EQ was hardcore mostly in that it was just very challenging to excel in that game. For years you were one of the best guilds in the world if you could simply beat an expansion's raid content before the next came out. Those raiders were generally anywhere between 1-2 years ahead of the average raiding guild on the curve. (talking mostly post-pop era). 30 minute fights didn't make it hardcore imo. To some degree the scale did, but it also left more room for carrying dead weight raiders. The rewards however were far more worthwhile than just about anything in WoW. The best weapons would last you a long time, as opposed to now where legendaries are good for maybe 6 months at best. (Unless you're talking about legendary bows, those lasted about 2 months for a lot of hunters!) And in order to see new raid content, you had to progress up to it. You couldn't just do whatever was current no matter how bad you were, then come next patch immediately move on to doing the new bosses and getting higher end gear. There just aren't many things in WoW that have such a lasting sense of reward. Having raided on WoW for several years now, looking back at some of the more difficult kills I've managed on this game... they just feel cheap compared to some of the kills from years earlier in EQ.

And where EQ still blows them all out of the water is in its immersion. Even traveling felt just dangerous and exciting, and as annoying as corpse runs and exp penalties were, they kept you on your toes to play cautiously. Especially so considering most of the mobs couldn't be soloed at higher levels, thus requiring more team work from groups and such.

And being a bard, I do miss pulling (and selo's!)! Separating mobs from packs and carefully weaving through patrols and such to make sure you don't bring in more than the raid could handle was a pretty fun part of the game. WoW just doesn't have that as part of its game =(

Overall though, WoW does blow EQ out of the water from a gameplay standpoint, but again its just a more evolved game, a later generation of MMO.