Thinking about playing EQIIFollow

I was an avid Everquest player for around 3 years, and I've been thinking about coming to EQII. I just have a few questions though, the most pressing being is that I've heard unless you have a lot of time to devote to the game, you will fall far behind most of the playerbase.

Now I understand the difference between raiding gear, but in the PoP era of EQ, a player could get a good set of ornate and be fairly well geared, but from my understanding, unless you have a lot of time to put into the game, it's not worth playing because you will be so far behind. Is this true?

The other issue is that I'm about to upgrade my computer a bit, and when I did some diagnostic on my computer which tells me what I need to play the game, I passed everything except the video card (I have that covered, I've got a GeForce 5000 family card now, upgrading to a 6000) and RAM. I know that I have flat out 512 ram, but it's gone to 440 some, and I was wondering if I'd actually be able to play the game with it like this.

Thanks for any advice/help.

Gelton Treewind-The Rathe-

Thanks, I appreciate the input.

As soon as you log you can start up doing what you like. Adventuring, questing, crafting, it's all possible. There is a ton of solo content so you will always find something to hunt.

Some actually complain that it is TOO realistic. Depending on how powerful your computer is, you can crank up the graphics until your motherboard starts to smoke. Best to have at least 2BG RAM and a 256MB video card to tackle those feats.

A less powerful version. In EQ2 you will not be able to quad-kite, but you can charm, mez, stun, and stifle. Only problem is, there are many other classes that have the same abilities to an extent. So your uniqueness will be diluted.

Any class paired with a healer will have a great chance of survival. To make kills quickly, you'll want to also have a DPS class like Scout or Mage. Scouts have better survivability with their better armor, but can't take a beating in melee like a fighter.

If you go with fighter, you may find your fights dragging out due to low DPS. However, Monks and Bruisers have good DPS for a fighter class. It all depends on what you want to have fun with.

And lastly...

...those upgraded specs will do you fine. If you can afford 2GB RAM, go for it.

The system I have atm is pretty close to the upgraded stat you listed:

2gigs PC3200 Ram (never played with 1 since I upgraded to 2 before I even thought of playing eq2)

AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (2ghz base speed w/o OC'ing)

Radeon 9800 Pro vid card with 128 Ram.

I don't have everything turned up to max, but I play on a self tweaked settings that I believe are based off the next step above balanced. Everything looks sharp a crystal clear, with good textures, flora, reflections, animation, ect and I rarely lag. Unless there about 20 other things/people/spells around me.

I've tweaked some more settings since I took this pic, but the changes have been small things like upping animation and reflections/particle effects, which obviously isn't going to really show well in a pic. (Note I took this pic awhile back to show off the combat log damage to some random people on irc, and didn't feel like them knowing the name of my char, or who got owned, hence the black bars)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v332/Tomec/EQ2_000003.jpg

Obviously you can't see some of the finer points of the settings I use like reflections and such, but that should give you a pretty good idea of the game can look... and that isn't even max settings. It takes a monster of a system to even THINK about running on max.

I've decided upon my upgrades, which stand as such.
nVidia GeForce 6600/256 MB/AGP
Corsair 512 MB RAMx2
Okia 450 Watt Power Supply
Thanks for all the help you all have given me, and if anyone notices anything wrong with this setup, feel free to say so.

I'm a new player to Everquest II myself. I'd played the Isle demo and it ran rather well on my system. (GeForce 5200/128MB, 512 memory, 2GHZ.) I go and pick the game up and I can't stop lagging. Even on the lowest settings I can't move around with out freezing up. I broke down and ordered a 1gig stick of DDR. I'm crossing my fingers that'll take care of the problem..