I gave AoC a shot after I read how supposingly well it had become. After installing I spent days to fix their launcher only to download the frigging patch content.
I tried playing Diablo 2 LoD a while back, didn't have any CD's anymore and didn't know that you just can go and download it from their website so I bought the CD's and guess what... failure message when I tried to install LoD.....
I played SOE games for over 8 years... that puts a aluminium hat on your head and you become resistent to most stuff going on in any MMO including down time etc. .
As for the restriction of the Actionbars.... for new Player only leveling, nobody can tell me that you "require" more than two actionbars to play effectively. If you raid/ pvp it can be harder to coop but not impossible.