Well if you've been playing long enough you'll remember that you had to have run threnal to get the stone dagger thingy, and then the caves in threnal so you could get a +5 weapon or you couldn't hit the mobs in tempest spine. And that was the only place to get a +5 weapon. There were no past lives so no +2 for class completionist and no +2 from racial completionist to all stats. No racial bonus Aps from tomes or TR's no Universal trees let alone the universal tomes for bonus AP's. There was no warlock or evard's black tenticles, no druid, no monk, etc, etc ,etc.
So yes quests took longer and were a lot harder. You were the bee's knees, or the big cheese of the server if you could solo Elite water works. Hell you had a strong party if you could group elite water works at level. You would rarely consider trying without a cleric, and Battle clerics were unheard of. There were several Quests with a single Mob that was regularly responsible for party wipes. You didn't do STK3 without a rogue. When putting together a group for VON 5 and 6 there was a great discussion before starting to make sure you had people with 25 str and 25 wis for the levers and runes. Not done it for years but i'll bet that is never even questioned now.
New quest were always done on normal in groups before any other difficulty was considered. Now I'll do new stuff on elite with a first life toon and if I wipe I'll decide whether it was down to idiocy, lag or difficulty.... It's rarely difficulty.
There was no store to buy tomes and no AH either, if you found a +1 tome people were amazed and wanted to know where it dropped, a +6 Stat item was something from legend. When the favour system first came out, people were still using House P buffs at cap because they didn't have +4 or better stat items for all stats, or even all important stats.
The game started to get a lot easier when it went F2P. I'm guessing because it needed to attract and keep more casual players. But here we are and the game has evolved beyond recognition. I enjoy playing the game now as much as I ever did, there will be player that don't and have left, and players that don't but are still here. Equally there are players here that would have hated the game as it was in the beginning and would probably have left long before we got to where we are now.
I started playing because D&D, I carried on playing after the free 30 days that came with the purchase because.... not D&D but close enough and I was really lucky in joining a guild of people from a D&D back ground and started playing for the same reasons as me. 18 years later I'm still in that guild, there's only 3 of us left but we are loyal. I'm still playing today because evolved with the game, I started playing exclusively in groups, both in guild and PuG's and now I play almost exclusively solo. But that's ok, my guild mates and I still chat and I often interact with others in general chat as I'm pottering about. My Main's name is Smelt-1-2 so I often get "tells" asking me how I ended up with the "-1-2"
I think in the end DDO is more like D&D than a lot of us think. The beauty of both games is that neither game are one string games. They are both different things to different players. You can Play DDO in many different ways, Strictly solo, Strictly grouping, zerging, flower sniffing, min maxing, flavouring or any mix of those things (and probably others that I haven't even thought of). And on top of that you aren't restricted even then, just because today you can't to group doesn't mean tomorrow you can't solo. This life you min maxed but maybe next life you'd like to flavour. It's all fine and all, importantly, up to you. If you feel the quests are too easy these days... ramp up the skulls, or impose restrictions on yourself (there is nothing to say you have to use your best equipment or run quest at level), Quests are too hard.... stop playing in reapers try elite, hard, normal or even casual. The only person that can judge you for it is yourself. You don't need to go from 1 - 32 in the blink of an eye. You don't need to be competionist anything or even second life anything. If you are getting grief or pressure because you don't have the gear or lives that someone thinks you should have.... don't play with them, or ask them to help you achieve what ever it is they think you are lacking.
Wow that turned into more of an essay than I expected. +1 to anyone that got to the end!
