As you said yourself, you only played archeage for alpha/beta through launch. The majority of us here have had to level up alts on archeage servers at least 2 times (first launch, first fresh start) and then a third time (third fresh start) and that's not counting all the alt characters we had to level up. The quests in this game aren't very interesting, they're mostly kill x amount of mobs or go fetch this.
Even if they lowered the exp rates, you still wouldn't be getting a slow progression unless they launched a pre-1.0/1.0 private server. This is version 2.9, and there are so many catch up mechanics in game that it makes progression much faster than what you remember. All private server bonuses aside, there's still: temporary farm cart merit award, temporary merchant ship merit award, obsidian weapons, soul forged weapons, obsidian armor, auroria gear, armor/weapon crafting manors.
Those mechanics, which are hardwired into the game, do way more to speed up progression than an increased exp rate. All the increased exp rate does is let you skip the boring parts of the game and get you to the point where you can really choose what you want to do with your time and enjoy the remaining sand in the sandbox.
