Actually pretty surprised that no one here as mentioned a Monk. Very good first class to play, melee class, dps class. can solo really well and has a lot of options to escape death(Feign death: You'll drop to the ground and lose all aggro with the mobs you were engaged with) and also Mend: ability to heal yourself instantly for a good chunk of your life

By the way, whats your characters names? I'll try to help you out inside the game if you have any questions or anything. I'm currently playing my monk named "Kayan" so if you have a question just /tell kayan

My in game name is Foozae, or Eazoof. Depending on what classes I decide to stick with.

Bards can do anything, 18 seconds at a time. I do envy enchanters sometimes, but then I raid and remember why I chose bard.

I really want to play Bard, but everyone saying it take very long to level in Everquest, and on top of that the 40% penalty, just scares me.

If you learn to swarmkite bard is by far the fastest leveling class in the game. It takes MANY deaths to get the timing down perfectly though.

A well played bard is generally accepted in any group as well if you want to group. I have a 60 ench, and a 52 bard. I didn't aoe kite at all on my bard, I just wanted to have fun in groups. The bard I actually like 100X more than my enchanter but I can't always put the energy into playing him correctly and so I play my ench or another class if I'm lazy :P.

Why level fast? What's the point? One could argue that levelling *is* the game, so why rush to be done?

Because you want to.

Fucking duh.

I actually agree with you on this point, but people generally want to level quickly to see the end game.

All of the new toons I make, I make purely for the reason of grouping, doing dungeons, dungeon crawling etc...

...I also get called insane for doing that though :P People are generally confused when I say that.

Unless you're an ass-pie and therefore immune to extreme boredom, you might want to consider being a pure caster for your first run-through. Necromancer or mage are the best choices, but druid works. Don't listen to people who tell you those choices are unoriginal and you should play the class you want: you don't know enough to know the class you want, plus any class can be fun, so why not minimize the pain--we are talking about your precious time here.

I find melee characters too gear dependent and they take too long to regenerate HP between fights, but not long enough for a quality jerk session. And even if it was long enough, how many times can you really rub one out per day? 7? And the last 3-4 will just feel like work.

Moral: Be a caster, mate, or learn to quickly masturbate.