Well SOE, never wanting to miss a change to fuck things up (See NGE in SWG), have decided to limit free accounts to only the very basic classes, of mages , scouts, priests and fighters.
So for example no Warnden, or Necro, or hybrid classes of any type on the basic free to play account, this goes against what is being successfully offered elsewhere ie Runes of Magic, LotRo, and of course DDO.
Also of course when you launch a new service like this you want to have only one server, so the load is absolutely terrible.
Plan to wait at least 5 minutes just to check if your name is available.
On a positive note the new download installer streaming client is really good, you no longer have to download the huge 12 GB files before playing, it streams it down as you are playing.
The EQ2 default GFX setting make the graphics look rubbish 
On higher setting it looks better
I quit when I noticed Free to play players can not use OOC, hello EQ2 good bye EQ2 (UPDATE: this is not true, Im currently playing a Warlock on the freeport server, and having a blast)
Summary
With quality free to play games like DDO and Lotro out there now which dont have these class limitations for free players and stupid social controls, there is really no reason to play EQ2, it is really disappointing, perhaps SOE will change things but dont count on it.
There is a very good game in there somewhere, I know because I played it for the first 6 months after launch years ago
Rating: 
Dissapointing
EQ2 Extended was officially launched on August the 20th 2010.
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Founder of GamertechTV, and EIC, executive editor of GamertechTV Read more from this author
Its a game with RMT like DDO or LOTRO, so I dislike it just for that.
But the rest of your review just was wrong.
Yes the classes are limited, why? Because your getting something for free, DDO doesn’t have that restriction sure, but if they did you’d be left with 2 classes, EQ2 is a bigger game with many classes so it makes sense to make money from this fact.
Chat channels, these are restricted too for DDO and LOTRO, basically they don’t want people who have not paid anything to spam the server with gold adverts. The restriction goes when you purchase your first item the same in all three games.
F2P sucks in all these games since nothing is truly free, if any of these companies did offer a free game then they’d go bust, think on that.
If you want a game economy that’s controlled by a cash shop though head for F2P games, just dont complain later when the game design pushes you into a RMT purchase every so often to be able to progress, because one way or another these companies will get their money.
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I loved EQ2 in the day, I do think the class restriction is a mistake, I want to come back I want the choice, Ill pay more for mounts or whatever later
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Sony messed up EQ2, roll on EQ3
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You get unlimited access to content for free. Every zone. No quest packages to buy.
The ‘free’ classes are a nice mix of the traditional classes. I do think they messed up by not putting a Ranger in the mix. However, you can now unlock a class for your account for only $7.50.
EQ2X is something that SoE has done right.
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I dont see how to unlock a class, on the membership levels, it seems to me you have to go to Gold membership which is basically a monthly sub before you have access to the other classes, I would gladly play a once off to play a necro for example
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This post was mentioned (along with several others) here:
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2x/posts/list.m?topic_id=4483
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This was the biggest mistake these guys made and the reason why I quit playing EQ2. For some reason, after it went FTP, even though I have a subscription, I STILL have to pay to play all my classes now. Even though I’ve bought and purchased this game, and I’m paying for it every month, now certain features that I didn’t have to pay for before, I now all of a sudden have to shell out my CC number to get? Horseshit. I was pissed when I found this out. So basically they are saying to the people that already bought the game and give them money every month, “Screw you, give us even MORE money to get back all the features we just took away from you.”
Tried multiple times to contact people on the phone as well as through email to find out vent my frustration to, but everytime I get told that basically this is their new way of doing things, and us people who have already shelled out hundreds for our subscriptions, are just going to have to bite the bullet so that the freeloaders who refuse to pay for any form of entertainment can get some of the action.
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