Yeah players are 80 now, my guild has 6 of them, but the leveling really isn't that much faster than WoW if any. Remember all the stuff on this forum alone about people hitting 70 in 2 days played? Thing here is that people are very familiar with MMO's now and at launch there were many people focused on hitting 80 asap so they grinded the crap out of it. The 80's are kind of a nuisance on the PvP servers though, especially if you happen to be KoS with their guild

Either way the game is still hella fun even with the broken stuff. I absolutely love the melee combat and the healers aren't relegated to healbots which is also really nice. I'd say if they finish out the game the way they started (levels 1-50) it's going to be stellar. End game remains to be seen for everyone at this point.