All players on NA/EU retail servers are bored with H5, many of them are not playing anymore, waiting for GoD pts anxiously, some of them can't wait anymore and they are playing on RU:

New video with some NA players in a group pvp:

hxxp: // www . youtube . com / watch?v = IGcLx5Z - Obg&feature = feedlik

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGcLx5Z-Obg&feature

To Much of Aion is this GoD .... beter cancel l2 project and start impoving Aion ... this is nothing like L2 .....h5 had the last drop of l2 as we know it .....

Have the same feeling, is free to try

agree.

for me it was interlude

Since L2 head developer was dropped from the team (that was around c5 if I'm not mistaken), the game has been going downhill.
The new dev team could not keep up from where the original team left the project, and their work was never complete resulting in many holes in all aspects of the game: plot, design, etc. example the doors behind palibati queen in cemetery, they were supposed to open in an update that never happened, or hellbound area which has been left unfinished ever since.
Take a look at the how nicely designed are some low lvl dungeons like elven ruins, and compare them with later-added catacombs -plain and repetitive walls and pillars. What were they thinking when they introduced catacombs? One would think "nice place to avoid crowded farm spots". But do you think the devs cared about this? No, catacombs was the place to hide all those bots and chinese farmers. And the list can go on and on...
So between the developer bringing the game to its knees with every update since c5 or so, the bots, adena sellers, exploiters (last example go look l2.ws forums how the russkies kill Valakas), and private servers who attempted to offer an alternative to retails corruption, yet they were more corrupted themselves in majority, the game has been going downhill-despite that it maintained that unique l2 feeling that kept people playing. With GOD that unique feeling is diminished, personally I don't see something that will keep me playing anymore. This game could be a true master piece if it had not been milked to death in the name of money.

who cares
life goes on ;]

afterall its all matter of preferences-many like l2 the way it is now and think its much better than before.

Ofc it does, and its time to move on