There is no-other like it. A game that was developed with love and wont take you for a fool.
Anarchy online's setting is Scifi world. Which was little bit off putting to me at first. Eventually it grow on me and I started to love its freshness and uniqueness. It's perfect for this kind of complex game.
The complexity might be a blessing or a curse. When you first enter the world of anarchy online you will get overwhelmed easily. There is so many things that should be taken into consideration already at the early levels. Thankfully, the player community is extremely helpful and happy to help out. Anarchy online's ark's are online helpers that you can summon by petitioning for them. Their sole purpose is to advice you and guide you if you need anything. There is also an excellent organization system, that makes it a very good idea to join early in the game to the org. You can ask for info etc, and members usually are very helpful towards each other.
Back to complexity. If you feel like you don't have much free time in your life to play, but still want to play mmorpg, you should probably try simpler game such as World of warcraft or such. Where you mainly hack and slash. My intentions are not to say WoW is a bad game, I haven't ever played it enough to make that call, but i am saying that AO is going to take some time, but it's the most rewarding mmorpg out there. Mainly because of the complexity you get so much freedom to create something of your own, and you can be proud of something that you have made.
Anarchy online's graphics are outdated, that's a fact, but the content is so rich. There is so much everything. Thousands of different items that all have different effects, and that alone would seperate it from other mmorpg's. But dont worry about that amount of stuff in game, there are excellent sites that are databases for all the times in AO, so you can search and check effects easily. In AO there isn't just one best weapon for one class, you really can throw your imagination into it and create something unique and at same time not necessarily weak.
One thing that was important for me was the fact that there was several classes. It brings so much variety to the game. Every profession has their own way of playing, own strengths and weaknessess. My first character (well not first, but the first I'm not embarrased to talk about) was doctor. My sole purpose was therefore to heal others, so I decided to focus totally on healing, and not use any guns. Focusin for the things that matter. Choices to be made.
Anarchy online is very rewarding game with a great community (I can only speak for the clan side, since i haven't played on omni much). It's not that badly outdated with graphics yet; your eyes will not burn when you play it. I promise. AO demands time though but its all worth it. I recommend you give Anarchy Online a try, especially because its its available for free to play at this moment. I will see you there.