That's what a lot of MMOs are right now. Feels like saying that modern CGI movies aren't really movies because they don't feature actors. Unfortunately the age of EQ, where you grind for hours and hours with a group as the primary way to level, has passed.

i guess that's true, but my friends and i always kind of hacked the system in a way where we were all leveling in lockstep and stuff anyway. but yeah, the individual quests themselves are mostly single player, with some weird multiplayer affordances (like sometimes if you are on the same quest as someone else you can kind of fight the same mobs / make the same progress). i found all that stuff pretty boring anyway-- the trials, dungeons, etc. are the meat of the game as far as i'm concerned (and they are the ones bookended by the cinematics that deliver the meat of the story).