Immersive enviroment with nice looking graphics that look great,but retains playablility on older machines.
I played Asherons Call (1999) from beta on up (turbine made). In AC when u died it carried severe penalties.You would leave behind your corpse still wearing your good armor (some of which took a long while to aquire).One had to re-equip,and go resue their armor off their own corpse (a user corpse can stay in the field for hours before dading). This made one fear death...it was brutal,but exciting.
..my point is,these newer MMO's no longer have enough penalties.You can die,die,and die some more in both LOTRO & WOW with no loss.This is because people complained about losing their armor etc...so turbine said "ok wimps,we'll remove penalties and anything remotely challenging".
Now we have wimpy MMOs loaded with gobs of nice weps,irems,etc. There's such a ridiculous flood of good items they're no longer appealing.Combine this with no reason to fear dying...you get the picture.
Turbine is a gifted developer.Their only mistake was giving in to the wimps,and letting the MMO become the boring,repetitive entity you see today.
Throw in a twist of asherons call,and turbine could regain the spark that was lost over 8 years ago.
Thank you for reading.