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Pondering after Everquest-announcement

Will Everquest then be able to compete with concurrent titles like WoW and AoC by just riding on a wave of nostalgia?

Yesterday SOE announced that it would like to herald a second spring for its classic MMORPG Everquest: according to Kotaku, SOE promoted “new program called “Living Legacy,“ through which EQ subscribers with inactive accounts who left with all their bills in order can come back from now until the end of July - totally for free.
Returning players also get the EverQuest II: Rise of Kunark compilation plus bonus items at no cost, and they can keep it all if they convert to a paying subscription”

While Everquest was always a noteworthy MMO and a lot of gamers still associate quite a few happy memories with EQ (according to commenters), it is obvious that Everquests popularity plateaued and declined in the past 4 years or so, and eventually was superseded by WoW.

Will Everquest then be able to compete with concurrent titles like WoW and AoC by just riding on a wave of nostalgia? Probably not with a subscription based business model. In contrast to micropayment-driven MMOs which can more easily co-exist, subs-based online worlds anyhow are somewhat squeezing each other out of the market, as players are likely to max out the time they spend on a single title to get the most of their monthly payment. 

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