I played for a couple years starting with closed beta.  Actually met my wife playin 

.  We just reactivated this weekend to try it out again.  It can be a little tedious to play at first but once you get into a bigger guild and start doin castle sieges it gets to be a lot of fun.  Nothin like epic battles involving hundreds of players.  So far it seems like they have done a lot to make the early lvl grind much easier and faster.
The second video on this page made me want to play again:
http://www.lineage2.com/pds/pds_movie.html