I played Darkfall from Beta till just before I came to Iraq this time. It is nothing like UO was back in the day. It is a fun game, but the grind is about 50x worse than UO ever was, even after they made gaining easy. They think it's a good idea to have your character only be viable after a 6 month grind. There is also no skill cap, the way you go about crafting is kind of cool, i'll give it that. It's also more over-run with hackers/scripters and botters than UO (at the time of my leaving it was this way and didn't seem any different when I went home for leave in April)
Couple the grind with the fact that there is very little sandbox to the game, it's basically just a FPS MMORPG. Darkfall in no way compares to T2A UO. Darkfall is just what it says it is, Darkfall. Glad you're having fun in it. Wish I could play here but my ping to AV's NA and Euro server is way to insane to even think of playing.
For those of you who do want to try darkfall, go for it. You'll have complete protection from any PK's that decide to raid your starting area for 24hours of played time. It's not enough time to make you viable to fight off said raiders, but it's enough time to get you out of the starting areas where getting PK'd by enemy races and the occasional prick from your race/alliance tends to take place.