[EQBallzz]

You are a brave soul playing this ancient MMO but it's a good move. This is still the best MMO out there (well maybe not the live server version) IMO and if you missed it during the EQ heyday it's great to have the opportunity to experience it now. Until Pantheon comes out there really isn't another MMO like this on the market.

As for the noob friendly class advice..people always say druid and I can see why that works in the long run but I have always found druid to be sort of grueling until you hit at least 14 when you get SoW and a better DOT. Druids do a lot of things but don't excel at anything (except maybe travel) but below 14 druids are really bad at almost everything. If you can make it past those teen levels the class starts to improve a good deal and into the 20's you can start healing a bit better and doing more damage and of course porting. You can start soloing better after 14 also with a semi-effective root/rot strategy but it's a very boring strategy to kill and can be frustrating when root breaks constantly. In mid to later levels druids solo much better and get much more versatile in groups with solid buffs, heals and utility.

I think two other classes that are probably better for a noob (but not as versatile or mobile as the druid) would be mage and necro. Necro does great in groups thanks to their healing and twitching (mana transfer) and their pet is powerful. You also get Feign Death which is an amazing survival tool. Mage pet is super OP at lower levels. Mage can also summon some useful stuff like weapons, bags.

If you like healing I would say druid if you can manage until the mid 20's when your heal starts to improve or if you want to be a much better healer go cleric. Cleric play is pretty straight forward so I think it's noob friendly but you will be much more reliant on other players as they don't solo that well and they have very little utility except Rez which is great but doesn't really come into play until much later. Shaman is also a solid noob choice for healing if you want to excel at buffs and debuffs.

Look me up in game if you are looking for a leveling guild. We have a good number of lower level players and a few that are even new to EQ like yourself. Our guild has a lot of very friendly and helpful people who will answer questions and help you out if needed. Most importantly, we try to all group together to make leveling more fun. We are also looking ahead to Pantheon so we can move there as a group when we get the chance even though that is quite a ways off.