It's too late to start on live, but not here. And I disagree with the earlier posters that say just grind grind grind. To me, that's not very fun. It gets you to level 50 quickly, but it's not like you'll be the first to level 50 and "win" the race to 50.
Some of the quests can be kind of fun and get you a nice item. You can check out
http://everquest.allakhazam.com for quests. About half of the quests even in Freeport won't actually be there, as they've been added sometime between 1999 and now, so therefore aren't on this server, but it's a place to start.
Exploring can be fun too, most of these guys have been playing for 10 years, so exploring isn't nearly so fun for them, but back in the day, I had a great time just running around and seeing everything.
The earlier posters are right in that part of the draw is that it's not all handed to you on a silver platter and you can't get to max level in a few days of soloing like WoW. And many classes can't solo effectively so you have to work together to progress. You get dropped in the middle of a city with a newbie weapon and part of the game is figuring out what to do, both by trying it out and interacting with other folks.