I never got much into mmos, viewed then as merely gear farming, cooldown managing "chores", but played lots and lots of single player rpgs, from 90s and early 00s and am a huge SSI fan. And always play as an caster. That said, I have no nostalgia towards EQ cuz I only played EQ as an adult and to be honest LOVED it.IMO the minimum for a game to be considered an RPG is to have different PCs(player characters) if they play as the same class. In many mmos, everyone with the same class is merely a clone of others. That said, when I started to play EQ, I was in doubt between NEC/MAG and decided to check many places, since most people recommended NEC, I picked NEC and played a lot in about two weeks. With NEC, I really liked the Aesthetic and control over the battlefield, but I prefer to have powerful servants and powerful spells, so I decided to check MAG and had a huge blast. Reached lv 50 much faster. Din't hunted "hot zones" or used potions but reached lv 50 in about 23h and 51m So far I really loved MAG. My unique critique is that Magicians are too fire based!!! In the class description, is said that MAGS are the masters of elements. Fells more like I'm playing as an "pyromancer" instead of a "conjurer elementalist". That said, would be cool if just like you can specialize into a school(conjuration or evocation), you could specialize into an element and for eg convert the fire damage into cold(water), physical(air) or poison(earth) damage. Because Companion of Necessity? Summon an fire elemental. Elemental form? Transforms you into a fire elemental despite the text mentioning other elements. Would be also cool if necros could get more ice based summoned gear. Like creating an ice spear and giving it to your pet, because seems like magicians are more akin to pyromancers than anything else... And in EQ2 is even worse(only played very little but din't liked much), only air/water/fire elementals to summon. Compared to NEC(only played this two classes), I would say that NEC is better in control and MAG is better in raw power. Also wish that a new pet line will come to the game, imagine how cool if we could summon ice golems, permanent gargoyles or maybe something like if 4 magicians working together cast the same ritual, they can summon a very large dragon. I really loved that class but believe that there are a lot of room for improvement.
When you get around max level, gear and full AAs, you basically only use the water pet because its the best damage and can tank anything. Its a problem of EQ in general, the design foundations are shaky, a lot of spells became useless and the classes lack real choices and balance. Keep in mind that eq doesnt change lower levels when they change classes so you will start experiencing modern EQ around level 90. Side note: you can cast elemental form several times to get another element's appearance.
Easy fix, create a conjuration line modelled after Melf's Acid Arrow. If you take issue with borrowing a spell from D&D then consider than EQ drew its inspiration and ideas from Sojurn, a Forgotten Realms based DIKU MUD. Acid arrow would give us something to do on fights where magic and fire are effectively unusable (e.g. Naggy, Talendor, etc), it fits the class and leans into the elementalist role without further creep into Wizard territory.
