A buddy of mine got me into Aion. It's pretty sweet!
After dumping EA/Biowaste's SWTOR like the load of garbage that it is, I took my buddy up on his suggestion and joined him in Aion. And like I said it's pretty sweet! The graphics are gorgeous and the world is alive and filled with nuances. Combat is pretty cool... well, for warriors at least; with solid impacts, impressive animation and good sound effects. Mages aren't very fun to play, at least not in the beginning from what I've seen so far. The interface is pretty functional and easy enough to get the hang of. Doing quests (grinding) is still little more than click it till it dies but it feels satisfactory, mostly because the world is so fun to watch. And the game hasn't messed me up yet, so the design feels pretty solid.
There's day/night cycles, weather patterns, birds fly by, fish can be seen swimming in the streams... there's just a lot of details that are fun to watch. The character editor is extremely robust. The aesthetic for characters is very Asian/Final Fantasy inspired, so that might appeal to fans of JRPGs.
There are hardly any F2P restrictions, although it's pretty stupid that they limit you to two characters per account... you can just create as many accounts under another email address as you like.