I played my ToS to 43-46 or something like that (can't remember), and one of each archetype through the Tortage (to see the whole story of Tortage, as each archetype sees different parts of the story; what can I say, I am a sucker for a good story). I guess I have to mention that I was in the beta from autumn 2007, so I knew what I was heading for. I bought the game because I knew Tortage quests are great. Altough it was quite worrying that I was in the majority of beta testers who were *not* allowed to see the world outside Tortage or crafting system, or much about anything else for that matter (and I have to admit I mostly did focus on the PvP games during testing, which I then didn't play at all after the game went live). The game was released waaaay too early, but its release date had been postponed already so many times it prolly was not an option anymore.
The game has great gfx, but expecially the sounds and music in the game are fabulous. Tortage is wonderful. I sent myself a buddykey which I activated in January, and Tortage is still wonderful and now there are no bugs either. However, after Tortage it did seem the same old story was still true: The quality of the drastically drops after Tortage.
Still, I am not sorry I spent the 40 euros on the game. It has some wonderful things not seen in other games, and it has some fabulous stories. Sadly there are too few of the good stories to compensate for the grind grind grind grind.
The suckiest thing about the game was however that it was absolutely horrible to play something as a group, and I don't know if that as improved. The guild UI was pure shit, but even that was not as bad as the party UI. People being in same place but different instance... It just felt wrong. Also, the world didn't feel that big because of the travel system.
FunCom has shown with AO and AoC they have a tendency of having catastrophic failures with games at launch. Hopefully they will improve and make AoC a superb game over the years like they've done with AO, because AoC deserves that in my opinion.