I agree with you on some of the points. I myself find it quite interesting to explore all sorts of places in the game world. Vanguard has a world with vast size and because they did not create "zones" or other unnatural borders to keep players within a certain area, it feels even more wide.

WoW on the other hand side featured a nice compromise between world size and travel options. Classic WoW was kinda huge, especially with the limited travel options we had in the beginning. Unfortunately this has changed since TBC and WotLK. What I am missing most is that there are far less hidden places than in Classic WoW.. and a lot of the exploration feeling has gone because of flying mounts.

I was quite interested in Aion until i started to gather more information about it. It features a "channel-system" like Guild Wars and Age of Conan. This means you are inside some encapsuled zone and not all the players in the same zone are really around you. Also this implies having loading screens or portals / NPCs instead of smooth transitions between the zones.

I played Vanguard at launch and left due to the bugs and general unreadiness of the game. Similarly to the writer I went back at random a week ago, and I'm amazed at how much it's grown. Specifically regarding distance, they've solved those issues entirely. There's a great rift-way system (read: flight point) which essentially teleports you anywhere you want. You don't even need to pre-explore to find them. The game keeps lower level players away from higher end zones by simply making those "rifts" more expensive, so at the low levels it's cost prohibitive, but by the time you're an appropriate level it's pennies.

On top of that they added flying mounts which are rentable for a few minutes at a time. So rift where you want to go, grab a bird and complete the trip. You can get your own flying mount later as well.

I find myself wanting to travel a lot in general just to explore because there is so much more content than there used to be. Tons and tons of named mobs that drop nice loot that you'll just want to wander into.

The draw-distance problem seems solved on my system as well. I have a recent video card (GTX 285) with a 3+ year old machine, and I keep them up pretty high - I can see forever, and it's by far the most impressive vista's I've ever seen in any mmo.

If anyone's interested, I posted a big overview of my newbie experience in the last two weeks in their forums. It's here: http://forums.station.sony.com/vg/posts/list.m?topic_id=49540. They've also fixed the only big that was annoying me (and mentioned in that post) this week, so I'm completely happy with the game now.

Honestly the only problem I still have with this game is that the community isn't as big as it SHOULD be.

=Luke

Sorry Incognito Guy, your research on Aion isn't entirely accurate. That channel system only exists until level 20 or so, while the beginning areas are densely populated. For the PvPvE content and beyond, the channel system ceases to exist. Smart imo.