I'd love to try joining D&D Encounters to kill some time with a couple hours of casual D&D each week, but does it really have to be level 1 only and Essentials books only?

I find it kind of lame that an official campaign centered around combat encounters with a predetermined plot restricts players to making characters who quickly devolve into at-will spam. I'm not even taking into account the Essentials thing here, even a non-Essentials level 1 character doesn't have that riveting an arsenal of options in combat.

I don't see the purpose of the Essentials-only limitation. It's not like the game can be broken at level 1. So, it's okay to play a VAMPIRE of all things in D&D Encounters, but I can't play a barbarian, a bard, a druid, or a sorcerer (amongst many other classes), because those aren't in Essentials books?

Encounters just looks like so much wasted potential to me.