Everquest WAS good, now its a tired old and creaky mmo that should be retired.
Levelling up hasn't changed much at all, in fact I think its actually worse now that theres hardly anyone playing, the free trial allows you to level up very fast to around 10 by doing some quests and learning the game in the basic area, once you get into the real world, its a pure struggle to slowly watch that experience bar very very slowly creep up. I firmly belive grind games are dinosaurs and should be in the past, no reason these days to be forced to pay to play a game that you have to sit for hours and hours and even then, you might not even level once, almost scandalous IMHO.
I don't think EQ will live much longer in my opinon, unless its made totally free to play of course, but thats highly doubtful.