I had the collector's edition for AoC and yes sir it does indeed suck. It didn't help that the seige PvP wasn't included at launch either, that certainly pissed me off.

I haven't been able to find any offers to come back other than starting a new account. Any chance there's a way to check it out with my existing characters other than resubscribing? I never had any problems with the game when I first played it so the bugs that were fixed aren't a concern.

I can agree that AoC does not suck completely, but it's not the über-MMO you describe either.. Some flaws last time I played it:

Very boring/grindy quests after Tortage - Lets face it; these quests could have been done better with a few more months in development.
Leveling to 80 is boring
Still some bugs, though it's impossible to make a MMO 100% bug free.
Going from one of the outer zones back to one of the capitals is way too time consuming.. they could have at least added a taxi system that takes you from one end of the zone to another at epic mount speed.