First, Heroics are in fact a breeze. anyone who commits enough time to get the purples necessary to do them can get through them without a thought.

The difficulty doesn't come in when fighting a particular monster in EQ. The difficulty comes from other factors. Are there Sand Giants near where you fought that croc? did you aggro it? Are you pulling to a spot that's safe? If you're fighting orcs (I assume you're referencing Oasis zone in your post) did pull just one? Are you in a spot where pathing mobs won't get aggro as well? Can you handle two mobs if you get more? Are you bound close if you die? are you in a spot you can personally get to while naked if you die? Will your group stick around if there's a delay? Do you have enough time to stick aorund after your death to regain your lost 10% exp?

The rewards come significantly slower and the penalty for a mistake is huge in comparison to WoW. That's what makes it more challenging.

In WoW all you do is follow a map to your next target. You generally can't even accept a quest unless you're the appropriate level to do it by yourself. the only exception to that is dungeon quests. Anything outside in the open world is tuned to be defeated solo under almost all circumstances.

Oh by the way, there's no in game map, nor is there a compass, just so ya know OP

Leveling in wow was 'easy' by comparison to EQ. You could do it easily solo as any character. Raids in Warcraft were more difficult due to the fact that 1 single mistake and it was over. EQ raids were easier because you could 'recover' in some cases. EQ is 'do damage, debuff, heal, control aggro and win'. Warcraft is 'Do damage, not as many debuffs, heal a whole lot more, dodge, parry, thrust, ho, ha, guard, win'.

I hit max level on release in just over 2 weeks in Warcraft. I spent 2 weeks in level 59 in EQ.

If time is your factor, Wow is way easier than EQ.

What Deity should I pick for a magician or is that not important? Also what city

wow raiding is just a glorified ddr/guitar hero on repeat until you score perfect. that requires zero actual class skill and is not mmo-caliber gaming if you ask me.

eq actually requires knowledge of what you're playing besides "don't stand in the fire"

most of the raids in wow, though, had an attendance limiting factor (dungeon cap size on instances). since eq does not have this limitation, the encounters are often trivialized by the sheer amount of people participating in the raid, but that in no way means it's easier since you had to mobilize the appropriate force of leveled/geared players and actually fight your way to the depths of a dungeon instead of zoning in to immediately face the first boss like in wow raids.

i had tribute to insanity and server first heroic LK in wotlk as an on-again/off-again semi-casual, come at me bro

What race you lookin at playing?

"What race you lookin at playing?" Human

Deity doesn't matter much but safest to go with Agnostic so you won't getting killed for being a follower of whichever god. The starting city depends on the race you pick. The most popular races are usually Erudite and High Elf due to their high INT or humans since you will be right near the more populated areas.

deity selection is really a cross reference of class, race, gear, and intention. not all deities are available to all class/race selections, and some combinations have specific gear available for them. if you intend on playing a cleric or shaman, and want to be evil, then picking dark elf or troll (respectively) can reward you with the disciple to innoruuk snare necklace, but that's the trade-off for being hated by a majority of the cities in norrath.

if you're picking magician, what race are you? some of the races have nice cultural armour (innorruk & tunare chain for instance), and some of them are really neglected by their cultural gear (erudite, human, gnome).

if you're a high-elf, it's pretty safe to use tunare, and if you're dark elf, you'll probably be hated either way, but picking innorruuk will pretty much guarantee you can only bank in neriak and grobb. the rest can just be agnostic since there's no benefit either way.

Start in Freeport, then. The zone next to it is called East Commonlands and is the trading hub for everyone on the server. This will make it easier for you to get help and learn the game :)

For mages your deity matters very little. I picked Agnostic on mine because I don't really care lol!

thankyou Uggme