One is a polished, mature game, one is a buggy, poorly thought out pile of crap. Not sure that's the comparison you were going for.
PvP system is proof enough, especially with "hardcore" PvPers spiel'ing about it since the game game out. EQ you lost experience, UO you stood to lose your gear. And in WoW, a bit of time and that's about it. Only teens and younger kids would be furious about losing any of their epics to PvP but I suppose that's the very reason it's as successful as it is today. Without fear of losing anything to PvP it gives a lot more incentive for people to stay and grind.
As for your comparison, since I will assume you are as arrogant and superficial as ever and you think AoC is the buggy PoS game and WoW is the polished one. If that's the case, WoW was far from polished when it first came out. AoC has time to iron out the bugs but it won't be too long before they both will have to see what Mythic brings with WAR.
And as for Lich King, the lack of Ulda when planned proved Blizzard won't be fully ready for that release. I'm skeptical siege engines will actually be in there on release day, how long after release did it take them to implement BGs again? And wasn't that slated for release?