I discovered this game about a week ago and quickly became a backer.

I played WoW since Vanilla and off and on throughout the years (most in Wrath) up through the beginning of Legion. What AoC captures that I think most other MMOs miss the mark on is the emergent gameplay. The closest successful MMO that I can think of that has done this incredibly well is EVE Online. I played this too many years back and quit when my alliance was expecting me to get up at 2am for ops. The common thread I see between these is scarcity. That is what makes the node system work and makes the interactions between players meaningful. After watching many of the live streams, I believe they will hit the sweet spot between risk and allowing players to feel that their progression is meaningful. It was always sad to enter a bad engagement in EVE, lose your ship, and (if you were unfortunate) your pod, potentially losing hours or days of skill points in you had not updated your clone. The threat of loss made the game more exciting than the majority of memories I have in WoW.

Even if AoC is not a WoW killer, I expect it will have an enthusiastic player base. Let's hope AoC doesn't end up in the Star Citizen development hell ;)