Look man, I don't really care. I didn't come here to argue. My point is Everquest has no purpose, no plot, no meaning. It's not a realistic game. It's a hunting game, a shooting gallery. You're welcome to enlighten me what the point or purpose of it is, but I won't discuss it beyond that.
https://everquest.fandom.com/wiki/Lore
It probably has more plots and lore than any other game ever made.
The "purpose" was different for different people. The first person I met in the game was a 50 year old man running his own business, he was working all day and left his character sitting in town. All he did was crafting. My real life friend was similar, he sucked at fighting but he liked bargaining with people and would buy and sell items, got rich trading, met a girl in the game and married her in real life. My other friend like raiding and lead his own guild. I preferred soloing or playing in groups. My guild was run by a husband and wife, she was a stay at home mom and only really played for chatting to the 50+ people in the guild, occasionally the guild would drag her on an adventure and she clicked heals. But the skill cap was massive, so the difference between her and some hardcore gamer with a 20 button mouse, doing dungeons by himself... it was like different games. For me the purpose was to try to be like that. Going to a difficult place with a group was the most intense and tactical combat I've ever seen, nothing else comes close.
As for 'meaning' I don't know what any game means. People like to get absorbed in books or movies, games too. EQ was so complex that it could be a full time hobby for some people, especially if they liked doing raids. That required a good leader, good organisers in the guild, scheduling etc. I didn't like that, I just liked going on an adventure with a party.
As for "realistic" I think it is as good as anything. It is a game with magic and dragons and stuff so by realism I assume you mean in a consistent logic sort of way? That's one thing it should be praised for if anything. It had a world that was realistic with ports served by boats, travelling merchants, ambushing bandits, farmlands etc. Frost creatures resist cold magic, fire enemies resist fire etc. Players needed food/drink, stamina, you can fall to your death, drown under water, bleed to death, get diseases that lasted until someone cured it. Everything had a faction so killing merchants or guards or something had a consequence. It was as
as anything.
The hunting thing is mostly true but I don't see how that is a problem? Lots of RPGs are more combat focused, for me that is a plus. The shooting gallery thing is not true at all, it was finely tuned tactical battles and it was very complex and difficult to win. People could spend hours infiltrating somewhere carefully just to kill 1 dangerous enemy. It's the opposite of a shooting gallery. The weird thing with this game is you are reacting to things that are mostly extreme reactions by the devs to things that used to be the extreme opposite. In other words EQ was known for taking 3 hours to travel to a dungeon, then another hour to find the area you want and buff up and prepare. And then you finally engage and it all goes horribly wrong and everyone dies and now you have a 3 hour corpse recovery job when you would rather just go to bed. It was brutal but that was partly what made it addictive, you wanted to overcome the harsh challenge that was set. That was the hook with early EQ. All that is long gone.