Well, since there are a few people talking about AC, I think I'll give you a
general rundown of what I've noticed and correct a few things people have
said. At least from a monk's point of view. I won't even get into spells
cause that's a whole other bucket of worms...

Pros:
* Can customize face and initial clothing to some extent, nice sliders and
drop boxes.
* Appearance and initial clothing choices determined by 'heritage', as well
as some items can be only used by one of the 3 choices.
* Auto-aim on melee means you always follow and whack the mob/player that
you are attacking (many PvPers on EQ should be drooling over this)
* Can decide which weapons, if any, you would like to specialize in, and
only a few can't be used unless trained
* Unarmed combat actually lets you use some weapons, so it's not really
unarmed combat...
* Fighters can get nifty elemental weapons with ice/fire/lightning/acid
coming off of them so that they don't have to have mage-particle envy like
on EQ ;)

Cons:
* No provision for dying clothes a different color at a later time.
* Easy to get whacked fatally by a big huge monster someone let out before
you can even see it. Usually in EQ I've at least had time to panic.
* Lag can cause you to move slower and eventually stop altogether, basically
running in place. BUT it's not as bad as the stop-walk-jerk-stop-walk-stop
motion from UO I always had, even when I had a good connection.
* If you want an armor bonus of some sort for being an unarmed combatant,
forget it. But your bare hands still are damn fast. You can specialize in
defensive skills or raise the attributes behind those skills though.
* No mend, but if you were willing to take points away from vital fighting
statistics you could get stats to help you use Healing Kits.

Other notes:
* Initial 3rd person perspective can be changed to 1st person by hitting
Del, but it does look kinda funny.
* Custom character lets you do some weird combos, like you can have a
super-fast and coordinated guy who specializes in a dagger, so he can't hit
but he can avoid everything :)
* If you got a beta invite and plan on playing the game, don't choose a
pre-made character type unless don't have any time to choose your own stats.
The characters you can come up with yourself are more fun.
* Oh, BTW, archery is actually affordable in AC.
* For some reason AC actually has some "safe zones" built into the
landscape, like walls that monsters cant climb the ladders too. Weird, huh.