I have done a little more raiding and a gone deeper into the new expansion...I thought I'd give you some more impressions.
For those of you that don't know, EQII can conveniently be divided into expantion 'tiers'. Tier 7 (t7) is the current expansion. Most gear and tradeskill items dropped in a tier are appropriate for that level range, in the case of the current t7 its level 60-70.
The general appearance, as I have said before, is pretty nifty. The floating islands in the different zones that make up t7 are visually neat and offer a little bit of something for everyone. Now that the player base has spread out some in the zones (with some folks going to PvP servers) the zones are more playable in most areas...lag is still an issue for some in some areas.
You have a series of graphics quality standard choices (with individual settings customizable). I play most zones on 1600x1200, 'high permformance'. On a scale of 1 to 7 with extreme performance and 1 extreme quality, thats a 5. I only kick it up to 7 for full raids. I can go higher quality but you get a bunch of grass and bushes that make foraging hard and in a full group the spell effects flare out the screen.
There is a quest series for a 'profession' hat, level 67 that has pretty decent stats (not the best available though). Unfortunately from my point of view, its pretty close to what 'Huggy Bear' the pimp wore in Miami Vice (think I have the right series) for bards...so some folks turn off the graphic...a nice feature.
Player craftable armor from rare raid mob drops (similar to the PoK stuff in EQI) is pretty much the rage now. Farming the raid zones for drops isn't the most fun I have ever had.
I do like the variety and look/feel of the group inside dungeons. Pretty neat quests and the like.
Equipment wise, the rare player crafted jewelry and armor is really screwed up this expansion. The ac for instance on t7 often isn't as high as t6. In addition, they seem to be planning a shift of all resists to jewelry with not as many (or eventually none) on armor. Jewelry has no AC any more. From a convenience standpoint of gearing resists to specific zones and raid mobs, that will be helpfull for players who gear differently for given situations, but the transition doesn't look well planned to me. We shall see.
AA's have arrived and you get several cheap/free redo's (you can't do them all at this point). I don't hate them, (better than EQI AA's from my twisted point of view) but my jury is still out on them.
I could ramble on a lot, please ask any questions you have and I'll try to reply as best I can.
There are still alot of things I really miss about my EQI bard, but I am still liking my dirge.