I'm coming back to Everquest after 15ish years. I've been narrowing down what I want to play the last few days, and have settled on mage or wizard. I would prefer the wizard, but I'm concerned that finding groups might be a problem, and from what I understand they don't solo well. This will be my only character until beastlord comes out, and I would appreciate any input.
I've always found Magicians easy to run. They work well at resource gathering for things like spider silk. 100% agree a Wizard is a tougher character to level but not impossible. If you can manage to get into the 8-12 levels, there are still a lot of ad hoc experience groups in Unrest that would get you to the 20s. Solo for a Wizard to me means a lot of root and burn with root breaking and having to zone. I go through a lot of SoW potions. Still the payoff is pretty good once they get their evacs and ports.
Mages definitely are easier to solo play. Wizzies get a lot better when they get their snare for kiting. At later levels though, I found wizzie nukes to get partially resisted and harder to do good dps w/o a debuffer.. Wiz are nice for the ports and stuff later. Mage nice for CoH/summoned stuffs. I have a mage and wiz and heavily prefer the mage. Had no issue lvling each class solo, as mobs summon/immune to run change speed, wizzie gets much harder. You can still quad/kite w/o snare but one mistake and you die quickly..