My pregnancy is over

It's been a little over 9 months since I started playing Darkfall. Time goes by very fast, yesterday I was telling Kall, a fellow clanmate, that I've been playing for 5-6 months. So after the 9 month period, how's my character? Well, I like it, that's for sure, but when I started playing I thought that it would be a lot stronger than it actually is. My stats are nothing special: STR 49 VIT 53* DEX 39 QUI 47 INT 35 WIS 59. As you can see, I haven't been using a lot of magic but this DEX thing is kind of weird because archery is my main weapon. Skillwise it's more of the same, I got good archery skills with Sharpshooter at 93 and using R50 and R60 bows and so is my melee but a little bit lower: Knives at 89, Knives Mastery at 47, Power Attack at 61 and Whirlwind at 57. I still got a lot of training to do with my one hander (1h Axe at 35) but I don't do a lot of mounted combat anyway.
The problem comes with magic. You can't be competitive (you can if you have some friends with you) if you don't have some utility and damage spells. The ofensive spells can be discussed but they remain a very powerful tool for any player, mostly due to rays. On the utility side, it cannot be discussed; without them even entering your own city can be hard (Elendil knows ;-P). Moreover, most of them are not easy to get; you need 100 GM before you can use Confusion (a must if you are outnumbered) and 75 WC before you get your third "heal self" spell. I wonder how long will it take me until I got 75 Spell Chanting if I gotta raise it with Adept and Stamina Bonus. Then I'll be able to buy Arcane and I will have to train it until it dings 50 and I can use Wall of Force.
It's overwhelming and I've already decided not to get stressed by it. I'm gonna use whatever I got when I need to and train certain skills while waiting for an event or a siege to start. I guess this was the way Aventurine intended this to work: most of the players with a set of skills and spells and only a few with the most powerful of them available. Sadly that's not the way it is but I still enjoy the game anyway and I believe Av needs to work on other things aswell ([cough]expansion[cough]).