IMO, wouldn't even consider UO or AC as an alternative to EQ. Why?

Well if pre-release hype is any indication, then Anarchy Online is going to
be a really good game. AO will have one feature that looks very promising
in regards to quests. When a player/group receives a quest, then a special
dungeon (or whatever term they will use in AO) will be created that only the
player/group who recieved the quest can enter. No camping for items,
fighting over spawn points, or killstealing concerns. This feature will
promote dungeon crawling as a standard form of adventuring. The only
problem is that there are no bards in AO, which I guess is appropriate since
it is a science fiction setting. AO is in beta now and should be released
before year end.

Most likely candidate replacement for EQ for those who like to play bards is
UO2. The developers haven't released a lot of details on skills, but they
have said that there will be over 1000 different skills. You would think
that a few of those skills are bardic in nature. One thing they have
confirmed is that players will be able to select specific "leadership"
skills which will convey a bonus to all the other players in the group. So
that means that the base code does contain ways for a player to affect/buff
the entire party. I subscribe to the UO2 developers mailing list and bards
in UWOO (thats what it is actually called not UO2) is a popular topic. If
OSI/EA releases specific info on how bards will work in UWOO, I'll forward
them to this list.

Galtin of E'ci

Correction: I'll do some Wall-hunting in Qeynos until I get banned, THEN I
will check on UO (or maybe AC)

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