This special runs until March 26th midnight. Every old or new account will be allowed to create ONE Heroic Class Character Level 85 for FREE and will receive a ton of special bonuses. Here is the link:

https://www.everquest.com/news/heroic-character-faq

I created a Heroic Magician Grand Summoner. All the bonuses are just great. Im looking forward to re-entering Norrath with this Hero.

A fine choice. I boosted my 20 Mage to 85. All I can say after being away since Secrets of Faydwer is Wow. He was auto granted over 4,600 AA, given a full set of gear that's nice with foci, the works and all his spells to level. Holy smokes! Now to learn how to drive this semi-truck DPS machine. :D

He even got a free Cleric Mercenary too. Sweetness. This guy will be amazing solo or in groups. It's going to be a very fun change for me from my many years of playing a cleric main who I'd left at level 80. I've got a 74 Monk too in full Gnolish gear from an annual Fabled Spitpaw zone I think it was. I farmed it with the cleric along with some nice stuff for my other alts.

They have really done some amazing stuff with EQ to make it solo friendly, to encourage grouping for great xp in hot zones, added more cool quests, updated the graphics nicely in all newer content for years now and made it alt friendly now as well since it is faster to level and acquire baseline AA to be viable in high level content starting out thanks to auto granted AA in large amounts. It is possible now to return to the game and boost a character or even make a new one with the heroic characters feature and be able to group and play with everyone.

I'm really happy to see good old EverQuest alive and kicking ass after 15 years and it's a lot of fun to be back in Norrath.

So Everquest for free basically? Is it still worth my free time? Is this MMORPG any good?

I always wanted to peek into into Everquest (not seriously play, but peek), and this seems a good opportunity. I'm a complete Everquest newb though, so it would be much appreciated if someone could help me by answering these questions ... please? :)

1. What are the perks of these "Heroic" characters?
2. Can I transfer characters between regions and servers? If not, which server would be recommended? Timezone is irrelevant, but I'd regard longevity and activity as important. If there are dedicated servers for different playstyles, I usually prefer PvE over PvP, and role-playing over min-maxing stats.
3. Should I choose or stay away from particular classes, and why?

Many thanks in advance! :)

Edit: I already found the answers to question (1) here: https://www.everquest.com/news/heroic-character-faq
Would appreciate more information about the following part:

"Heroic Characters will have full access to thousands of Alternative Advancement Abilities (AA’s). Players that don’t currently have a subscription will need a membership or need to purchase individual AA unlockers to continue to earn AA points after they have the cap on Free-To-Play characters."

What are those AAs, how high is that cap, and how restrictive does it feel in-game?

The comparison table of free, Silver (one time $5) and Gold (subscription) is here.

I'm not an EQ player, but I played EQ2, and AA is basically a way to gain more abilities (spells/attacks/...) that you select and advance to higher levels using points. The subscription level in EQ limits how many point you can have.