Not impressed with AoC and sick of WOW. Have heard some real slid stuff on theur website regarding huge improvements since game came out. How does it play? Is it smooth like WOW? How is the variety of characters, weapons, gear, quests, etc? Thanks!
I just decided to give Vanguard a shot and loving it. The wide openness and complex crafting have been awesome to me. Although the crafting can be very frustrating, especially when you lose your stuff because you messed up the process, but it feels rewarding when you do it right and at a high quality. The classes are very fun, especially the Necromancer. I am currently at level 16 Necro. Makes a great solo class. I haven't done diplomacy yet so I can't comment on that.
There are little things that also make the game cool. Actually being able to see the sun rise and set, seeing a storm off in the distance, a rented flying mount that you control so you aren't taken on a 10 minute trip when it should only take 3 minutes as the bird flies ala WoW.
Does it run smooth? Well no. It is much better than it was at release, and after some tweaking runs decently and still looking good on my 2 Ghz iMac with 2 gigs ram under Boot Camp/XP. (My FPS gows from 35 down to under 10 depending on weather, location, and time of day. Night gets a bit choppier for some reason.)
Gear? Well the stuff I have seen is pretty boring visually, but maybe that changes at higher levels.
Quests? Tons of quests all over the place. And you dont feel like you are on rails. Don't want to level up at a particular quest 'hub'? Look around for another. Although gear rewards for quests seems pretty few and far between currently at my level of quests. Seems to be about 99% monetary rewards.
Travel. There are plenty of ways to get around. A riftway system that can get you to areas quickly. You get your first mount at level 10. And as I mentioned before, controllable rented flying mounts. There is a permanent flying mount you can get at the end game.
Hopefully the trial island stuff will be done soon and it brings in more players. If you do go ahead and pick up a copy, which you can probably find cheap, go to the Seradon server. The others are ghost towns.
My .02.