Why warriors are always better than mercs and pets

I suggest you play more games then. EQ is one of the most limited free to play models I've seen. EQ2, DDO, LotRO, Runescape, Etc. are all far more permissive and encompassing. They also have the ability to buy far more unlocks than anything EQ has. Many allow you to unlock everything in the game with cash unlike EQ.

I have played EQ2. Obviously we disagree. I don't care about unlocks, though. I see them as a more expensive way than just going gold, so I only compare what is actually free. I'm sure you'll argue that this or that detail makes you right and me wrong, so have fun with that.

No one is attacking you so let's cut the attitude okay? Everytime someone disagrees with you it isn't personal.

If you don't count unlocks at all, then I still would probably look at many of the other games I played and see a much bigger benefit as a free player. A few locked classes or races and very small limits are better to me in games like DDO than anything EQ has given. The only thing EQ has over the other games is maybe the fact that they give you so many of the expansions for free. Then again none of the other games have so many expansions.

"why warriors are ALWAYS better than mercs and pets?"

They're not always better.

Having played DDO, I'd have to say that even if Turbine made that game 100% free to play it would still be a fairly weak offering. The character customization is alright, but the game doesn't have a tremendous amount of content (to put it mildly) and the fact that the majority of the combat is stuffed into instances makes the overall game world seem small and disjointed to me. However, LoTRO is decent and their FTP offering is nice, especially with the ability to earn points to buy more content by grinding deeds in game.
I don't have anything nice to say about Runescape, so I won't say anthing about it...aside from saying that I don't have anything nice to say about Runescape...

Everquest's FTP system has gotten better since they unlocked all the races, classes, and platinum caps. Prior to that update the FTP option was among the worst I had seen, but it seems competitive now, while still providing some incentive to spend money on the game.

And just so that I'm not completely off topic here-
I don't believe that warriors are ALWAYS better than mercs and pets. Sometimes yeah, maybe even usually, but not always. I don't always use warriors to tank, but when I do, I use warriors that drink dos equis.