The "looseness" of EQ was also, to a certain extent, it's downfall. There was very little questing to be done, and most questing was for the class-specific epic items. The later expansions made questing a little more important, but quests themselves were never a good source of experience. It made grinding a necessity.

Honestly, I don't mind grinding. I can recall taking my group of 6 to Sebilis to camp this or that item, was great fun. Also, going invis to get across zones was awesome, especially when you had to invis 6 characters and there was no easy way to tell when invis was going to drop. The fixed timed invisibility spells later made things a bit easier, but they offset this by putting a lot more mobs that saw through invisibility spells.

My proudest moments in EQ were taking my group of 6 and "breaking" Fear for a low level guild that wiped. And Cazic Thule's Death Tough was awesome, seeing the zone-wide emote where he yells your name and you just fall over dead... good times.