The downloads are rather big, and the updater has been known to have a few issues every now and then, and as this \"game\" is still a pre-alpha tech demo, most things will not run smoothly from the first. Please try to work with this :) Planeshift is not EQ, nor will it ever be, and comparisons between the two different systems are rather without point. The thing is that you definitely need those updates, as various crashes and bugs will occur without the fixes they include. Are you sure the updater froze completely for three hours, or perhaps you missed its progress?
The Paths are simply a quicker way of generating stats for your character, if you don\'t want to spend a lot of time working over the details (the Next button). Right now the longer customization seems to be buggy in various parts, so using the Paths is preferred.