You know, I remember the days before WoW was even thought of, when all we really had was Ultima Online or EverQuest. I spent far too many hours of my day in EQ running to a zone where I could only hope to sit down in a safe area, not be killed, and spam the OOC channel for hours that I was looking for a group. At the very best, I would have to wait for guildmates to log on and hope they wanted to start their own group. I played a Wizard, so travel wasn’t nearly as inconvenient for me as it was for others who didn’t play a Druid or Wizard.
I don’t understand how people can wish to spend the majority of their playtime not actually playing the game, but getting ready to play the game instead. I don’t want to spend 15 minutes running to a dungeon after spending an hour trying to setup a group for it. Back in the day, I didn’t have a job, a wife, a kid, a mortgage, a social life, or bills to impede on my playtime. I was able to waste away hours doing stuff I wouldn’t even bat an eye at now. I see these anti-flying/lfg people as those crazy fundamentalists that would rather throw us back in the dark ages than benefit from current technology.
Back then, it was virtually impossible and unprecedented to have instanced servers or matchmaking capabilities that modern games have. Nostalgia gets the best of them, and I understand its allure…but it’s just that, nostalgia. No business in their right minds would cater to these people as they are an extremely small minority who doesn’t even really know what they want.
Check out Frostfall its a mod for Skyrim that adds some neat immersion stuff like that
I'd actually love to see this happen, if only to see the "hardcores" start sobbing about the game being too hard or freaking out when Blizzard announces the servers will be shutdown because everyone left.