And yeah, Ash Gromnies were the bane of so so so many players.
Similar with the min-max:ing of the class-less system. :) IIRC, the aforementioned "dagger warrior" was designed around two things: double attacks at max attack power, and mobs not being able to land a hit. The perfect glass cannon that made it possible to survive AC's harsh lands even when under-leveled - or die instantly. :)
The size of the world was another thing that drew me in - another kind of "grind", if you will. Seeing other players whoosh:ing by - literally running by, in a mount-less world - was pretty hilarious, but the fact that it took time to get around was only a good thing IMO. I want a game world where the only option is to carefully navigate a large, dangerous desert to find the missing ingredient. The current theme-park MMO juggernaut seems to lock most things behind some "boss" and be done with it, which makes the game world pretty void of other players in most places. You just move on to the next quest hub and leave old content behind for ever. This also makes the world, regardless of its actual size, only feel as big as the current "zone" (I don't like "zones").
But in the end, the developer needs the game to be profitable and the players want the most out of their money spent. If my wants belong with a minority group the game probably won't cater to me.
Not really sure what my point is (old man yelling at clouds with contempt for "instant gratification" perhaps), but thank you for AC and the time you spent developing it! :)
I think I mentioned this in another comment and certainly a ton over the years - but a lot of the magic of AC was that it was made by a bunch of people who had never made a game before, much less an MMO, and there were very few ingrained lessons, so we were foolhardy enough to just do things the way it felt we should, player behavior or other consequences be damned. It was built on hopes and dreams and naivete and that made it beautiful and flawed.
But also yeah, once something ships to players, it's now "theirs" and not "ours". We stood in pretty stark contrast to EQ's "you're in our world now" philosophy, again, for better or worse.
I haven't really given it any serious thought but I'd likely start with trying to more strongly codify the good parts (incentivizing smaller circles inside of the larger structure, making systems for patrons/vassals to play together in more meaningful ways, etc) while highlighting the positive actions that players could do / benefit from. I don't want to say AC was TOO opaque but a lot of it definitely suffered from being over designed for a very hardcore market.
Loved AC. Bots kind of killed it IMO (something I feel bad about contributing to), but also new MMOs (WoW decimated the competition when it came out). I remember a portal / recall trick with two vendors, where one would sell a specific thing cheaper than the other would buy it. This was before eBay cracked down on virtual goods. Interesting times.