I think it's a shame though, these MMORPG's in general.
I can see what is fun about them, making your character better, getting better equipment, in EQ2 there's also gathering stuff for your house etc. The progress you can make your character make is cool.
But i have tried many MMO's by now, including Lineage 2, EQ2, Age of Conan, and some others i cant remember, and all of them usually come down to the same gameplay.
Now you could argue that this is the same with shooters obviously, but there is a difference and many of the things an MMORPG makes you do are just tedious affairs.
Leveling up is fast at the start, but the farther you get the more mobs you need to grind through to advance , and after you advance, it's usually with a few statistics and perhaps a new skill but in general the reward is not there.
The same thing goes for harvesting materials for crafting. I can appreciate you needing to get them yourself instead of buying out of a shop, but it's a very tedious business. For example Age of Conan had some area's which were specifically made for resource harvesting. You'd walk around for several hours pickaxing your way through endless rock formations, etc.
In the end, to put it more simply, MMO's in general feel like a second job after a while.
The things you are made to do are 9 times out of 10 very simple and basic, and has you standing in a field with mobs wandering around not doing anything untill you attack them.
There is a lot of work and, except for the start, very little reward. In most of these games i cant get to level 30 before uninstalling the game out of boredom.
And as i said, that's a shame because i can see the potential and the fun parts, but it takes a lot of work to get to those fun parts. And especially when a monthly fee is asked, you feel obligated to play to make it worth the money. In that sense, i am happy to see more MMO's going free to play, including EQ2 but it still isnt enough to keep me going.
The only exception i can think of to these rules is Guild Wars because it's area's and missions are instanced, and the quests dont require you to kill 10 of these, and 10 of those most of the time but give you an actual goal to work toward to, with a storyline to reward you for your efforts next to the character advancement. Other MMO's rely purely on the advancement of your character to make things fun.
I am eager to see what they can do with GW2.
Untill then i'll stick to the single player RPG's from now on. Playing Risen at the moment, which is absolutely excellent, i love every second of it.