"Again, same, but different.
I'm just not sure what you were expecting."
See? I think you just answered what my problem is - what I was expecting. "Same, but different" is like bean dip that's been left out in a swamp for six weeks. It reeks.
The classes have been so hyper-balanced that there is no life left in them.
I was expecting SoE to deliver "the next big thing" in MMO's. Instead we got a "over all those years we never got our act together - creatively, anyway - but we're going to slap some lipstick on this pig and rush it to market to beat WoW" sort of derivative, retrograde piece of junk. Well... all right, that's too harsh. There's good stuff in the game - lots of it. But for getting so much of it so right, how could they have screwed up so much of it???
There should be more distinction between the classes. Why? Because "variety is the spice of life". And without that we have Haggis instead of Pad Thai noodles or Schezuan Beef or Chiles Rellenos or even Big Macs. Wait a minute, I like Haggis! Hmm, what kind of food is EQ2? That'd be a good question for a thread.
But to answer your question - what was I expecting? If you went to a Mexican food restaurant and found out they only had tacos (but wait! Two, count em, two different kinds of tacos - one with SHREDDED beef and another with GROUND beef), would you go back? If you went to a Chinese food restaurant and found it only served fried rice (pork or chicken), would you go back? I mean, listen, you could live on tofu and broccoli, right? Why isn't tofu and broccoli good enough for you, breakfast lunch and dinner? Huh? Why do you have to eat other kinds of food all the time? It makes life difficult on the rest of us! You and your food-variety ways - what's making you eat different kinds? It makes no rational sense!!!!
Sorry to subject you to that, but do you now see how I feel after reading your post? Okay, I went a little overboard, sorry. But seriously, I'm stunned that this is even an issue. But... maybe... I... don't... belong... in... EQ2... (but I keep fighting because EQ2 is a trendsetter, and dammmmmmit, I don't like the trend they've set - and I don't want to see it infecting furute mmo's for one thing).