Again, you keep projecting you expectations and standards on others. With all there is to do on WoW and GW2 I find them vastly superior than EQ and AC ever was. And that is what makes them a great game (to me, my opinion). Instead of just going and fighting monsters and getting the best gear you can. Sure at their time EQ and AC were AMAZING (Eq more than AC), but that was then. And without the Boost to exploring a whole new idea of a game genre (MMO) that one would get excited about, these games wouldnt do well like that anymore.
No one ever said the best games are the most popular. But business models don't aim for the "best" game. They aim for the most popular (example: Call of duty 217) What can they do to make as many play, enjoy, and be used to sell other merchandise on. When WoW can make 4.5 million dollars selling a $10 digital companion pet that does nothing but look cool, its the smart business decision.
Companies don't go "Oh look, approx. 400,000 people want an EQ like game, we should make one for them and barely pull a profit for many years worth of work putting it together"
SWtor made the same mistake Elder scrolls is getting ready to. They are going to take a game that is very popular single player, and turn it into a MMO that destroys most of the fun/good things the single player game had.
And you can say I am hung up on why you won't play a game 10 years old. But again I will ask, if that is the kind of game you want why not play it? I enjoy old N64 games and such because those are games of that genre I enjoy (goldeneye, diddy kong racing, etc.). However your issue with playing it, is it would be no fun "since everyone is full level and no one would really be around to play with me" which goes back to me saying you want a game like that, that is popular. However a game like that would not last after the first few months unless they were to do some of the newer innovations set in to allow more casual play, thus ruining the type of game you described you wanted.
Edit: If you want me to say it more blunt, you are sounding like one of those grandfathers that say: "Back in my day....." Gibberish that means nothing, because we don't live in the past, we live in now.
I get what you're trying to say, but let me show you how wrong you are. Almost every game since WoW has tried to recreate WoW's popularity, and every one of them has failed. I still think GW2 was like RIFT, and everyone went in saying "OH THIS IS NOTHING LIKE WOW", but it was, and now it is not as popular.
To be fair, i liked WoW, a lot. I just got tired of it. WoW just became its own worst enemy, because they kept trying to cater to the lowest common denominator. I haven't met one person who played WoW during launch and through to the end that didn't say that Vanilla WoW was a superior gaming experience. True, WoW was never overly difficult, but there were times when the player would actually die. Now, spells, and combat abilities are so damn effective it almost takes a miracle of stupidity to die. The progression is too fast, and it does not give you any time to sit down and enjoy the environment or the people. That's the problem with games now adays. Too grindy, and they do not let you go out on your own to explore. I am hopeful that ESO changes that, but in my opinion it looks too WoW like. I hope i am wrong.
Also, SWTOR was a remarkably fun game for a little over a month, the problem was not that they turned a single player game into an MMO (The easiest argument to that would be they turned Warcraft into WoW...), it was that they made the game supremely easy. Honestly, the game almost played itself when it came to "crafting" which was boring as hell, and the space missions gave you ridiculous amounts of experience for how easy they were to complete. I quit playing because the content evaporated. With a bad area PvP zone, and no real reason to go out grinding for loot and money (since your companions were doing it constantly), what were the incentives to go back and grind? This is why people quit, and why the game failed. They made it TOO casual.
Why did i stop playing WoW like three times? It got old, and repetitive. That's just how MMO's work. I went back and played because there was nothing better. Also, let's be honest, graphics are a major component of gaming for most people.
I look forward to a challenging MMO where exploration, and crafting are a major part of the game. Even WoW had some exploration involved back in the day... Yes, there is certainly some nostalgia coming from people like me about MMO's, but catering your game to incredibly fickle young players is going to make it very difficult to keep a gaming population for an extended period of time.
Also, if you can find current GW2 numbers i'd be interested. I doubt it's too high concurrent usage. They made the game too solo centric...and too much like WoW...please don't tell me you're sipping the koolaid on that. That game was a WoW clone with WAR public quests and a really really bad story/voice acting.
Oh, and i still don't think its graphics were that impressive. Muddy ass textures.