I never played UO but I played EQ all the way up to Shadows of Luclin I think. There is no comparison between EQ and WoW. EQ was by far the more difficult game. However, most people got their start in MMOs in WoW so they can only compare WoW then to WoW now.
EQ2, when it came out, was more like EQ than WoW. It had mostly group overland content and was difficult to get anything done without a group. It came out around the same time as WoW and I chose to play it over WoW. It was apparent very quickly that people liked the WoW version of MMOs much better than EQ and WoW ate EQ2s lunch, so much so that EQ2 redid all it’s overland content to be more solo friendly. However, it was too late by that point.
I have fond memories of my EQ days, but I guarantee I likely wouldn’t stick with the game very long if I played it today. Just not enough time anymore. As much as people bash on WoW today, they made MMOs way more accessible to the masses.
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SWG was my first ever MMO. Still my favorite one to date. I still mess with the EMU here and there. What threw me when I tried out WoW was how much more player friendly it was. In SWG you pretty much always needed buffs. Without entertainer and doctor buffs you wouldn’t get a full suit of armor on. Your regen would suck and using weapon specials would obliterate your health/action/mind. If you died your items took decay too plus as you used them they wore out. You could repair but unlike WoW it didn’t just magically repair to max stats. A previously 100 durability weapon would repair fully but only have like 75 points after. Sometimes it’d go totally wrong and break completely. I loved it. Sadly these days I don’t think that type of game would do too well.
The perception of difficulty is relative to the person.
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MMOs were a niche genre prior to WoW, at least in NA and Europe.
WoW essentially made the genre cool and appealing beyond that niche, and that happened largely because it was more accessible to casual players than the genre typically was at that time.
Getting to max level took a reasonable amount of investment, there was some grinding, but not a ridiculous amount. No death penalty.
Some of those changes were just common sense adjustments.
But the idea that vanilla WoW was a rugged, punishing MMO is simply not true. It’s an old game now, and so naturally closer to its predecessors than current games. But it was a casual-friendly MMO from the start.
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Loved SWG. After they brought out the NGE though I was outa there. Totally ruined game because developers wanted to do it their way.
I played UO:R and T2A… It will always have a special place in my heart… prob still the best game I have ever played… The rush you got in pvp while being chased by a red is like nothing you will experience on wow… I still log onto private servers to get my UO fix every now again…
Maybe some of you will recognize this name…
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As far as MMOs, only played City of Heroes before WOW. Wife tried Everquest but I guess she had really bad luck since she couldn’t get help with anything. Since she quit that, I never started. Have tried a few MMOs since WOW but they haven’t retained my attention.
WOW was designed to be casual when it was released. It tried to reduce the grinds of other MMOs of the time.
I played Knights Online World. I learned more Turkish profanity than I ever imagined I would.
ff14 then swtor both had that god awful need greed loot system when i heard this had personal loot i immediately switched over
the zoomers really give themselves away when they post the ‘VaNiLLa wuZ sO HaRD’ nonsense. compared to other mmos of the day - everquest, asherons call, ultima, ffxi, wow was largely considered the casual friendly kiddie mmo.
and its why it was so insanely popular.
i came from asherons call and ffxi to vanilla. i was a ‘hardcore’ raider back then, cleared naxx us 13th or something along those lines.
But nobody was demanding i give the guild leader my personal phone number so i could be awoken out of a dead sleep at 4:30 am because a world boss spawned after 7 days straight of camping with rotating shifts, and it was the only way to attain high end raid gear, as was the case with the aforementioned old school mmos.
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Like poisoning food and dropping it on the ground in front of the bank for some noob to eat… imagine the qq on the forums these days…
Star Wars Galaxies was my first MMO and it is still to this day the most fun I have ever had in an MMO…brilliant game way ahead of its time. WoW doesnt even hold a candle…and it never did.
Unfortunately the publisher completely destroyed SWG with multiple terrible game revamps and it only limped on from there to its inevitable death.
dudes playing today wouldn’t make it to lvl 10 in original EQ…
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I thoroughly enjoy these post.
Started with UO myself, loved the PVP and the rush of possibly losing your hard farmed spoils and gear. Having to run back to the nearest bank or your house if you were fortunate (later I was), to kill that Mofo that ganked you and took your stuff.
Once that died, I went to DaoC. Absolutely loved that game! The PvP was the best part but I digress, yes, I played an MMO before WoW
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this is starting to sound very familiar, isnt it? 
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yeah, that was so sad. I had so much fun playing that backl in the day. 
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Imagine thinking this is anything other than a subjective opinion.
Agreed. Vanilla WoW was very easy and accessible compared to Everquest. I played EQ for 5 years and raided hardcore for 2.
Vanilla WoW was made for casual players. People can go on and on about hardcore it was. Thats stupid. It was a simple game mechanically and it was a simple game for even raiding.
That is not the case today. WoW is way more hardcore now than it ever was in Vanilla. I honestly think hardcore players lie about this as they want to pretend the game is not catered predominantly to them now. A Mythic raid is way harder than any Everquest raid was. That was not the case in Vanilla WoW.
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I came to Wow from FF XI.
Anarchy Online… i was an engineer…hic!