I played EQ1 and I agree it was immersive. But like Ualaa said it was made for 0.1% of people. I never got to max level. I had a bunch of toons in the 20s and 30s. I read somewhere it was designed to take 2000 hours of purposeful play to get to max level. That's the same as a full time job for one year. That's insane. I do remember that feeling of constant fear though because dying was such a pain.

Bad things I remember are:
- It was a pain in the ass to travel. If you missed the boat, too damn bad. And it took a long time to get to the destination. Traveling without the SoW buff was even worse (which you had to beg for).
- You had to beg a certain class for a bind, (like a hearthstone) which could only be done in a few areas.
- You were forced to group to accomplish anything near your level.
- You had to grind the same spot for an eternity. Remember the ogre mound near the tree city?
- You'd try to find a safe spot to heal/drink/afk and someone would bring a train of mobs to you and die right in front of you. Then you got to die, too.
- Getting your corpse and all your gear back was a nightmare. My highest toon was a rogue for this very reason.
- High level toons and epic gear were truly epic because of the time investment required to get those items. I read about people staying awake for actual days with their guild just to tag epic mobs on super long random respawn timers.
- Once you got to the 30s, you had to be in a serious guild to advance any further.
- When I quit people were setting up bots for binds, SoW and other buffs.

Good things I remember are:
- It was immersive. People were generally very friendly and helpful - unless they were sick of being asked for binds/SoW buffs. People paid a lot more attention to what they were doing because of the penalties for making mistakes. For me, the bad outweighed the good once I realized it was a hassle to level no matter what class you chose. I finally figured out it wasn't going to get better.

As for the graphics, look for Everquest One screen shots on google images. The graphics look silly now. WoW stays current because it never tried to look "real." And how real does a fantasy game need to look, really? Its not a racing simulator.