I've been beta testing E&B since the end of June, and all I can say is try not to compare it to EQ.

Why? Well, because it's not EQ. If you continue to compare games to EQ you'll likely be disappointed each time.
Instead, point out the strengths and weaknesses of the game, and allow people to form their own opinions.

I would say Quemn was correct in saying that this game is basic. It's easy to learn how to play, and it's controls and chat are very basic compared to most MMOG's on the market today. It's easy to jump right in, and have a basic understanding of the game in less than an hour.

The skill system is based on levels, but experience gain is split into three groups, and each has 50 levels for a total of 150 character levels. These groups are:

Combat Exp: Any experience obtained via combat with monsters or bad guys. Basically, you shoot them, they die, you get combat exp.

Exploration Exp: You gain exploration exp by going to places you've never been before, or by mining astroids and gas clouds.

Trade Exp: You gain Trade exp buy selling items and making items, as well as running trade routes.

Each time you gain a level in one of the three pools, you get a point which can be used to buy skills. Some skills require specific levels of a exp pool (Exploration 15 required for example), or a general level (Level 30 for your third hull upgrade).
As you buy new skills, you can advance them by alloting more points to them. Most skills have 5-10 advancement slots, each costing another point than the previous one. For instance, lets say you want to upgrade your beam weapons (lasers), the first upgrade will cost you 1 point, the next will cost 2, then 3, and then 4 and so on.

Character Advancement: Every 25 levels or so, you gain a Hull Upgrade for your ship. Generally these add more slots to your ship where you can add new weapons or devices. Your hull also gains strength, and a new look.

Things I specifically like about E&B:

1. Reduced death penalties: There is no death in E&B. Basically, all of the game is played in your ship, so once your ship is incapacitated, you incur a penalty. The penalty is figured from the difference in your exp pools, so if you keep your exp levels balanced, you have less of a penalty incured.
Another great thing about E&B is that the death penalties are reduced while you;re logged out. So lets say you're exploring a sector with a bunch of nasty monsters, and you get yourself incapacitated; If you log off, your exp penalty is reduced by 1000 points an hour. This means that you can log on the next day and have ZERO exp to make up.
Also, when you have an EXP penatly against you, any exp you gain is split 50%, half going to your penalty and half going to your advancement. In other words, you're still advancing even when making up an exp debt.

2. No Corpse Runs: Since you don't die, there are no corpse runs. When your ship is incapacitated, you can opt to get a "Jump Start" from a player, or you can get towed to the nearest starbase.
A Jumpstart from a player is similar to a rez in EQ, in that it allows you to continue from that spot in the game, instead of having to start back over from the last starbase you were in (Star bases are like bind points in EQ). When a player Jumpstarts you, you still need repairs, so heading back into combat is not a good idea, but you can still do stuff like explore and finish trade routes, so it doesn't kill your game session by getting yourself blown up.

3. Mission system: The mission system in E&B is really simple, which is why I like it. Basically it's derived off of EQ's Quest system, but you don't "talk" to NPC's. They guide you to the mission text by asking coined questions and illciting coined responses. So mispelling a word won't keep you from doing a mission.
Generally the missions are for advancement, but there are quite a few that you can do in order to gain new items. Most classes in E&B have an item reward mission before they're done with their newbie training.
Completing missions is also a very easy process. Any time one of the prerequsites of the mission are met, it's deducted from your mission steps. In essence, a mission will be "Fly here, collect this item, fly back to me". Once you get to the item's location, the mission log updates itself, so if you log for a week, you can see where you left off.

4. Grouping: Grouping in E&B, while not really required in the lower portions of the game, is actually made quite painless. Each time you group with a player, you gain a grouping bonus. These bonuses are buffs, and also exp bonuses for anything you do that would gain you exp. Each class gets a different grouping bonus, and they add up, so having more than one class in a group is sometimes a good strategy.
The Grouping bonuses add up to a maximum of 15%, which each player adding -1% for each instance of them in the group. So, if you had a group of 6 Jenquai Explorers, each of the group members would have 15% added to ther reactor regeneration. The First JE adds 5%, the next adds 4%, the next adds 3%, and so on.
I guess the best way to explain it is; Grouping is easy, and it's handled much better than other games I've played.

5. Character and Ship customizing: This game has by far the most advanced character creation/customizing that I've seen in any game. You create your Character from one of the three races available, and you then decide what profession that character will take up from the two that are available to each race. Then you start to customize your character and ship.

Character customization allows you to change things such as:

- Character Height & Weight
- Facial Features
- Facial Hair
- Hair Style & Color
- Skin Pigment
- Chartacter Clothing & Pigment
- Character Accessories

Ship Customization allows you to choose between four types of segments for your ship:

- Hull
- Profession
- Wing
- Engines

There are three options for each ship segment, and you have two sections per segment to paint any way you want. If you do the math, there are something like 1,494,186,269,970,473,680,896 ship variations for each classes ship.


Overall, I'd say this game is very fun to play, and has the potential to be just as addictive as EQ. Currently it's only downside is that the chat interface isn't really all that great. The give you tons of channels to talk in, but the chat window itself is hardcoded at a specific size. They've recently introduced a split chat window, but it's still not resizable, so you're just cutting your chat window in half. They really need to work on that chat system.

So far, I'm having a blast playing E&B, and right now I'm waiting to go out and buy the game, since it hits the shelves today :)

I've been beta testing this for a while, and all I can say is "terrible" . Very boring, you cant get into your character. It's incredibly basic.