EQ I left for personal reasons, when I was able to return several years later it just wasn't the same. I am playing it now days.
WOW I left due to developer decisions, I never liked it much from the start, it was to artificial with the whole mob leashing and all the easy mode junk. I found it quite annoying when they made the epic mount I fought so hard for nearly a freebe to newer players, then the last straw was when they normalized all the hunter pets, I had researched and hunted/camped for probably hundreds of hours for the best pets in the game for my hunter, only for them to turn them into just the same pet as everybody else's with a different skin. I learned the best way to play WOW was to cancel your sub, save a couple years worth of subscription cost then simply buy back in and pay for a level boost.
Cheaper and more efficient!
Wow when they added pay to be high level instantly,speed running every dungeon isnt fun, lack of exploration, lack of challenge in open world content.
Eso xp potions and cash shop adding items beyond cosmetic options such as lootboxes, broken combat system that 3 years after launch was not fixed and ignored.
Eso brought real world politics into the game on the very beganing of Summerset expansion which really rubbed the wrong way.
The first few quest that everyone had to see and play were very political. Im sure many living outside Cali, Ny were offended by how those were written to attempt to change a humans political views.
This was the straw that broke the camels back for me.
Out of all the MMOs I have played and quit, I think it boils down to a common theme of cultural change within the game. What I mean by this is that if I get use to the game system of that certain game and then they change it, I lose interest in it. Usually quality of life mechanics tend to change the culture of the game and the importance of character reliance and thus killing it for me. Example would be the POK in EQ. This was probably one of the stupidest moves a gaming company did. Also, community and the people you play with is also a huge factor. I only played WoW for a long time because of the friends I played with. Once the guild finally broke up I only lasted another few years because I slowly realized the WoW community just sucks in general.
I left EQ shortly before PoP as I felt something had fundamentally changed in the games philosophy. It was also not aging well, especially in the early 2000's when the graphics tech was moving at light speed.
I left EQ2 because of boredom and the focus on easy solo and quest content. It started out strong but the graphics requirements were rough even on a top end PC of the time. I quit shortly after exhausting all the content of Kingdom of Sky shortly after release.
WoW was pretty good until after BC. I quit just before WotLK because my guild broke up and everyone I was friends with quit. I returned for the end of Cata, and played up until WoD after which I got bored again because it was essentially a single player RPG at that point. Plus all the speed runs of everything was getting to be too much.
I tried Elder Scrolls for all of 30 minutes, Conan was the same, along with Neverwinter, DDO, and many others. I've tried many of them since so many are F2P. But none seem to capture the magic of the early days of MMOs when group dynamics and reputation were an important part of the experience.
I left Everquest 2 after many years because of an update that kind of ruined the PvP on Nagafen. I remember it took me so long to get my Dreadnaught/General titles as a Defiler, I think we were only two on the server, and seeing people with Overseer, General was extremely rare. After that update, it meant nothing. I believe at the time, many games came out as well, and the population on Nagafen decrease a lot. In addition to that, I moved to the US from France, and lost many friends due to the timezone difference. I tried to get a fresh start on a PVE server, but did not have any motivation.
I do not remember why I left Guildwars but untill this day, it was one of my favorite PvP game. I had a solid GvG guild, we were playing in the top 100 worldwilde and we had a great time.
I left Conan, GuildWars 2, Final Fantasy, Starwars, Wildstar, Rift, and many others after a short period of time, from a few weeks to about a month or two. Usually, my guild moved to another game and I followed.
I left WOW after a few days, got high level in no time, I never enjoyed the game, felt boring, and too easy. Raiding did not interest me. Watching good players on youtube and learning Boss phases.. that is boring... I preferred how it was done in Everquest 2, we had very little information, and had to figure it out ourselves.
I tried Everquest in 2018 with a buddy of mine that played for years but we did not have enough time, and quickly stopped playing.
I never left POE, I still play from time to time, a few weeks each league. I now play Outward.
It is interesting to me to hear players loved Everquest and did not like EQ2. I know there were completely different games but I think I would have loved Everquest but I never had the chance to play the game in his prime. I believe that somehow, I loved Everquest 2, because I did not play Everquest. I also feel that I did not like WOW because I loved Everquest 2. That's interesting and scary in a way. Our past gaming experiences seem to be very an important part of our opinions.
I hope we will not all be disappointed by Pantheon the same way many players felt disappointed by Everquest 2, WOW and other games. I am sure many will go back to Everquest after trying Pantheon and that is okay.
VR has a tremendous challenging task ahead of them. I wish them the best! There is a great community behind, I hope they will succeed.
EverQuest I was a bit young for, and by the time I could really appreciate it, it was changed dramatically.
Lineage II was delightful but really lacked a roleplaying scene, which I was getting into.
Dark Age of Camelot conflicted with school, and the futile RvR was giving me existential crises.
EQ2 I tried and tried and tried to play, and loved a lot about it, but ultimately I was so put-off by the art direction...
Same with WoW. They both brought out some visual snob in me that I haven't seen since...
In FFXIV I failed to really attach to my character. Always felt like the races had nothing for me, and the shared cities and all-classes design left me without identity.
SWTOR: Guild blowup and some unrelated events soured it forever. Makes me sad to log in.
ESO... I don't know, to be honest.
EverQuest: I was young and my father moved on to wow because his friends started playing it. Even being young though I still have really good memories from my time playing EQ. In hindsight I think what appealed to me most about EQ was the codependancy required by every class and how well that system was done.
WoW: I quit this game twice. Once at the end of MoP because the game's development had started really going down hill during its cataclysm expansion, and its content direction during MoP turned me off. I started school right after I quit in 2013 and didn't come back till the legion expansion. I enjoyed legion for the most part content was good, storylines were flushed out, art was decent. Wasnt a fan of how loot became a grab bag and lost its "importance". Bought BFA because like I said I enjoyed legion for the most part. BFA... I have never been so dishegusted in my life. The developers honestly are so removed from their fan base that they don't understand what is going on, and the quality of game delievered upon launch was insulting. Not to mention druids were hit so hard with this expansion basically making them unplayable. I've mained a druid in wow since the BC era and losing the ability to enjoy that class also didn't do much for my opinion of the game.
TERA: Went free to play. I've never been big on free to play MMO's because of micro transactions and the excuse that you don't actually pay for new content until a new expansion or dlc has been added. What completely killed this game for me though was the limitations eventually put on gathering materials. I'm not necessarily the biggest crafter ever, I usually only pick up the professions that have the highest impact on raiding effeciency. However the limits that were placed on gathering professions to stop money farmers in an attempt to control the economy punished all players.
GW2: I enjoyed the open leveling concept. I think the ability to allow players to group with their friends despite their level is helpful for a games lively hood. It also helps keep older zones relivent and alive. As a healing main the lack of a trinity system eventually killed the game for me. It also didn't help that all classes brought the same buffs/ debuffs depending on the weapon they were carrying. I find that for a mmo to be healty classes need clear diversity and GW2 didn't do that for me.
ESO: Im still subed to this game though I rarely play. Again I enjoy the open levling design like GW2 has and I enjoy the alternate advancement system past 50, but I think the biggest issue I have with this game is I just don't have a connection. I don't really have a personal connection to my character even though I enjoy playing him. I don't really find my self connecting the the community, and I'm not really anti social I just don't find a need there. Most of the game can be done solo, theres a tagging system so you don't really have to group for normal world stuff. The only three things that I find require a group are hardcore PVP, dungeons, and trials. Dungeons can be handled through the group finding app within the game so again no need to go make a connection. Pvp depending on how hardcore you want to be can also be handled through a group finding app. Trials are the only thing that I would argue truly need a dedicated team, and even then 1. Players can't do this content till they reach 50, most people want a character to have a certain number of alternate advancement points before they consider taking into a trial. Which comes down to more solo grinding for alternate advancement levels.
EQ: Left late 2004 when EQ2 & WoW came out, as most of my guild left for one of those two games. I chose EQ2, had no interest in WoW. Most of the guild went to WoW.
EQ2: Have subbed on and off since it was first released. Just canceled my current sub a few days ago after getting bored yet again with it, that and the fact that I made it to level 82 solo. Kind of really not the point of an MMO, to be able to solo the whole time.
WoW: Played on and off for about 10 years. First time was when I left EQ2 after a couple months to go be with most of my EQ guild. But by then they had outleveled me and I never caught up to them before getting bored. Went back from time to time as co-workers and/or family took up the game, but always got bored after a while and left. Didn't help either that most of them played on PvP servers, I have little to no interest in that aspect of game play.
EVE: Got bored after a month or so, only ever soloed and not into PvP.
TERA: Played for a couple years, liked the graphics, never got tired of seeing my toon's boobs bouncing. Got tired of other parts of the game and left. Came back a couple years ago, got a toon to max level then just got bored with nothing of meaning left to do, and left again.
LotRO: Played for a while, enjoyed it for the mnost part, til I hit a wall and couldn't progress solo, and was at a point where I didn't feel like getting involved with a guild, so I left. Reinstalled it a few months ago, rolled a new toon and played part ways through the intro campaign and just lost interest.
ArchAge: Played for several months, got bored.
SW:ToR: Wanted to really like this one. Played for a year or two right after release, both factions. Never got comfortable with the pace of combat and wound up being a drag on my guild's raiding ambitions, so I just kinda faded away.
Neverwinter: Liked it, started playing with some extended family members, but they all left pretty quickly, so I did as well.
EQ: Came back a couple years ago, rolled a new toon on a TLP server. Got into a good guild, we were doing lots of successful PoF, PoH & PoS raids. At some point when Velious was about to open and I realied Luclin was coming up after that, I remembered how much I disliked the feel of Luclin zones and didn't want to go through them again. That and I wasn't looking forward to the Velious faction grinds either, so that was the end of that.
I think the common thread on why I left most of the games I did is lack of community, and the ability to do most of the game solo. Dungeon finders suck, you get into a group and folks hardly say two words to each other, it's just a race to the end. Lord help you if it's your first time in a dungeon and you're grouped with someone that's run it a bunch of times, most will have no patience for you taking what time you need to get any quests and read the qeust text, of figure out where to go or what to do when. I mostly blame WoW for that, it seems to have cultivated a whole generation of impatient players.
I left Starwars Galaxies because they pulled the plug
I left Vanguard because they pulled the plug
I left Tabula Rasa because they pulled the plug
I left Age of Conan because lack of content when i was lvl 80 (they have more now i read)
I left Saga of Ryzom because they pulled the plug a 2nd time (it's online again but after 2 wipes i had it)
I left Pirates of the Burning Sea because every guild i was in left and the game hardly got new content
I left Battleground Europe because the massive battles are gone and when i would log on there were hardly any skirmishes
I left EQ2 because i just found the game boring at some point.
I left WoW because i just didn't like the game that much. I tried 3 times but it was not appealing to me.
I left BDO because it became a job instead of a game. When i found myself online (afk for live skills) 24/7 i decided to pull the plug myself
Edit: I will leave ESO when Pantheon releases. Currenly i play ESO as a free player.
I will only list the MMOs that I actually liked until something significant changed/happened:
-I left EQ after they allowed server transfers from PvE to PvP, having played solely PvP and being at a severe disadvantage from there forward.
-I left DAoC because my friends got banned for selling money
-I left WoW just before Cataclysm because I started to see how the game was becoming a cyclical money pit with cheapened content designed to give you just enough entertainment to last until the next $60 expansion while you were already continually paying $15/mo.
-Most every other traditional MMO since then I have left due to the games being designed for monetary purposes (cash shops or pay to win) at the expense of good content.
-Some MMOs that I liked but just didn't hold my interest due to friends leaving, lack of content or just RL issues interfering were GW2, FFIX, ESO
With all of this said, there are quite a few MMOs coming out in the next couple of years that have promised to harken back to a "different MMO" instead of hopping onto the moneytrain... I hope PRotF can establish and maintain a player base larger than just these forums.