Well, what loading time are you talking about? The time from when the loading bar shows up until you can move again, or from when the screen freezes after you cross a zone line until you can move again?
I mean with an SSD the loading bar should be much quicker. Takes like 5 secs max for me with a very old SSD.

However the delay before the loading bar pops up is always extremely long (about 20 secs every time), and I think it has something to do with the server.

Reading the RamDisk thread, he theorizes that the server takes about 16 seconds regardless of how you are running EQ to zone. I run ramdisk and notice much faster load times.

guys, im running off a shit laptop, 5400 rpm hdd, 1.5 dual core, onboard intel graphics (the really shitty ones, not the nicer ivy bridge ones) and I still load in at about 15 secs, from the time my character freezes to the time im in the other zone.

Yep, just measured it. Its always about 16 seconds until the loading bar shows up.
Once the loading bar shows up, it takes about 2 to 3 seconds until I can move my char again. That is with a 1st gen Intel i5, GTX 660, 4GB RAM and 80 GB Intel G2 Postville SSD.

Well that tells me why it takes a good 45 seconds to a min to load into the game, thanks. Not much I can do about the server. I am interested in getting the time between zones down to like 5-10 seconds, instead of 10-20. I see people zone faster than me all the time. I'm inclined to think it is internet speed now. Oh well...

intentionally bumping a years old thread - any new tips on this?

I have a SSD, all my game files are on that, only ini files, Log and Screenshot folder are linked in from a magnetic drive. I have a new system, yet my EQ zone times are about 20-30 seconds. Has anyone figured out what keeps us from zoning in 5-10 seconds?

God bless this post is true.

Na, I got the Everquest folder on the SSD, symbolically linked to the wine drive_c folder in my home folder. Don't worry, it's launching from the SSD alright... It was writing inis and Logs there until I thought it is maybe not such a good idea to expose the SSD to heavy writing with Screenshots Logs and whatnot, and also put the data in a safer place. :)
So I moved my "valuable" data (ini files and Logs and Screenshots) to the magnetic disc and linked those in symbolically to the EQ folder again.

There has to be another reason...

Ur tech ain't cutting edge enough to run this game dude

So you are playing on a mac? That might be the issue.