I see a lot of negative reviews on these forums so I decided to give my own review as it's not negative and but entirely positive either.

Game installation:

Installing the game takes incredibly long. I think it took me about 15 to 20 minutes, and that doesn't include updating. The installation didn't give any problems though, I only needed to let it run while doing something else for a bit. Updating went surprisingly fast. I had to download a file of about 230 MB and it took about 2/3 to half the time it normally takes when I update a game.

Entering the game:

God this sucked. It was utterly horrible. Half the time the game just froze, restarted my pc or gave an error and had to close. Then I used a small tip I found on the forums. "let the patcher finish, then delete 3 cache files and start the game." This worked incredibly good. Game loading time went down from 5~10 minutes to 30 seconds or so. Loading times went from 10~15 minutes to 30~50 seconds and a max of about 2~3 minutes when you first load your character. I also didn't get any error or game freeze anymore. I hope they fix this issue before retail. If not, it's not the end of the game but it will still be annoying.

Graphics:

The graphics are stunning. They're almost as good as they are in crysis, if not just as good. Forests look like real forests with bushes, grass and trees everywere. The ground has a very realistic texture and the water looks pretty realistic. If you have DX10 even more so. Downside is that because of the graphics the game is also very demanding. I recommend a minimum of 2 gig RAM, a duo core processor, and a GeForce 7800 or better video card (don't know what this would be for ATI) Another downside is the bloom effect. It makes anything that has the sun shining on it a bit too bright in my opinion.

Gameplay during the singleplayer mission:

This mission has been very well done. It's not too hard so you don't have to worry about tactics yet, and it gives you all the time you need to learn the basics of your character and things like the UI and movement. It's a short mission that takes about 15~20 minutes in total and at the end you'll be level 5, which gives you the 2 starting skills of your class.

Gameplay overall:

Overall gameplay takes a while to get used to. It's a very different style from all other games I've played so far. You need to click for every attack and you also have 3 directions that you can attack from. (left, front, right) Most skills also take a combination of those 3 directions to successfully use. Spells are generally just click and cast though.

Sound:

The sound has been very well done. In forests you hear birds and animals, on the beach you can hear the sea and sometimes some seagulls, in the city you hear many sounds that go with them, on teh docks you can hear the ships and cranes working. It gives you a great immersive feeling wherever you go. The music is also very fitting. In forests it's something calm, in city's something that you'd hear from street performers, in combat something with more energy.

Level and skill system:

It's pretty easy to understand. You don't add stats yourself as this is automatically done by the game. You can however, add skillpoints to the skills you have. Things like bandaging (more hp regen) perception (hide detection) and renew mana (mana regen) You have a LOT of skillpoints however. his could have been toned down a bit in my opinion. (at lv 10 or so you have like 700 skillpoints and each skill can be upped to about 200)

Something that is a bit of a let-down is the "feat system". It basically is exactly the same as the WoW talent system. I was hoping for something more original.

Class Balance:

This still needs work. Classes like the demonologist and ranger can easily kill most classes, while classes like the bear shaman and dark templar struggle a lot. This can, however, be different at level 60~80.

PvP:

World pvp sucked in the open beta on the last day. It was a free for all, no rules, no penalty's gank fest. It's even worse than wow pvp servers. I really hope that they make rules and enforce them when retail hits the shelves. Otherwise you probably won't see me anywhere near a pvp server.

Minigame pvp, however, is pretty nice. Capture the flag, deathmatch, and another one I believe have a good system and nicely made instances for them. I'm looking forward to playing them more in retail.

Game score:

Game startup: 3/10          Originality: 7/10

Gameplay: 8/10                Sound: 9/10

Graphics: 7/10                  Level system: 7/10

Class balance: 6/10       PvP: 7/10

                       Overall: 7/10

Conclusion:

This game is already great, but it has some minor and some major setbacks. It has a very high potential to become the next WoW in popularity, if the developers take the time to work on the major setbacks. I myself am going to buy the game as it looks like a better game than WoW in graphics, gameplay and balance.

Please give me your opinions too on the different parts of the game I addressed.

Funcom did a great job of fixing the bugs and balancing out AO - I'm sure they will do the same with AoC.

Very nice review and i feel that it was accurate. I enjoyed my time playing and can't wait til the 17th to really dig in. I also do hope that some of the issues you mentioned are fixed soon. All in all the game play was alot of fun IMO and the combat was fast paced. The graphics were very detailed and the sound XF man I loved them. I think once these minor problems are ironed out this will be alot of fun. I have two level 70's on WoW and three level 80's on EQ2 and feel that i am ready to move on to a new game and so far i like what i have seen. There were some zones that i counted over 50 people in it and i was able to move pretty smooth. The only time i began lagging was after repeated zoning or game loading from the over 100 pvp deaths i was sustaining "yea I sucked" and not to mention the peeps camping the respawn points for easy kills.

That was a pretty good review based on the limited time we had to play. I agree that the game looks beautiful but that is one of the main probs with stability I think, I run a 8800 gts on my system and on high/med settings it did struggle in places and when there were a lot of other people present like Tortage and the city hubs, once the server population spreads out this shouldn't be that much of an issue. I'm hoping by the time border PvP is available to the masses that they will have optimised the client by then ................... iI can hope cant I? lol

Game installation didn't seem that big a problem for me but as it was installing direct from hard drive its gonna take a while, when you install from the disk that shouldn't be as big a problem.

I agree that initially entering the game was a pain in the ass before the PvP patch, sometimes when we were in Tortage I would crash zoning between major areas and back but the patch solved that.

Single player Q's were standard MMO fare for the most part go from point A to point B and give/kill monster/Npc etc but the cut scenes were good as they helped with immersion. Nothing new really but if it ain't broke don't fix it.

Overall game play was good, enough to keep me interested and the eye candy makes everything a bit more real in a way, I wouldn't have minded if they had gone for less flashy graphics and a more open world but I'm quite happy with what they have given us overall.

Class balance will be addressed over time, its the same with any MMO from WoW to EQ2 there are always going to be balance issues especially at launch, I'm confident that the guys at FC will do the right thing on that score.

I'm not goin to comment on PvP as I don't think the FFA PvP event was a true representation of what PvP will be like when the game launches.

I agree the skill tree system is very WoW like but hey it worked there so why not, I hope there is a system in place to respec if you go wrong, I didn't see one in beta but it was beta after all.

Good review many thanks.

These are only my initial thoughts. I have only played a dark templar and a barbarian so far and haven't played beyond level 20. (level 13 and 19).

Game start-up: 5/10
Pros: 
- Very very fast patching, even with huge updates. I get at least 700KB/s with my 6mb connection (full speed).
Cons: 
- Lot of loading. 
- Several annoying splash screens from various companies (thankfully you can click past them, but still...) 
- When your character is loaded and enters the game world (or a new area for that matter), some details gets rendered on the fly making it a chunky experience the first few seconds (would prefer to get the whole mess fully loaded the first time)

Originality: 7/10
Pros:
- The combat system. I was very sceptic, but after I'm getting more and more comfortable with it, I also enjoy it more and love it now.
Cons:
- No matter how I look at it, the combat system is still all about button mashing.
- Quests are like in any other mainstream mmo out there. Gathering quests, fed-ex quests and kill quests pretty much sums it up.

Gameplay: 6/10
Pros:
- I'm not bored yet.
Cons:
- There's so much loading going on all the time that it's starting to become a problem for me in order to fully enjoy the game.
- Not sure how it will be later on, but in the starting area the world feels like a maze, like you can only run along some clearly defined paths. That's what I disliked about Guild Wars and made me quit, I'm starting to think that the story will be the same for AoC.

Sound: 10/10
Pros:
- It's just perfect! From ambient sound, voiceovers, combat sound to music - wow!
Cons:
- Can't think of anything

Graphics: 9/10
Pros:
- Breathtakingly beautiful world
- Awesome and highly detailed models
- Even the details have details
Cons:
- Can be very demanding on your system
- Some unfortunate clipping issues here and there
- Animations could be improved upon, but nothing seriously wrong
- I have had a few problems with my character's head doing some wierd stuff (like spinning around, facial tattoos disappearing). Relogging fixed it on both occations and I haven't experienced it since.

Level system: 7/10
Pros:
- Great "WoW-like" talent trees with very interesting feats to help define your character.
- The pace I level up feels just right, not too fast or slow
Cons:
- I'm not sure what I think about the passive skills (climbing, hiding, bandaging etc.)
- Nothing new or VERY exciting about it, pretty mainstream

Overall score: 7/10
I'm not sure I'm going to play AoC, but that said, I'm sure the game will be a succes and will have a healthy community and subscriber base. It's just not a game for me so far. Will wait and see how life after level 20 is before making a final decision.

(sorry for any bad english)

Thanks for the great replies and I'm glad I gave a good review. It's my first for any game so far. ^^;;

Anyway I can understand that this game isn't for everyone. It brings some new things and keeps to some old concepts as well, and some people don't like the new things that they added. But like said before, I can also see this game having a good playerbase. Maybe WoW will stop dominating the mmo market almost completely now. :P