They didn't get around to fixing most of EQ2 until the first expansion or so, so vanilla would be terrible.
EQ2 was pretty fun, despite the more WoW-like model where quests took the place of grinding mobs for experience. I suppose that can be considered a good thing, but it really did put the game on rails a bit.
I loved the classes and ability to do fairly long quests to switch faction to get the race/class combos you like. The models, capes, mounts and armor were well done as well. Epic weapon particle effects were cool for the most part. Brigand comes to mind.
Raids were thoughtful and challenging! Most raids required guilds to practice encounters a ton before beginning to be successful. Veeshan's Peak comes to mind in Kunark, and there were some doozy encounters in subsequent expansions all the way up until...
...Velious, where they broke the game by completely re-itemizing and changing the statistical mechanics. So, all the tricked-out cool BiS raid gear you have? Pretty much null and void for your slog to the next level cap. Of course, equipment replacement on a new level cap is inevitable, but BiS previously had enough overlap to give you a leg up on the next set of raid encounters.
Blah blah blah, many folks ended their EQ2 adventures there. I am sure there was some cool stuff in there, but with that abrupt end to meaningful progression, there just wasn't much of a carrot to keep chasing.
Player housing and guild housing/features were fun, as was the tradeskill system (after they fixed a few death bugs (yes, death bugs)).
Most of the raid content was instanced, so most of the competition was progress-based as opposed to simply all content going towards the zergiest or unemployediest. There was open world stuff to kill, but it wasn't required for gear progression.
PvP was instanced and really fun (IMO) once they implemented and fixed. It also eventually had special gear you could purchase using a PVP-dollars sort of mechanism, which was perfect for alts to gear up. I'm not sure how regular server-PVP went as I never tried.
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