I'm not sure about the compairson to EQ, but EQ2 has armor quests starting around level 20. They provide decient gear, however, if you are power leveling it might not be worth it. You'll wind up passing the level too quickly.
If you are taking in the lore and doing all the quests, definanly look into them. Depending on your class, they have different starting NPCs all located in either Freeport or Qeynos.
Since you are new to the game, consider going to Timorous Deep to do your early armor quests there. You can run through the early levels there with any character (no one is KoS) and the new sets for teen toons has really nice stats.
Much more in line with the stats in the new expansion than with the original game.
Even if you choose a different starting city, it's well worth the run and it's fairly easy for a low level toon to get there.