While AoC had (and has) it's issues, I'm a patient person, so that's not what really pushed me to try Vanguard. Actually the fact that people were comparing the AoC launch to the horrible Vanguard launch reminded me of the game, and I hit up the forums/website to see how it was doing. There seemed to be a general momentum of people joining up and trying Vanguard, many of them ex-AoCers.

After the grueling download what I found was really a gem. The game has soul... A large choice of unique races, each with unique abilities and starting areas. Then you move on to the classes, every one I tried felt significantly different from the others, different take on the roles than I've seen before, and a couple of truly unique ones.

The actual game is just MASSIVE, so much to explore and see. Other than the character art, the environments are just gorgeous.

Really to me AoC felt more like Guild Wars, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but not what I was expecting. I played the classic EQ back in the day, and loved it. Vanguard is the only other game to give me that feeling since.