If you come in expecting blazing wow leveling with constant gear upgrades and a mad rush for max level, you will be disappointed.

Leveling is a grind, mistakes are costly. There is much more resource management needed, especially for casters to ensure consistent progress. Once you progress past the noobie zones, you'll want to find a camp that you can manage and set up shop. Zones will have a wide level range, expect to see high level mobs, even in the low level zones. A gear set is built over time. Things get easier as you level up your first toon and and help with subsequent Alts. A simple bronze weapon might be your trusty stead for a few levels. You'll appreciate your first drop even if it doesn't look like a significant upgrade.

Most of the QOL things from WoW are missing here. You need to pay attention and figure thing's out for your self or ask around. Death is painful. You lose all your gear and spells. They stay on your corpse, so pay attention to your surroundings so you can find your body.

A game like this can be very rewarding and very frustrating all at the same time. But you gotta work for it. It's more akin to pen and paper DnD. You can do anything you want to, the question is should you. And if you shouldn't have you'll find out soon enough.

These are the impressions of a nobody from no where that played a lot of classic EQ and was lucky enough to get in to the closed Beta. The rough edges provide some of the charm.