The only game which I found on equal with AoC (not in terms of combat or PvP) was EQOA. People laugh all the time when I say that, but every place you went there was something interesting going on that just exploring was fun, even at 60. Non-instanced, fluid world transitions, rotating weather cycles, there was nothing dull in the game except the tedious group grind forced to level up past 50. Finding weird places to bring a group to farm, or stealing other people's mobs, the game was genuinely fun, for a pve game.
The fact AoC is instanced makes all the world maps feels small, and another reason why I think contributed to the PvP servers failing because population was never consolidated because of it. AoC still has the best combat system. After trying WoW, SWTOR, GW2, and ESO, the PvP in all those games is basically trash compared to AoC. No collision, gear based combat, with gimmick style auto wins, casual MMO's have the worst PvP. That's what I always liked about AoC, at launch it made NO apologies for being a FFA PvP based game where you had to watch your back from day 1.
Most players have forgotten this or never knew it...