well, i\'ve been leading a raiding guild since the Scar of Vellious expansion, and its easily understandalbe why its so addictive.
Leading raid of 40 to 70 persons, assign each person their tasks, timing the event to make it succesfull so people can win some new "phat lewts".
Lots of people play a little bit, and just cancel their account after beating few snakes, rats and bats. But the fun truely begin right after that, when you meet people in this vast world. Day after day when you log on, you meet new people that become your online buddies. then you progress through the game, get in new dungeon, fight harder monsters (mobs!) gain better treasure (phat lewts!)
And then, your character is strong enough, your knowledge of the game become sufficent to join raiding guild. Its the same basic as killing monster with a 6 man group, but instead you kill the dungeon boss or the plane\'s god.
It can be as easilly as having a monster that will melee hit only one tank, where you have 5 clerics keeping him alive and having 35 other people dealing the damage, to harder battle where you need to coordinate the event (some battle can be as long as 90 mins !!) Some gods are really nasty, dealing the amounth of HP in damage of your tank in one round + area of effect spell that does damage over time to all the people around and calling forth is minion to help him to fight.
The coordination of this is quite amazing. having 15 different class available, you can configure your raid differently on a daily basis and use different technique then other guilds.
There\'s many things to the whole "behind the scene of everquest" and it sure isnt the graphic that as keep the people playing this long.
When you are in a wolrd with over 350 zone, 1000 to 5000 theres bound to be stuff that will happen differently from yesterday.
But as MM said, the 2 global reasons people connect each day, is to meet their friend and score a chance to gain more phat lewts (character progression!)
