Can you solo through the leveling experience with every class? I've looked into both EQ and EQ2 a bit and they each seem to have a mercenary system, so for instance if I wanted to level a warden, by using a tank or damage dealing mercenary would that be feasible? On the subject of classes, how are wardens and beastlords? I gravitate towards nature and pet based classes, those two looked the most appealing to me. Would one over the other be easier to get into for a newer player? I'm comfortable with both healing and dps. If I want to play an Iksar or Sarnak, am I limited to grouping with other evil races and evil cities/factions? I love lizard races but also generally prefer playing "good" characters, would I have to pick a different race to do that? Is there a designated RP server? Although I won't necessarily get into RP, I tend to prefer those servers because in my experience they have more welcoming and social players. I would want to play on a live server rather than a progression server. When the new expansion comes out, does this game work like WoW where there's essentially a player power reset and everyone can catch up on even footing in the new content, or is there ongoing power development that requires going through much of the older content? And finally, should I buy the discounted current expansion? I wouldn't be making use of the level boost, it would strictly be for the other rewards. Is there good value in the bonuses you get from the more expensive tiers? Thank you for your time and for any responses, I'll be posting a similar topic on the EQ forums as I'm interested in both games.
With the merc feature enabled, any class can solo. Both Wardens and BLs are good. It just depends on how you want to play. Wardens are healers. BLs are DPS. Any class or race can group with any other class or race. If you want to be good, but the race is evil only, you can betray to be good and keep your race. Theoretically Antonia Bayle (AB) is the RP server, but don't go there if you expect it to be an RP only server. Only the minority of people on any server RP and that is true for AB. There really isn't an easy way to catch up if you want to play at the top levels of end game raiding. Other than that, it shouldn't be a problem since it sounds like you don't want to rush to the end game. If you buy the discounted KA expansion, you will get the merc feature included, which is enough reason to buy it. If you're going to sell things in game, then being a subscriber and having the 0% sales crate from the Premium Edition is a game changer.
You can solo all the way to 100 even without a mercenary. The mercenaries just make it loads easier. Wardens are "melee priests" in that after a certain level, they have ways to turn combat spells into melee damage abilities. They use heals-over-time, in which a heal is cast and it heals some every tick while its up. All healers are valuable, so long as you learn to play your class and remember to cure DOTs. I just started my baby level 1 beastlord, so I can't speak well to that. I like pet classes in general, and the BLs i've known really seem to enjoy it. You are not limited in grouping by alignment. Welcome to Norrath!
