Leveling in EQ1 was driven by a few factors:
Play time - obviously, the more someone plays the more the do and the more exp they get.
Recovery - after a fight where you lost health and mana, you needed to recover it before jumping into the next fight. Buffs (or crack) were critical to speed that along and have the minimal down-time. Even so, you might need to wait 10+ minutes before another fight.
In EQ2 you will find it is much faster. Everyone has "Vitality" or exp-bonus. As you kill things, your vitality goes down. You vitality regenerates automatically at .5% per hour. So after about 8 days, you can go from 0 to 100. The bigger mobs you kill, the more vitality you loose.
However, you loose Vitality at such a slow rate, you might always have some left, hence get a exp bonus continuously.
Recovery of health and power (mana) is lightning quick. You can be back up to full health and power in just a few minutes, faster if you have good food and drink on, even faster (almost no loss during combat) if you have a Breeze-type buff on and healer.
All this means you will find the leveling speedy. but probably not as fast as WoW. The minimal down-time means you can kill stuff much faster, explore a lot more, and get more accomplished.
Once you get to level 50, be ready for a significant slow-down in exp. When I kill things, I get about .1% per kill, sometimes less.