Kyle Valle, creative director of EverQuest 2, is a big fan of MMOs and plays basically all of them, but he believes that at some point the genre has lost its way. The sense of community that the early MMOs fostered is being lost, he says.

"Other MMOs seem to have lost that [community-oriented] sense, and community is no longer a big part of it," Vallee told me at Fippy Fest, a celebration of EverQuest recently held in San Diego by developer Daybreak Games. "We're providing the tools to build the community. "It seems like they no longer provide the tools to build a community. The other two or three MMOs I play are almost like 100% solo players, and I don't group with anyone. The tools to build community seem to be really lacking in the newer ones."

When I started playing EverQuest, community and cooperation were not always an option. Monsters were ferocious, some classes could not be played solo at all, and if you wanted to get something done, you had to reach out to other players and form a group. The challenge itself was a function of organically linking players together.

Some MMOs are done better than others. I played FF14 when it first came out, and like many players, I left the game completely. A few years later, after the overhaul of A Realm Reborn and some well received expansions, I decided to play again. I had fun and played all the way to Stormblood before getting lost, but spent most of my time alone. Of course, there were the occasional main scenario dungeons and raids, but for the most part I slogged through the main scenario quests alone.

Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing; FF14 tries to tell a much more structured story than many other MMOs. I enjoyed the storytelling, and the duty finder was always there for a change of pace when my mind was melting from fetch quests for moogles. But there were times when he felt alone in this world of thousands of players. Valle felt the same way in other MMOs.

"Some MMOs have a group finder for everything. 'You go into the group finder, enter the zone, literally don't talk to any other players, clear the zone as fast as you can and walk away. There's no talking. In our game, if you want to find a group, you have to talk to other players. At one time we had a group search feature, but we felt that the sense of community had been lost from the game, so we discontinued it"

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Now I understand the appeal of quality-of-life features like the group finder. One of my biggest complaints about playing EverQuest back in the day was the difficulty of creating groups sometimes. There were too many Shadow Knights in Castle Karner, and when I wanted to play, I either had to make a long trip to another zone, spend a few hours solo to earn a few measly XP, or give up completely and play another character (i.e., realistically speaking, I couldn't not play EQ).

The ability to log on to WoW, FF14 or TESO, get a daily, and enter a group of dungeons with the click of a button is undeniably useful. But as I wrote last year, and as EQ visionary Brad McQuaid famously said, sometimes the magic is in the boring parts. Sometimes a monk you happen to meet at a high-hold keep offers to give your shaman a buff tip and becomes a friend for life. Sometimes, while waiting for the baby to finish getting changed, you realize that the same group of tanks are in the next town over and decide to go for a beer. Sometimes you meet the love of your life.

There's not much that's boring about EverQuest 2 these days, and EQ2 seems to be suffering a bit from the same fate as modern MMOs. A lot of content is focused on the raid scene, characters are extremely powerful, and everyone deals literally trillions of damage. That said, the newest TLE (Time Lock Expansion) server, Anashti Sul, can be traced back to the beginning of the game. Based on a 2006 build, it's a bona fide classic server, born out of years of studio research into old databases and playtesting the original game.

"When we first launched the first group of TLEs, a lot of players said, 'This isn't what I wanted, this isn't what I'm going to do. So that's what we're trying to offer in "Anashti Sul": you can't buy and sell chronos, and there's almost nothing in the marketplace. It's tough, it's exciting, and players love the server, as evidenced by the 50 newbie zone cases when I logged in. Everywhere I went, people were gathering on the global channel, even as low as level 1, forming groups to work on stuff.

Seeing players grouping up to attack content, coming up with plans based on group structure, and suddenly being challenged is the essence of MMO gaming. I don't speak behind the backs of those who just want to jam the dungeon finder, but to me, the juice is only worth it if you squeeze a little.