I was very impressed with Aion, but I will digress - the movement irritates me.
What I mean is, to move from one place to another is just such a flippen mission. Flight points costs crazy amounts of money and are few and far between. Running through areas is impossible with mobs around and dying is a huge schlep.
I would have the same problem with Guild Wars if they did not have instant Map Travel.
What I enjoyed most about WoW was roaming around aimlessly through areas without dying constantly and pulling aggro from 10,000 mobs. It had its serenity that I could not find in Aion.
such a lazy ass

, dude when i started to a play online game (nwn1, waterdeep) we had to RUN all the way and back. there was no teleporting from, to the leader or back to town. if you died, tough luck you have to rerun all the way. not to mention the gm at that time running it limited the bloody gold you could get from the seller as well as the total amount of healing potions till next server reboot.
for gold, well go play aion 'ah' for it

.
most of the issues i would say is misconception and wrongfully expectations. you can't for example expect a "western" mmo when it clearly was made for and firstly by easterners as well as tones and elements kept from GW. most people seem to forget this. just to point out two things:
a) roaming mobs and a lot of them as it was with GW.
b) funny/'girly' toony graphics with overwhelming fantasy touches to it as with most korean or jrpgs.
yes aion is f****** expensive. it is by far the most expensive mmo i've played to date and you will have to work for mats, money and leveling. i mean geez it is 3500 kinah per profession not like casual-joe-wow mere 10 gold to start off with. though i've yet to have a real cash problem yet anyways.
shadowfox: aion has been realistically running 1 year prior in korea and that is why it is so smooth at launch in the west and yes how long is wow in the running, how much time did blizzard have to sort out their problems ? quite a long time has passed for them since their initial launch and oh boy it was a shaky ride in the beginning...
...i'm totally bought into aion. for it is specifically the 'eastern/korean' touch i like in the game it self. it sucks me in and at least can hold my imagination and attention. if a game can't do that rather go try something else
i can't however wait for these to try out
secret world
knights of old republic
star trek
mortal online
huxley
guild wars 2
i have finally quite my hellgate korean account why ? because hanbit soft has taken away all the difficulty levels and made it two being normal and hardcore. so no more elite or elite hardcore which as about the only reason why i kept my hellgate account was to be able to finished the damned thing on hard core elite nightmare after a hard core elite run. not to mention being able to run around stone henge on those difficulty levels with group and seeing how far we can push it.