The Ruins of Kunark - The Bad
What's Bad in Kunark
Now onto what's bad with the expansion, or at least the things that are going to upset people with the expansion when it comes out.
Binding: Binding is an important issue, both because the rules have changed with the expansion and also because the continent design has a heavy effect on all.
Spellcasters can bind in any non-dungeon zone in the expansion. Non-spellcasters can only be bound in city zones. It was previously mentioned that this is two zones, and I'm not sure if they meant East and West Cabilis, or if possibly one of the other city areas is bindable (i.e. Sebilis). I believe (or I have heard) that it's possible to bind in Firiona Vie. At any rate, very few areas.
What does this mean? It means that all you warrior-types better get used to begging for SoW if you plan on dying in the expansion. Verant stated before that they want the continent to be vast and dangerous, and it certainly is that. My fear is that it will be a continent run by the casters, as the fighter-types will get sick of running around to get their bodies, but this remains to be seen...
The continent design, as I've mentioned above, is a big deal as well. It is huge. Imagine that every zone you have to cross is equivalent in size to Western Plains of Karana (the long direction) and you have a good sense of what's involved with moving around Kunark. Can everyone say hours of running around?
Quests: As I mentioned before, many of the quests are now dependent of trade skills. Although I think this is more realistic (perhaps), my guess is that not enough people either already know the trade skills necessary to do the quest or will bother learning them. It's also unclear if any of the races from outside of Kunark will have any access whatsoever to these quests, as Cabilis is likely to be a hostile environment. Unless they require bare minimum skill, they will likely go vastly underutilized.
Merchants and Selling: This kind of goes along with the binding problem. I'm not sure that the new continent is going to be a place to make lots of money, mostly because I haven't seen a large number of merchants that you are going to be able to sell to. The Iksar can sell to the merchants near Cabilis, but I haven't seen any others in any other zone so far. The races from Antonica can only sell to the merchants on the docks in Firiona Vie, as far as I've seen. All this means that you better get your hands on some large bags fast and some strength-enhancing items if you want to be walking around with tons of loot.
Casual Gamer Effect: This is merely my prediction, but my guess is that the casual EQ gamer is going to hate playing in the expansion with their old characters. Given the vast size and binding issues, entire sessions could be spent recovering corpses and redying in new areas. Even playing the Iksar is difficult, since money is scarce (so far). I'm predicting a lot more anger rising out of this than we've seen to date.