Believe me, if Ark 1 had been my first ensemble library I would have wrote even more overblown junk than I do now!!!
I get super epic with the libraries I mentioned...in some ways better than Ark. But that's just me, as I said Met Ark 1 is still a pretty darn badass library imo.
I started out with rock and heavy metal music as a kid (mostly the latter), so Wagner (and Met Ark 1 for that matter) were pretty obviously going to be in my future lol! I just get sounds that make me happier with Iceni, Hollywood, etc. Keep in mind, I must always tag at the end "engineering ability", without that MA1 would have been a constant staple for my epics.