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I've never thought AoOs really slowed things down in my game. The biggest slowdowns I see are:

1. Players dithering over what to do on their turn. This includes spending time to look stuff up, like spell descriptions or feats.

2. Calculating combat modifiers (bonuses/penalties to rolls).

For #1, there are various tricks to speed things up a bit, e.g., have them roll all combat dice (attack, damage, crit confirmation, for example) at once, or give them only a certain amount of time to propose and initiate their action. For my tabletop games, we only meet maybe once a month, and most are relatively casual gamers, so taking time for combat doesn't seem to bother us much. If you are playing more often, though, you should expect your players to be familiar with what their characters can do.

One good fix for #1 is to severely limit non-core resources in your game. Most players are familiar with how a fireball works, but you can expect people to be looking up their manyjaws spell unless they use it all the time. You could require them to have a full typed out writeup of every non-core spell their caster knows. That might also cut down on how many such spells they request.

Another thing you could do is streamline non-attack combat options, e.g., by using the Pathfinder CMB/CMD system, where you use a single pair of stats to cover an array of combat maneuvers. Or you could simply forbid certain actions or limit their use (e.g., no bull rushing unless you have the Improved Bull Rush feat or some innate ability that allows it).

For #2, one option is to group different kinds of modifiers together, so they don't stack (e.g., natural armor and armor; deflection, luck, and circumstance; and so on). That will likely have an effect on character building and monster stats though, so it's probably not worth it. Another option might be to have players have signs for common spells that provide modifiers, and display them while they are active (haste, prayer, bless, bard's inspire courage, bull's strength and similar ability boosts, enlarge person are all common examples of this). That also makes it easier for players not to forget active spells, and for you when you hit them with an area dispel!

I personally like the tactical side of 3e combat. I have no problem with combat being tactical. I do think that if you don't like the highly technical side of 3e, it's probably not the system for you.  But if dropping AoOs works for you--go for it!


As an aside, the one rule system I'd most want to get rid of is the alignment system. I'd be fine with keeping alignments as creature and spell subtypes, possibly, but outside of that simply eliminate alignment altogether.