Personally, I think AH has the fundamentals more nearly right than any other game currently out there in WW2 flightsim MMOL land, and its track record of steady progress is second to none.
Bottom line is gameplay. If the gameplay is good, you'll enjoy the game. If the gameplay is bad, you won't enjoy it no matter how excellent the graphics are. AH's graphics are perfectly adequate, and cause far less of a framerate hit than those in other games, thus enabling better frame rates with larger numbers of players.
For land warfare, sure, WW2OL is excellent. But it's a beast of a program compared to AH. And AH's ground warfare is probably the best amongst the MMOL flightsims, and that is steadily improving, too. IL2 has superb graphics and some very nice features, but isn't MMOL, and is another beast of a program with loooong load times. WBIII has potential but isn't really out of beta yet, and is yet another huge beast of a program compared to AH (and still with a smaller planeset than WB2 had, and smaller terrains).
Every game I've tried has been deficient in its early-war plane set to start with. AH seems to be expanding its planeset faster and more often than most other games. (shrugs)... it isn't perfect, but it's better than the competition, IMO. What we, the players, actually DO with it may be another matter, but the fundamental game is IMO superb.
Esme