The Tortage levels also focus on the player, whereas later ones don't. The change can be surprising. Returning to your homeland throws you out of a city where the story so far has been all about you, into a much larger area where you're just one of thousands of similar characters. Even though you'd been running all sorts of unrelated Tortage quests in the daytime, the destiny quests at night focused on your character, their fate and their background. They're even customized to take your class and homeland into account. Once out of Tortage, though, you'll have to go through ten whole levels before taking on another destiny quest and exploring the next chapter in your fate.

Is it reasonable to expect Funcom to have kept up the Tortage level of focus on your character? Probably not, but there are other directions they could have gone in - and still could take - to make the AoC experience post level 20 a richer one. Most importantly, they could make more of the game's potential for factions, potential that Tortage does utilise.