EverQuest II Preview, Part One

IGN's EverQuest II Vault has posted the first installment of a new hands-on preview for Sony's upcoming MMORPG sequel. An excerpt to follow:
The city of Freeport is comprised of six racial grotto zones, four inner city zones, and six adventure zones. To say that the city is large is an understatement. However, there are maps of each zone (with the exception of the adventure zones) to help you navigate through the city until you learn your way around. In addition to the zone maps, there is also a robust quest journal which will list the steps you've previously completed, as well as the step you are currently on for every quest you've received. As mentioned previously, quests play a huge role on EverQuest II. There are a huge number of different quests, from zone access quests (like the citizenship quest which allows you access to the city of Freeport), to simple tasks (kill five rats and bring them back to the quest giver), to epic quests (such as the epic armor quests for your subclass to be found later in the game), to multiple part quests which require raid groups to complete (there is a dungeon which requires one group of adventurers to pull levers in order to open doors for another group of adventurers to pass through), to heritage quests (in which you can find powerful artifacts that were items in EverQuest Live) and even class and subclass quests (you didn't think you'd hit level ten and just become a sorcerer without working for it did you?).the quest list is endless.