Would you play on red if:

[Duckwalk]

I tried red and enjoyed parts of it. Other parts were unbearable.

The experience modifier is great and for anyone wanting to skips past the first twenty level and into the meat of a class, red is a great place to do just that. My necro went from 1 to mid 20s in a day of good groups.

Regarding the community, it was my experience that they were overall helpful or at worst ambivalent towards me. The existence of server wide /ooc allows a small number of bad apples to taint the reputation of the many. Often times those players are some of the vocal and visible on the forums as well. As a whole the community was a big plus, something I was not expecting.

What drove me away from the game was the lack of balance or perceived lack of balance in pvp.

Nothing worse than having one or several of the ~5 spells you can afford to cast get resisted because you're wearing nothing but starter robes. Or successfully landing a string of dots on a melee character to have them come crush you for more dmg a swing than half a bar of mana is ticking for. Or better yet watch them regen faster than you can do dmg.

Nothing I've seen has shown me that EQ pvp is anything more than direct dmg nukes or melee assist trains.