Great step in the right direction for a game with a rocky start.
Unfortunately AOC failed to capitalize on its huge expectations in one very specific way: it was released way too early. Its awesome new combat system and disgustingly beautiful (and efficient) graphics engine were marred by a lack of content and extremely buggy gameplay. As a result most of the overnight wow switchers dropped it pretty quickly and moved on. Over time Funcom has made a lot of progress on a game I thought was going to be cancelled a year after release and thankfully its all been a major improvement.
Rise of the Godslayer is no exception in this department. To start with the game is still gorgeous as ever. If you can run it DX10 looks phenomenal however the standard DX9 still looks sexy as hell and runs more smoothly than games that look much crappier due to old engines. The new areas are much larger and less linear now which only adds to the beauty. The only downside of this is that load times have skyrocketed. I kind of wish that my AOC subscription came with a solid state drive to cut back on wait times when transitioning from area to area. Overall though there's probably less time spent on the load screen due to the fact that areas are much larger and require much less session switching.
As always the combat system is awesome, and pvp is the focus of the game. This is to be expected when its a free for all between all players, especially considering that the guards in cities are much less obtrusive now. Depending on your point of view that could be either good or bad, but you can always hop on a pve server if you would prefer to avoid the combat that is so wonderfully facilitated by completely open cities and awesome new landscapes. One of the best things about the new expansion from a pvp aspect has to be the fact that you can literally go anywhere in the cities. Just think about being able to play paintball in a super walmart with all sorts of obstacles set up. Needless to say it can get hectic but fun.
The big new addition of course is the factions. They serve both as a story advancer as well as an extremely good way to get all sorts of new gear. Its hard to completely convey the complexities of the faction in a review but let me take a crack at it. You can have up to 5 factions friendly with you, which automatically makes you hostile to the opposing faction. Each of them has certain types of armor and weapons so you do need to pay attention to who you choose, but there are a good three or four factions that should have the kind of gear you'd like. The customization is endless considering that there are three versions of each faction piece per type of armor, and that doesn't include the dungeon pieces or pvp gear. You attain faction gear by getting the required level (doing quests or grinding the enemy faction) and then turning in tokens that are rewarded for questing. There's definitely a bit of time to this but there are ways to get large amounts of token at once which I won't go into.
The Alternate Advancement system is the other big new change, adding a new level of character customization in place of a new level cap. Think of it as a new feat tree with no limit to how many points you can have The catch is that the points don't come easily. You can choose to use an eve like time training systems (which you should always have running whether you're on or not) but you also earn prowess (pvp) and mastery (pve) points which are used in different combinations to rank up the new tree. These two systems combined mean that no matter how much time you spend in game you'll definitely be adding to your bag of tricks quickly. I'm not sure how nice the perks are yet (equippable abilities that have some sort of affect on your player) but from what I've read on my own AA tree they look very nice.
Overall I'm loving the new expansion at the moment. The world is a an extremely fun place to play which I can't say for all MMOs. The factions have already given me something to set my sights on and I'm sure that won't change as there are so many mix and match options between factions, not including the awesome new pet/mount faction rewards. I have had the chance to try a few dungeons and they definitely fit the character of the new world while not being obscenely hard... yet.
Its also worth mentioning that you can start a character from Khitai now, though the new race is nothing terribly special. The more exciting news for leveling players is that after leaving Tortage at 20 you can spend about 20 levels in the gates of Khitai as opposed to the old city of your choice. The new area gives life to those leveling alts and adds content to what was becoming somewhat of an annoying grind.
So there you have it. after a few days I'm thouroughly enjoying the game and I have plenty of reason to believe that we're only scratching the surface of how fun this is going to get. Hopefully it manages to pull in the numbers they expected because its definitely not an MMO I'd like to see flushed down the toilet by larger, less creative endeavors.