I'm not a programmer, but I have had whiteboard interviews. I am a Cisco guy, doing routers/switches/firewalls and networking. I've been in IT in various positions for around 30 years now and working with Cisco and networking for more than 20.

The last few years I've really noticed, what I consider, quite a disturbing trend for the interview process.

I've been asked to troubleshoot a deliberately sabotaged pc.
Deliberately sabotaged virtual network through the use of a virtual router/switch software program.
I've been asked to go home and go through a questionnaire online that also had customer service phone role-play elements that could take anywhere from 2 to 4 hours of my time.
I've been asked to do role-play scenes with executives during the interview.
A number of whiteboard scenarios that were broken and I was expected to fix, most of the time without any additional information.
Technical interviews where I was asked a full range of random and often obscure or not-related to what I was interviewing for questions.
Given a big set of specs and asked to design the network from the ground up, with all the details (a thing that would take...many hours)

More and more it's felt more like a song and dance routine than a job interview...and I absolutely hate it. I have said no thanks on a couple of them and walked out and on another couple I put in an inordinate amount of work to find out, oh we hired someone else...D'OH! boy did I feel robbed and cheated.

So while I may not have had the exact experience a lot of programmers have, I've had an equivalent.

I hope the job I have now sticks, because I am sick of doing interviews and doing the song and dance routine.

I've played quite a few MMOG's over the years. Beta tested for a few. Ran an emulator for awhile. I don't think this is the death knell of EverQuest. Look at UO, which is even more dated then EQ, which is still running along its merry way. What we are going to see is a trend towards second generation MMOG's become more popular. This is really a natural progression. The fundamental question of what happens to old MMOG's that have run a long time and no longer become viable hasn't really been answered yet. It will be interesting to see how it is. In the meantime, I think we will see consolidation of servers across various MMOG's as the user base becomes smaller. Though I think this will only apply to the MMOG's that have a long and successful history. Slowly, by the time 3rd or 4th generation MMOG's come around, I think those too will fade quietly or maybe with a loud bang as the creators let the world go out in a huge fight. I don't know that we can really count SWG as a true second generation MMOG. I played it, it was like EQ in the future with Jedi. You waste huge amounts of time performing tedious tasks. FFXI I never played. I can't speak on it. City of Heroes - I have played it, its very good and you don't waste huge amounts of time doing tedious tasks. It appeals to casual gamers with the sidekicking option. This one has potential to last awhile. WoW will prove to be huge for too many reasons to list. We're at the transitional stage right now, between the passing of the old and the coming of the new. Which really makes it a great time to invest in some of your non-graming related hobbies while you watch to see what tumbles where :)