Actually, I think I saw you on NA1 the other day with a Long Spear when EU1 was down. What was your impression of it, and did you notice any big differences from EU battle?
There is a huge difference in average armor, NA does not armorcrutch like EU does. Ofcourse there is a few people that heavy armor, but the majority wear body armors that are around 40 base armor and I see very little heavy gloves. In EU the average body armor is 45 atleast with mostly heavy gloves. I think it might be as much as a 10 body armor difference on average, which quite changes the perception of damage of weapons and changes the cut/pierce balance around.
Not as much as a preference for long high damage weapons as in EU. Especially noticable with the 2h swords class, mostly HBS and Longswords, compared to 120 range greatswords usually used on EU.
There is a lot less ranged for as far as I can tell, but I wasn't playing at primetime, but I had to worry a lot less about cover and could mostly just fight some good melee fights. Which makes me enjoy my time on NA quite a lot. My choice of playing on NA 1 had little to do with EU 1 being down, I just kinda like playing on NA. It seems to frustrate me less, probably mostly because of the ranged.
There is also very little longspear abuse going on and people seem to not really be used to it as in they are not aware of me being able to hit them. Even though I fail half my stabs due to ping, there are just so much opportunities to stab that I do quite alright.