better, worse. any big changes to auction, pvp, questing, raiding?

pretty much what's the low down on eq2 today as oppose to eq2 a couple years ago?

previous game xp bout 4 years in EQ and close to 4 in WoW retired in both, currently messing around with PotC and actually like the game, thinking WAR may be an awesome game but who knows.

oh! dabbled in a bunch of MMOs including maybe a month of eq2

you're gonna get mixed reviews. If you used to have an account with EQ2 you get 2 free months of gameplay (plus the latest expansion for free). Id take advantage of that if I were you.

I tried the EQ2 trial when they first put that out a long time ago and I wasn't impressed at all.

That was then.

Since getting the invite back to try, I find the game awesome. I can't quite remember what I didn't like about the trial other than the fact that I didn't like it. I do however find the 'new' EQ2 to be something worth playing... at least you'll get 2 months to try it out again.

The graphics are crisp, I haven't encountered any bugs, the sarnaks are playable (and look real awesome)... the game seems to have tons of people playing it and in 2 weeks of playing I have only had to ignore one gold farmer 

I just cant believe I only found out about this yesterday, times a wasting!

I forget where EQ2 was as far as expansions released at that point.  KoS maybe?

Anyway, EQ2 was a much better game in 2006, in 2007 as well until RoK came out.  This game really sucks now IMO.  Maybe if they had not raised the level cap to 80, made all gear obsolete, and not made the whole RoK expansion 1 giant solo quest with a few lame raids.  It would have been much better to keep the old raids and content relevant.  They tried to make the latest expansion alot like Burning Crusade it seemed to me, which I also thought sucked... but it was done much better than RoK.

I also am no big fan of rok, but i don't think it was that bad as the previous poster made it look.

In a level/item based game a level increase allways will make at least 90% of the previous items obsolete. Its just a general problem with this type of games. Depending on class the old raid gear helped more or less for the next 10 levels till you started getting better new items.

Yes i agree on the point that the solo game from 70-80 was a real pain, i personally enjoy leveling in groups a lot more than soloing. On the raids i can not comment that much as i am in no high raiding guild. But from what i have seen they tried to continue the move (that started with EoF) away from the very easy Tank&Spank fights that most of KoS Raiding was.

Overall i think they just continued the content trend they started with EOF (they got very good critics for that expansion so i guess they thought it was a good idea to expand on that) which also had lots of solo content and the slightly more complex raids, but in my personal opinnion they probably went a step too far in that direction.

Originally posted by quaiky

...the solo game from 70-80 was a real pain, i personally enjoy leveling in groups a lot more than soloing. ...

Youre right, theres no grouping for players between 70-77, and you nearly MUST solo, what makes me bored

EQ is pretty much better in every way now.  Few random things that stand out in my mind:

1. Choose a class at level 1 instead of playing the first 20 levels as two different generic classes.

2. Crafting is now much easier to level.  No sub-combines, make a end product using only raw mats.  Also, endurance building abilities are available in every teir.  No more cranking out shoddy crap you have to vendor until you get to teir II.

3. A wide variety of starting zones ranging from challenging starting areas with utterly sad quest rewards (a fun challenge for twinked alts), to very solo friendly zones with polished quest chains and tons of good gear (great for first time players and casuals).

I guess if you are the kind of gamer that demands being forced to run uphill both ways in the snow, these might be bad things.  I personally never made it past my first month in 2006, and played for a good 2 or 3 months this time around.