A great game, but suffers from several possibly fatal maladies.
The early entry into the market was both a boon for the game and it's fledgling industry, and a hinderance as the development company (Verant) had noone else to look to to avoid possible mistakes or long term issues.
The game has flourished, and had more subscibers than any other of it's type for many years. Though it now has a smaller following, it is still going strong and releasing expansions at a regular rate.
Too regular actually, one of the biggest issues that I ended up having with the game was having an expansion every 3-6 months. In a MMORPG game an expansion gives you item inflation as well as new areas to explore. This means you need to play alot to "keep up with the Jonses". The $40 cost for each expansion on top of the $16 per month subscription is fairly pricy for one game.
The original game is a great deal of fun for novice and experianced gamers alike. But expect to be rapidly drawn into the expansions as you level up. Expect to solo alot, which is much more difficult in this game than in many other more current games.
One of the big obsticals currently is finding a group, as most of this older games players are higher level and many of the lower levels you run into are simply ginding to high levels, often ignoring people not experianced in the game.
It takes alot of time to progress once you are past your teens unless you have the expansions for better experiance spots.
I would still reccommend Everquest, as long as you know what your getting into. It's a very fun game with an enormous world to explore, though it is a bit lacking on lore at times.
--=== Played time: ~1000 days (yes, that is 24 hours x 1,000) across 3 accounts ===---