As a person new to the server (highest is lv20), who did not play EQ Pre-Velious, i feel the most important thing you can do is not necessarily twink them (though having a decent weapon makes the game mroe enjoyable in my personal opinion), but to offer them guidance. It is extremely difficult to locate the banks, trainers, spell merchants, or even entire cities/zones with the absence of an ingame map. And being told to "check the wiki" is often frustrating because.. at least in my case, about 33% of the time the game crashes when I try to resume full screen and i have to restart my computer to fix the issue.
It is not necessary to be 100% twinked to have fun.. I started an sk on the server first, was a human.. I lost that acct info so now I play a dark elf. Someone had given me a couple pieces of flayed skin armor and a halfway decent weapon and I was happy as can be, and while WoW was not ym FIRST MMO (Late velious-early luclin era EQ was, in fact), I still found myself having a great desire to continue playing. Though it definitely helped, that I had encountered a few generous people that gave me an item or two as well as a not insubstantial stack of platinum (100 or so plat and a sword of skyfire and I was pretty well set)
Other than being a knowledge resource, and a couple items and a few plat for skills/spells, I would say the most important thing you can do is play WITH them, and I see you already have a handle on that.. Playing a paladin you will also be able to tank for them and that is good. I would recommend druid for your undecided friend as they cover almost all bases.. nukes, dots, heals, buffs, ports.. Pet classes are also a solid choice (magic and necromancer, depending on what he wants, more wizard-like capabilities or, as I was drawn to, the dark art of necromancy.. diseasing and draining the life of enemies and raising the dead)
Also, make sure they are 100% Aware that the game is far more challenging than other MMO's they may have played. It is not simply more time consuming as some have stated.. sure the time consumption is a big part of it.. requires a lot more careful planning and patience than modern MMO's, but it goes well beyond that.. Even decked out in full jarsath scale by level 15 as a shadowknight, I found myself still constantly wary of even con mobs.. The downtime between them is not worth the extra bit of EXP, but that's just my 2cp
Edit-- also I'd like to include that you may awnt to give them the option of enabling luclin graphics.. I know most people ont he server disagree with me when I say they look 150% better than the classic graphics, and they have a right to their opinion, but to someone who does not have a positive, nostalgiac feeling associated with blocky, unrealistic graphics, they might be more inclined to play if they felt they looked "cool"
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