I was wondering for a while what it was that makes AoC character models look... off. AoC itself looks pretty awesome, and the models aren't even that terrible (but surely not finished yet, either).
Is it the animations? The combat looks fine... but yes, idle animations and all movement needs work, but that's not it.
The zoom? Yes, you can zoom out pretty far, and I'm sure that has something to do with it, but it's not all there is to it, and the model scale (in relation to landmarks and buildings) seems fine.
Then it hit me: The game has no character lighting. I double-checked, and sure enough, AoC chars look like shadows zooming around. Let me show you what I mean with character lighting.
Maybe consider implementing a "torch" function like this that lights up nothing but the character itself, and rethink the distance you can zoom out -- currently, you can turn your char into an ant and see half the zone at max zoom-out.
