I'm also a fan of AoC, and I agree with being sick of the general hate for the game. I've been in the WAR beta for about 8-10 months and my opinion remains the same: It is WoW with some new features. Sure, public quests are cool, the RvR stuff is cool, but at its essence, it is WoW, right down the UI.

A lot of people are probably thinking "Why's that a problem? WoW is great." But there are those of us that didn't think WoW was God's gift to MMOs.

I'm much more of the Ultima Online, Shadowbane, original, PvP freeform MMO fan, so the extreme evolution of the level grind/gear grind MMO that WoW perfected didn't hold much interest for me.

I was impressed with AoC and I still am. I've definitely taken long breaks when I hit the content gap for example in the 50s, but I've remained subscribed the whole time.

I maintain that once the higher level content is filled out and the PvP reward/consequence system is fully in, AoC will be the game I expected it to be when I heard about all their grandiose original promises.

Sure, you can hate on FC for not releasing it with all its features, with bugs, lacking content etc, and you'd be right. I'm not going to make excuses for the quality. The Game Director stepping down was an acknowledgment of that. But for me, AoC remains for me the only current gen MMO that is really trying something different and outside the WoW mold. For me, that's enough to give them some leeway and stay interested. WAR definitely is not.

To each their own. I don't hate on people who like WoW and WAR, even though I find their basic structure incredibly boring, and I hope people don't hate on people who enjoy AoC because it provides something different, even if it's rough around the edges.