Personally, I think the biggest selling point of AoC is the early game. After about 3-4 hours you realize this is exactly the same content you'll see at end game and its not very enthralling. PLUS the pvp is absolutely horrendous! Circle strafing ala DAoC when everyone left that game because fights became melee shouting matches. *shrug* Not a good game and extremely buggy. It'll slow down for sure.

I'm level 53 and enjoying the game emmensly. It's got both the best combat system and pvp I've played in an mmo. On top of that, hands down the best graphics in any MMO.

It's not yet finished though... still missing quests, has a few unfinished instances and is missing both end game siege warfare and a reason to pvp in general (no pvp xp/rewards). It's got a ways to go.

Arenaceus must have a vendetta vs. the idea of circle straifing in general because it simply is not a problem.

It might be interesting to see the numbers if the World of Warcraft games and The Sims games were combined.

AoC will reach 2 milions ppl in 6 months imo and then will get another milion in another 6 months.
AoC is a high-spec req game, 18+ and PvP concentrated that bases the game around skill and not farm, so stop with the " AoC>WoW? " spam cuz WoW is a game for the masses while AoC is another type of game.

poor kids they dont know what they are going to get into...the world of bugs and false promises
/sad

Eh, are you playing melee? I know from the experience in the game that its all circle strafing in melee. I love DAoC but even there its just circle strafing so no one pulls off combos and abilities. This doesn't create an enthralling combat system at all.

Graphics.. sure, but realistically that has almost no bearing on where the game will go or will be in the next year. In fact it can hurt more than anything since this game has ridiculous PC requirements.

Other than clicking a few extra buttons to get combos off and some shielding techniques, theres little difference in the combat system. I really don't see the revolutionary things everyone seems to be talking about. Directional, positional, and button pressing are not new. It comes down the the shield system which... I admit is something new, but hardly fleshed out. 3 shields, place them where you will. *shrug* Not that exciting.

And like you said, its NOT done. No real PvP content, end game is a grind, quests are completely redundant, which are all things they are advertising for. I don't think its smart to help Funcom along when they didn't even deliver the basic package they said they would.

Welcome to an MMORPG launch. WoW was a lot worse at launch.