And WoW CC was already dumbed down compared to EQ. For a start, in WoW when you turn an enemy into a sheep, they no longer become attackable. In EQ, the Enchanter would Mesmerize a mob and it would just stop moving but look the same. But people could still attack it and it would wake the mob up, either by attacking it directly if you used an area spell and it hit that mob, it would wake it up. This was bad because not only did the slept mob wake up again, but it would focus on the Enchanter who put him to sleep in the first place and he is so squishy, he has a good chance of dying because of someone elses mistake.
Not only that but the EQ Enchanter was pretty high tech with big CC. Say you had a really bad pull and 8 mobs come, most groups are just instantly fucked. People start panicking and the mobs just slaughter everyone in no time. With a good Enchanter, their routine was:
1) Area Effect stun which only lasts a few seconds but it is enough to stop all the mobs at once and give the Ench a chance to do something else.
2) Area magic reduction to give a chance of landing mez
(Sometimes another AoE stun here)
3) Area Mesmerization which puts all mobs to sleep
But there was a chance a mez resisting on any of the targets, and also a chance that it would mez the Enchanter himself too. So it was highly risky. Most people just did single target Mez but if the shit hit the fan, the area thing was worth trying before dying.
MMOs since then have not only dumbed down CC, but it is rare that you even get too many mobs to handle in the first place. In dungeons all the mobs are in little groups that are easy to tag in a nice bite sized chunk. In EQ you ideally wanted to fight things 1 or 2 at a time, yet mobs would often be in groups of 8 or so, so it required a clever pulling trick, or some sort of intense CC. So much has changed in gaming since 1999.
You're really underselling WOW here, at least for vanilla and BC. For one thing, WOW polymorph and other mez-type CC (sap, blind, seduction, shackle, hunter trap and wyvern sting) broke instantly on damage, and all cc had a per-tick chance to break automatically based on resists (your warlock had to apply curse of shadow to the target to make sure the CC landed in the first place, and priest shackle could break at the worst times). Some of this CC was also non-trivial to apply and/or could not be reapplied (sap could only be done out of combat and it had a chance of unstealthing the rogue even if they specced for improved sap; hunter traps could only be placed out of combat and were placed on the hunter's position, so you had to get creative with FD and distracting shot; wyvern sting had a cooldown and applied a DOT after expiration).
That said, the only wow class that really approached an eq enchanter was the warlock, especially when specced affliction. I mained one in vanilla and BC, and I remember cc'ing / kiting up to 4 or even 5 mobs at a time in shadow labyrinth and magister's terrace:
- dot up a melee mob and keep curse of exhaustion on them to kite them around, occasionally hitting them with searing pain to keep aggro over the healer. MAY be possible to do this with 2 mobs, but it'd require too much standing still / casting time or risk losing aggro, especially since I had other CC jobs...
- keep a demon mob banished (hit it with curse of shadow first so it has less chance to break early)
- if available, keep another demon mob enslaved + CoS'd and have it focus on a caster mob to keep aggro on itself
- if the previous is not an option, use the succubus to keep a mob seduced (CoS on that mob too)
- keep a mob feared, and keep an eye on it -- if fear breaks, reapply, and if the mob starts to run towards another enemy group, hit it with curse of recklessness so it becomes immune to fear. Replace with curse of exhaustion when it gets close so it starts running away again.
- emergency CC (death coil, howl of terror) to get any early CC breaks under control or give a breather during a bad pull
I was also a self-sustaining unit with a bunch of things that drained life from the enemy, plus lifetap + dark pact to keep my mana up... kinda necro-y.
It was a pretty intense experience at times, and coordinating CC with the rest of the party was a must. If you just went in YOLOing into heroic magister's terrace (for instance), you'd get obliterated.