I actually think that the great strenght of Tortage is voice acting, not much more. Sure, some quest chains are very well written and make nice little stories (Tarisha, Otho, Xantia's Wrath...), but that's the case for many other area. Turan, for instance, have some very well written quest. But I guess Tortage leaves better memories because of voice acting and immersion that result of it. That make them overlook their annoying flaws. Seriously the number of going back and forth between point A (usually tortage) to point B (usually Acherionian Ruins) are ridiculous, but the cool story and voiced dialog make you don't really mind.
Only real gripe I have with the leveling part of Age of Conan is that until post-80, a bit too much boss encounters in low level dungeon are brainless tank&spank. Sure there's awesome boss such as Shaddrizzar or Toirdealbach's bosses, but a bit too often it's Atzel-tier tank & spank.
After 80 and khitai, nearly every single bosses have a cool little gimmick or mechanism.
Yeah, I know that. I took the example of going 1-80 because you said you didn't like the idea of putting a limit on the system, and that player should be free to use their point as they wish. Which might raise the problems I mentioned. Problem is that as soon as you acknowledge there should be a restriction somewhere you will have an arbitrary limit. For instance, some says they shouldn't allow any transfer out of Rage because they risk of dupe/cheat item even though it's punishing for the honest players. Other will state they should allow it but with a low gold limit; other no limit, and so on. Same goes with real life. Some workspace have a total restriction on music because some idiots might be blasting crap at full volume. It might be annoying as hell but they have to put a limit somewhere, when common sense (aka reasonable volume) doesn't work.
What I'm saying is that putting no limit at all might induce abuse, which from a dev/community point of view is not cool; even if I agree that on the other hand putting one might make things not cool on a player point of views.