I find the chances of NWN actually denting the EQ userbase to be quite slim. The primary reason for this is the two games aren't even really the same genre. Everquest is MMORPG, a couple thousand simultanious users on average on each EQLive server, where NWN is simply RPG, if you read the "About NWN" page on the official website it's max users is listed as 64.
The "Massively Multiplayer Online" part of the genre is one of the primary reasons Everquest (and other games of it's genre, Dark Age of Camelot, Asheron's Call, etc) has so much popularity. If NWN supports only 64 users, I'd be suprised if it had a world size as big as Norrath (though I suppose it could since the world building kit comes with the software) and if it did with only 64 players max unless you knew everyone on your server it would be virtually impossible to stage some of the higher end raids you see in Everquest.
The potential of EQEmu reflects that of EQLive. Givin enough time and work, it wouldn't suprise me in the least if an EQEmu server could support the userbase of a EQLive server. On top of that, Everquest is a classic, and will always have a place no other games can bump into. To go so far as to mark it useless by a game that only supports 64 players is unthoughtout. I for one still pay for my characters on EQLive even though I don't play them all that often anymore, and I will continue to do so. As far as NWN, I'll do as I normally do and ignore the hype, if friends of mine can play it for a week without getting burnt out i'll give it a try...
Does NWN release make EQEmu obsolete?
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