I actually read through the entire rant ....

and what I got was you crying to go back to the days of old. Yes I miss the difficulty of EQ and FFXI just as most of the old hardcore players do. I would love to see things be harder, travel take longer, etc but the fact remains that no company will make those games anymore. Either get with what's current and be happy about it or just stop playing MMOs. Hell take a look at SOE's new EQNext, it's being pushed out to cater to that obscenely large casual crowd as well and if anyone was going to go back to those days it would've been them.

Fact is there is too much money in MMOs now to cut out the majority (casuals that can't spend 6-10 hours a day playing) and from a business standpoint it would be the dumbest idea you could ever have.

While my post is not all negative, I do agree with alot of what you said. That doesn't mean things will change because I can assure you they won't. In order for your points to make it into game they would have to start over, again. That just won't happen.

Basically you have 3 choices; be content with what you have and make the best of it, create your own game, or go back to the older games that had the challenge. Personally I'd be happy with just a hardcore server on a good game that gave mobs increased stats and health with other things added in (IE no fast travel, corpse runs, etc) but the population would probably be pretty small on that server