 to 14 I think (of almost exclusively killing goblins and orcs). The reward would have been bad at level 4, at level 14 it was a complete insult. Doing tradeskills? Tradeskills were money and time sinks, nothing else. Exploring, it wasn't so bad actually, there was stuff to explore - but not many places that were interesting to explore more than once. And you know what - camping is incredibly fucking boring. Sure, everything will dumb down to "camping" at some point, but other ways to do things should be supported, encouraged and rewarded. Camping both increased the reward and reduced the risk in eq, this is obviously not the way I think it should be done.
And you camp both xp and loot. You camp xp because of the reduced risk. And then you camp loot because of static and unique loot on static mobs. To me this is seriously flawed. The only static mobs that have static or unique loot should be quest related mobs. Regular mobs should be wandering if they have static or unique loot. If you want loot to drop in a specific location, every mob spawning in that location should have a possibility of dropping it.
I find the idea of killing gods (yea, yea, it's an avatar - sure) laughable. I find the idea that the death of a god has absolutely no impact on the world sad. I find the idea that someone who kills the god they pray to suffer no consequences, well - you get the idea.
Equipment is more important than the character. The sword is actually stronger than the wielder. This is partly because the entire game is cookie cutter, every character of the same class of the same level is identical. The only thing that makes them different is their gear. Because of this getting better equipment is more important than advancing your character. Getting equipment mostly meant camping mobs that gave very little xp - especially for those of us who hadn't memorized who dropped what and where.
There's a lack of progress, a character reaches its peak of diversity around level 25, after that time the number of spells and abilities you use decline - because mob resistance and such make them useless. In the end you have only a handful of spells and abilities you use, and using any other than these will get you kicked out of any raid.
Forced grouping. To encourage grouping is a good thing, since it is actually a multiplayer coop game. To make the game unplayable unless you're in a group (happens to more or less every class around level 30) is something different. Add "required" classes to that, and it starts to resemble a major mess to me. I don't have the patience to wait for a group, I've seen people wait 5 hours trying to organize a raid that never happened in the end - I could never do something like that.
The class balance is also a problem, mostly because they have very rigidly defined roles. Making certain classes not wanted or needed in groups, and when being in a group is essential to be able to play the game at higher levels - this doesn't look too good. In a high-fantasy combat setting there are four roles: Damage taker, damage dealer, ranged damage dealer, and healer. If you define more specialized roles than that you will get classes that are undesirable. However, you can combine those roles and get pretty good results.
Play nice rules. This is rule lawyering at its worst. I hate rule lawyers. To make my point clear: Any rule you want to enforce in your game - code it into the game. Don't make a list of errata saying "we never got around to get these rules into the game, but we will enforce them none the less. If you get caught doing something we don't like we'll ban you". Admittedly, the game company has the right to ban at their own discretion, but this is really weak. Sure, there are exploits and such - but the play nice rules aren't about exploits, it's about ingame rules that don't cover issues that people see as griefing. Like kill stealing, ninja looting and such. It is possible to code rules for these things.
Pvp. Pvp in eq is a joke, and not a very good one. I'll never buy a multiplayer game that doesn't have any pvp, or that has a pvp switch, ever again. I enjoy pvp, it adds flavor to the game.
The way I see it, to enjoy playing eq you have to be:
A power gamer, loot whore, a bit sado-masochistic, and have
a patience bordering on coma.
Either that, or you have to be a "yay, IRC with colors!" type person.
To those who disagree:
I hate it - that gives me the right to bitch about it, since
other games are going in the same direction.
You like it - that gives you the right to stfu and go
play - kthxbye.