[airspirit]

If you played AC2 in Beta or in the first week or two, I agree, it is very EQish. Since the December content patch, many of those issues have changed, and many will be revolutionized again come January.

Example of combat:
Me (Tonk Healer), 2 Lugian Tacticians, 1 Mage, 1 Archer, and a Melee guy all go to a particularly difficult area to get some killing in (pushing us into the next level for various skills ... look into the levelling system, as it is outstanding so far).

The Tacticians build a number of walls against a cliff face and a couple of turrets (they act just like they sound) inside. The archers and I would draw the mobs in (the archers have the range to draw, and being that these critters consider my Tonk as a racial enemy, they all want to bash my head in ... I'm always target #1). As soon as they catch my scent they lumber after with the archers raining death from above. The melee guy would wade out and make tactical strikes on them as their HPs would go down, and I would retreat into the fortress (that the Tacticians are deperately trying to keep up) and start focusing on keeping everyone alive. The mage would be raining death on things through this whole thing, and the turrets would be blasting away, helping us to wear these things down.

Granted, if we were to walk down the beach and just attack one of these things willy-nilly, we would all die, and it would be rare to get a kill. It is the team tactics that make combat stand out.

Questing Example:
An example of a quest would be the Isle Fortress quest early in the game. It takes good tactics or a MASSIVE team to do this. I went in with a group of five, myself (healer) and four random melee/archer types. We stormed the fortress, and after finding the key to open the dungeon, we went in. While the others attracted attention, I put on a run buff and sprinted through the chaos into the lower levels of the dungeon where I came across a huge barracks type area littered with mobs I could barely kill one on one. There were about 20 of them. I snuck my way through the mess until I came upon the ringleader of the group, drew him out with some sparkage to his head, and killed him assasin style. This drew the attention of the mobs who came running after me while I ran like hell to the top screaming "RUN FOR YOUR LIVES." We all made it out okay (except a young archer who went rogue while I was away), and finished the quest.

The gaming experience is unlike any other MMORPG I've encountered. Really, there are many things to build on herre, and it is a matter of time before the devs put further content in further differentiating it from other games. Those who've played AC and just dabbled in AC2 tend not to like it because it's different: duh! It's supposed to be. Give it a chance, and I think you'll be very impressed.