I did the exact same thing. I finally got a beta key (after signing up nearly 2 years ago) and I was pleasantly surprised by everything I saw and did in game. I was highly skeptical because I read combat wasn't anything special and really, it's not but there's something about the game that really gave me that old EQ1 feel.
Also, I'm currently out of town and all I have is my 11" laptop (which has a GT 650M) and a 23" monitor I brought along with me. The game looks gorgeous and runs amazingly well on my laptop at 1080p. I was pleasantly surprised. So much so, I ordered right after the beta.
Really thought I was done getting buying MMOs for a while but every time one gets close to release, I'm like a junkie trying to get my fix back.
Yeah, it definitely has an old school vibe to it (in a good way). Seems the biggest gripe people have is as you mentioned the combat, but I found it to be decent. Sure it is your typical type of combat but with some like twists in it. I like the limit break stuff for groups and think that is a cool little feature, though I don't think it is completely fair to judge the games combat fully till we are high leveled and truly get to see it with all the skills and stuff.
I am really happy that they are not doing flying mounts. They really take you out of the game world imo. This MMO really seems to want to immerse you into it but have given you the tools to be able to do things quickly if you want as well. The Aethernet is nicely done with being able to travel around quickly and with having mounts getting to a certain spot shouldn't take long at all.
A lot of stuff (be it names, sounds, creatures, etc) gives me a big grin as a long time FF fan (mainly of the first half of the series).
I found the game ran really well too and it looks great. The devs said that there will be higher res textures and DX11 at launch which should be awesome as well. The sound/music is top notch.
I enjoy the class/job system and like the way they have it all setup and even made a separate armory inventory for all the different gear you will need as you level up various class/jobs.
Ton of stuff I just don't know crap about but look at menus and windows for, can't wait.
I've already accepted the fact that I'll probably always play an MMO in some fashion for as far as I can tell. I will say though, I am actually happy that they are staying with the standard subscription model though. I've found that with F2P and B2P games, the community/user base is generally a lot worse in most regards next to sub based games (WoW withstanding as their community is ugh, but that is part of blizz's fault for making the game accessible to anyone that can move an avatar).