Magician or Necromancer are definitely fun first classes for new players; agreed.

for what it's worth, every person i've ever started from scratch on EQ has been a mage. There's just something about "send your pet to kill, zap them with your spell, and click this gate thingy if it starts to look bad" that lets people ease into everything else this game evolves to. Melee have to deal with positioning, and melee range and mob fleeing. Which for somebody without the keyboard/mouse familiarity, can really frustrate you.

Casters probably the best bet, and wizzy or mage are the most simple form to start with.

Today was day one and it wasn't with out problems.

My youngest was playing the rogue and was having problems positioning. This was hard to explain what to do. The mobs were dead before he was really able to help. From what everyone has said being a caster might be a better option. We are all low level so starting over isn't a big deal.

I want to start in the same area so we can work together, we might have to all be a different class.

Any suggestions on that?

You could make Humans; or Erudites and get a port to, say, Faydwer, and bind there; or go High Elf caster(s) + Dwarf melee(s).

Also; about rogue positioning, I don't think being behind the mob is important enough to matter until Backstab at 10. It's optimal, but optimization is not the focus with this group. :)

Also...do you guys use the first-person view (basically looking through the eyes of the character) or the zoomed-out first-person view? I'm thinking if you scroll all the way out on the rogue player, he might be able to position himself better.

:)

I would say day one you will have trouble no matter what. If the kids aren't too frustrated I would say give it another shot and just have them play while you watch over their shoulders to give advice. Just getting the controls down may take a while and at low lvl they shouldn't have much need of healing at first.

If you do want to switch I would say gfay area is the next best bet. Half elf, wood elf and high elf all in the same starting exp zone. Felwithe being less likely for deaths due to falling :)

Dwarf Cleric/Warrior (Or paladin) + 1 more. A high elf Enchanter would be good, although enchanters are one of the hardest classes to play well, so maybe a Mage would be better. Allows you to tank and them to play a pet class + a cleric, which is fairly easy in groups. Also I bet they would get a kick out of Dwarf barrel rolls.

If there's two kids, I stick by my original info. Make one a wiz and one a mage, and let the one who got Wiz know that they will be super cool once they get their port spells and not to be sad that they cant use a pet like the mage.

Mage pet + Wiz root + Both nukes = Win.

If you're rolling a new toon with them try all Dark Elves, the UV makes things very nice for folks. You would probably be best running a cleric or enchanter with them depending on what you want to bring to the group. Avoid melee imo

edit: As an afterthought, If you feel one of them has the potential to do it right and not feel bored healing, let one be a cleric instead of wiz, and you can run Enc and have access to nearly everything you could ever want to do encounter wise.

Last night we played for about an hour and went a little better, but we got buffed by a high level Shaman. So it was hard for us to die. Other than when a red con rolled up on us, we all ran different ways. To me this was fun because it reminded me of playing the game. The kids had a harder time because one had to zone.

I think a caster group might be better with me being and ENC. I played a Bard back in the day so I enjoy that type of character. I will check with the kids and see how it goes.

Should the younger one be the mage or wiz?

I have to add, my first day waaay back in 1999, I spent the entire first night trying to find my way out of neriak. I kept getting lost. I still logged back in the next day.

As far as fighting stuff goes, if you manage to get past the gates area of your starting city within a week, teaching kids, I would say that is plenty fast.

This is really interesting thread btw.