EQ was very hard, I concur. Quests were nearly nonexistent, so you were grinding open, contested spawns for every bit of experience you got. Night time was actually too dark to see (if you didn't have night vision or a light source equipped), death took experience and sometimes newly gained levels, your corpse had ALL your stuff on it and you'd have to fight your way to it to loot your gear (when the plane of fear opened some people lost everything they had), and there was a skill you had to raise for every single ability. Like, your swimming started at 1 and you had to PRACTICE if you wanted to swim at a decent speed.
People who bought accounts had no chance of completing high end content (lol guk or sol b) because the game was HARD.
I miss it.