A mixed bag. It has its good points, but is ultimately flawed.
First, the character customization leaves a lot to be desired. There is actually little to none aside from name, race, and appearance when you first load the game. When you actually play the game for the first time, you are given the choice of four separate career paths. Basically, the professions branch out as you move along in your career. This means that in order to reach your ultimate choice of career paths you must reach certain levels first.
One nice thing about the game is the quest system. You have quests unique to your class and there is really a lot of complexity and depth involved. Although sometimes you'll be scratching your head wondering what to do next which means heading to your favorite MMORPG website to get the quest info to move on.
Probably the first thing you'll notice is the graphics of the game. This is a mixed bag as well. Basically, I've found that people either love them or hate them. Personally, I have no problems with the graphics in EQ2, but a lot of people hate the hyper-realistic "plastic" looking character models. The animations are sort of stiff as well, but this is a minor issue.
The game interface is fairly simple to figure out. Not as easy to learn as World of Warcraft, but it is still fairly easy to grasp. This wasn't really an issue for me, as I've played just about every MMORPG that has come out on the market, and so I'm used to your average interface layout. When you think about it, most MMORPG's nowadays have fairly similar interfaces.
The sounds were fairly good. There are a lot of voice overs which is rather neat, but they can get monotonous as you travel the city and whatnot and hear the same gibberish over and over each time you visit an area. It would have been nice if they included random voice overs for the NPC's to keep things more interesting.
Speaking of cities, there are basically two factions in the game; Qeynos (the "good guys") and Freeport (the "bad guys"). Which city and game area you end up in depends on what race and alignment you pick when you create your character. Some races can be either good or evil, while others can only be aligned to evil or good.
And really the two different cities is actually kind of a good thing, because if you ever get bored you can always roll up a character of the opposite faction. The two cities and beginner areas are completely different. Also, I forgot to mention that your career also depends on your alignment. Each profession basically has a good or evil equivalent, but they are still different nonetheless. If you'd like to play as a race that is only aligned with one city as a different alignment, there is a betrayal quest you can compete that will switch your alignment, but I have heard this quest is so hard to complete it's not worth the effort. But that's just hearsay, I haven't actually investigated that quest due to lack of interest.
As for the game itself, be prepared to kill monsters, and kill plenty of them. This is where I think World of Warcraft wins the fight. In WoW, you mainly level up off of your quests. In EQ2, you still have your old school whack-a-monster gameplay. Now, some people may prefer that style, but to me it is just getting boring nowadays. I had enough repetitive monster killing in my Asheron's Call days. I'm ready for something different. Another annoyance about the monsters is it wouldn't be so bad if you started out killing cool things, but you'll find yourself killing things like beetles, snakes, etc., before you move up to the more impressive mobs.
Well now we come down to the bottom line; EQ2 vs. WoW. This is sort of a tough decision because each game has its pluses and its flaws. But ultimately, World of Warcraft wins the day because it took your basic MMORPG formula and added their own flare. EQ2 doesn't really offer anything new to the genre. My recommendation for EQ2 is to wait for something better. I don't regret my time spent with the game, but there are so many good games on the market now and coming soon on the horizon, you'll find plenty to keep you occupied until something new comes along, like D&D Online. Even if you don't like World of Warcraft, I still recommend passing on this one. It just gets old too quick.