EQ2, a few questions.Follow

1-Classes. 24 classes is coerrect, and every each of them is unique. However, brought to the simplest idea, a tank is a tank, a healer is a healer etc. Which means every class can do what it is supposed to do, but they do it differently. Let's take the Warden vs. Templar example you posted. I play both. A templar is prolly the best healer as far as direct healing goes. My warden, however, will have her direct heals that are lower than my tempy ; however, the warden has Heals over time, which are also really great. It's really all about knowing your class and what you can do in every situation. While every tank can tank, monks and bruisers will relay much more on avoidance and higher dps than a guardian. Each class is unique, yet they can all accomplish their specific role.

2-Specialization. This is one of the aspect that might lack a bit in EQ2. Of course the addition of new class ability is nice, but there is not that much that differs templar A from templar B, aside from gear and spell upgrades. Of course one can have gone wisdom path in AA and the other one in intelligence, but aside from that, not much. Race is good, since aside from the very first few levels, an ogre guardian won't be better than a halfling one (even though to me it makes no sense lol). Stats are mostly decided by your gear and not your race, and at the higher levels there is no difference in strenghts from a race to another for the same class (aside from some racial abilities).

3-Achievements. Basically each class has a tree with 5 different branches (1 for each trait). You start gaining xp for these starting level 20 if you have the kingdom of sky expansion. You gain xp by discovering areas, figthing boss mobs, completing quests and looting rare items. Then you chose your path. Be aware though that most of these path have an equipment restriction, which makes specialization akward. All templars going wisdom path are all wearing symbols, bards going wisdom all have a long bow equipped. It kinda suck in a way because it forces you to equip a certain equipment piece you might not want because you really want that AA path. But some of these abilities are really good and totally worth the trade off. You get 50 points total to put in your tree, most bubbles can go up to level 8, while you have to be level 4 in one to advance to the other one (not really complicated, im sure you would understand better with the tree in front of you hehe). You can respec the tree as often as you want, you have to seek an npc for it (think there is a cost too but im not sure since i never respeced it).

4-Leveling. Max level with expansions is level 70. For both adventuring and tradeskilling. Leveling is slower than Wow, but quicker than EQ1 or FFXI. Like a middle ground. It's hard to say how long it would take you to get to 70 without knowing how often and for how long you play. With a lot of dedication, it is possible to reach 70 in a month, maybe quicker. But that means you are a hardcore player and that you are only interested in grinding all the time. There's plenty of ppl that aren't 70 yet, that play casually. If you are the kind of guy to play 16 hours a day, 1 month is a possibility.

5-Raiding. There are some lower level raid targets even though they are rarer. Raids come in 2 forms mostly : instanced and contested. Instanced raids are either a single mob in an instance or an instanced dungeon with many boss mobs and a big ugly at the end. These usually take whole night, depending on strat, players etc. Contested mobs are 'free' in the outside, for everyone to take. Most high raiding guilds have those mobs on timers though which make it hard to get a shot at. All the instanced raiding zones have reuse timers. Like today I raided Lyceum of Abhorrence. I cannot return before 6 days. It's ok because tomorrow is another zone, and such is friday, sat etc. If you are not in a raiding guild, there are always one group instances. Gear is not as good as in raids, still it is good gear. Those are one group and reuse timer is usually 18 hours, so it is possible to do them everyday (which rapidly become redundant).

6-Servers. Yes there are raiding guilds on PvP servers. It's the same servers only other ppl slaugthering is possible. However, as far as raiding go, you don't have quite the same dynamics, as there are some classes you can't group with due to the PvP effect. It's all good vs evil, so you can't have let's say 1 templar and 1 inquisitor in the raid. While raiding is still possible, in my opionion it might make things harder since diversity of classes is one of the key to success (among others of course). It's all great to have 11 pallies, but you won't take down much content with 11 pallies in your raid force (raids are 24 ppl usually in EQ2 btw).

Hope that helps.

Thank you all for your quick anwsers, now I really want to go buy EQ2 :)

Yes, there are no restrictions like this on a normal PvE server. You can speak with each other, group with each other and join each other's guilds. It can seem weird for a paladin for instance to join a group with a shadowknight. Roleplayers won't, but it's a personal choice just how far you want to go in this game with that. (ofcourse, if you go on a roleplaying server, this changes logically)



When you log in, the first screen you get allows you the choice of English(UK), French, German or English(US) servers. They added this later in the game (as all servers were global at first), so I'm playing on a US server even though I'm Belgian. At times you can be playing on your own a lot, due to the fact that I tend to play when the US is working, but it works.

Wisdom and Intelligence alter this, one increases defence against spells and the other increases the damage.

Not sure which does what though, and I am basing this on what it says for my monk, might be different for casters.