Despite Arenanet's terrible community management and development promises, GW2 wasn't "just another MMO". It promised and delivered radically new things that were previously foreign to MMOs, like how Living Stories were played out, as well as the healthiest free-market economy I've ever seen in any game - and everyone that's ever seen my posts on the *shudder* Era section about how laughable the economy is, knows how picky I am about them. It went away with features of traditional MMOs like the mob single-drop which is incredibly frustrating in Archeage and other MMOs and encouraged cooperating with strangers if one so wished to do so. Quests have no annoying backtracking, dynamic events actually feel like quests you have to complete and not "Kill 15 rats and return to farmer José!" World vs. World, when played right, is by far the greatest cross-server PvP since Dark Age of Camelot. The thrill of being able to step up and lead a zerg of 40+ players on your server, especially when a lot of tactical and strategical thinking came to play on reset nights - can't find it in any other MMO.

Archeage brought two new features to MMOs - open world housing and the redesigned dynamic class system. While the class system was pretty neat and finally not terribly two-dimensional and linear, it ultimately was wasted due to how poor combat mechanics are in the game. It felt like I was playing a 2D version of Arma 2. Open world housing might as well be instanced since no one gives a **** about your house other than you and guildmates, and it's limited to housing districts. What's "open world" about that? Other than this, it's absolutely no different than your traditional MMO.

I now understand why I've never heard about this game in NA throughout its life in Korea until an NA patch was announced.

I'd actually prefer that ransoms weren't interested in entering my house while I'm away, thank you.

Open world means being able to go anywhere without being confined to a quest, not being able to place a house wherever. Also, it follows society's standard of having set places for housing, I don't think you'd rather build a house in the middle of the wilderness where you leave and get instantly aggro'd by several mobs. Not only that but if houses could go ANYWHERE, people would be trolls and block quest objectives and key areas. So don't whine about limited housing spaces, it's meant to prevent frustration.

As for the 2D ARMA feel, I don't understand that at all because you can travel however you want and where you want.

Combat has more depth than most MMOs, idk why your complaining about that either. It's not pick a class and go with it, you mix any 3 classes to create your own play style. It shouldn't matter whether it's traditional auto target combat or click every strike, you'll still be using skills 90% of the fight anyways.

Then play a game with instanced housing.

I would like houses in the middle of nowhere and would love to PvP around my house, which is why I'm glad they added housing on the PvP continent. And, "society's rules" (whatever this means) also state you can buy unused land, especially land in the middle of nowhere and build your own property.

I'm not talking about how the class system affects fighting. I think the class system is one of the best among MMOs. I also loved a lot of the abilities, bar some of the Sorcery CC spells, and thought it had pretty nice balance among each profession - and stealth was done correctly in this game, which is a rarity. That wasn't the problem. The problem was actual gameplay and how it felt to play the game. After playing games with much better gameplay feel like GW2 and even ****ing SWToR, Archeage feels as clunky and rigid as a game from the 1990's. Animations provide zero fluidity, it doesn't even feel like an MMO. It feels like an RTS, if anything. Play almost any other modern MMO like GW2 or even Wildstar and you'll understand what I'm talking about. It's hard to prove a point when the other party doesn't know your reference points.

Oh, and Archeage's gearing system and stat distro is just LOL