Hypothetically speaking: I bet that anyone who has good experience with arcade fighting games and FPS games would have gotten the system in a few hours and liked it. However, considering that the average person playing MMOs these days isn't mentally or physically agile enough to handle such games as mentioned above; I could see why the decision was made.

It still looks as though FUNCOM is very much approaching AOC with "Player Skill > Character Skill/stat > Gear" in mind, rather than giving the game the typically retarded "auto attack" + mindlessly hit same button-over-and-over grind-for-gear feature that we see in most other MMOs.

[Linked Image]

[Linked Image from nodiatis.com]