I think there’s really only one or two MMOs you can really get into in your life. After that it’ll be very hard to feel the magic again.

I played a small one Ashen Empires because it had an amazing local community. Then WOW because it was so well made, everyone was playing it and I loved blizzard. After a few years of both, any MMO hasn’t been able to keep me interested for more than a few days.

I recall that sentiment. I think those of us who avoided MMORPGs (either because of poor internet, or general fear of playing with other people << me) we weren't corrupted. I also recall a devoted following to UO also complaining about lack of domain-building in WoW.

Everquest is still around. They've got a free play option which is great if you want to indulge in nostalgia.

The main limits on free play are you can't have as many different characters, and you don't get some of the newer features or you get limited versions of them.

If you can remember your old account information, your account will have limits and abilities somewhere between a paid account and a new free account.

Some big changes since the old days, aside from a very large number of new zones, include:

1. The game is much more solo friendly. I had no trouble soloing a bard a couple years ago to around level 60 on a free play old account. I then switched to paid and got him to the mid 80s. There I stopped, not because it was getting difficult to solo, but because I'd satisfied my nostalgia need.

2. Related to #1, you can hire an NPC mercenary. There are tank, healer, and DPS mercenaries. There are apprentice mercenaries and journeyman mercenaries, with four different tiers of each type (lower tiers cost less, but are wimpier). If you play a healer or DPS class and hire a tier 4 apprentice tank mercenary, you and the mercenary will be able to take on nearly any content that would normally require a full group, up to around level 60. Same of you play a tank class and hire a healer mercenary.

Only paid accounts get to use journeyman mercenaries. That was the main reason I switched to paid after level 60.

3. There are a large number of good quests now. You can go to a lot of the expansion zones and find quests that will involve taking you to all the interesting spots in the zone. The Hero's Journey quest, which you get in a book at the start of the game, will suggest a path that can keep you busy and advancing for the next 60 levels.

4. Lots of UI improvements.

5. Veteran Rewards for existing accounts. For each year of your account, you get certain bonuses. One big one, which will almost certainly be on your old account, is a free resurrection. Once a week real time, you can go to an NPC healer in certain zones and ask them for a resurrection, and they will summon all your corpses and then give you a 100% XP resurrection.

Other Veteran Rewards include a 15 minute resist, stats, and run speed boost, usable once every 20 hours, a health/mana/endurance complete restoration usable every 3 days, 30 minutes of double XP usable once every 20 hours, one that summons a banker to your location and one that summons a merchant (both usable every 20 hours), and a few more.

All in all, free play EQ is nowadays a quite good solo game, at least for 30 levels or so, and for at least 50-60 levels if you have an old account, and for quite a bit farther on a paid account.

PS: system requirements are quite low by today's standards. My ancient PC (Asus P5Q, Core 2 Duo e8400, 8 GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 460) has no trouble running two instances of EQ at once. It could probably do 3.