I heard a lot about Everquest and remember seeing the massive books and being really intrigued but by the time I had a stable enough internet connection I'm not sure why, but I just wasn't interested. Honestly, I wouldn't have played AO had it not been for this regular in the computer lab. Even with the super stable and very expensive university network, it was still disconnecting often.

The same was true with DAOC and basically anything else. I don't think that is nearly as much of an issue these days but this was back when most people's houses just had dialup.