Yes.. and yes..
Although - there is a portion that's a 'grind' to it, of course. You may end up in a zone killing bandit after bandit.
It will be just a smooth grind fest of XP. This is... assuming you can.
1. Break the Camp decently
2. Maintain the DPS to keep the mobs dead enough before new ones spawn
Breaking the camp - no, not at all mindless button mashing. You may need to 'lull' some of the mobs to keep them from assisting the one you pull - or control them when they do come (crowd control) or 'split pull' with a class that can feign death...
Some camps are pretty easy to 'break' - others can be quite difficult. The idea being if each mob spawns every 12 minutes, you'll want to kill one... wait a minute.. kill another... etc - so they don't spawn all at once the next time. Some people seem to have serious trouble with this concept, lol.
Unlike many MMO's mobs are not 'tied' together in 'locked encounters'. Nor is any encounter 'locked' - if you pull a mob, beat on it for 5 minutes and it's at 60% health and some jackass comes and burns it down in seconds - doing more than 50% of the damage - it's his kill.
Not that it happens often - but it can.
Yes, corpse retrieval can be a serious test in dedication, patience, and tenacity. There is no 'soul rezzer' - if you cant get it - somehow and can't get anyone to help... Well, you can keep at it.
I've been persistent enough to always get my corpse back in EQ. (there is a /corpse command that you or other - with your consent /consent helpfulperson can use to pull it to a safe spot)
One thing that's also cool about the game is that you can make decent money just by killing and selling junk - by and large. Unlike WoW - where 90% of the money you get comes from the auction house.
You aren't penalized for deaths at all - until level 5, then you loose XP. No 'debt' or anything - yes, you can loose a level and probably will. Of course, you can usually get it back moderately fast, it just sucks when it's a 'spell level' and you get gimped by one death.
No 'quick travel' - short of being a class that can do that - like a Druid or a Wizard. You'll have to wait on boats, run decent distance, and along those routes - danger certainly exists...
A lot of other - well, LOL!! MOST MMO's - the whole group, like a bunch of lemmings can just charge full speed into many dungeons, and DPS it down. That won't work here. You'll need to learn how crowd control works. Not too difficult at all - although *some people* will make you think it's like advanced calculus.... learning not to break 'mez'. (mesmerize)
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