So,

I have played almost every MMO on the Market.  My top 5 games have been:

1.  Asheron's Call

2.  Dark Age of Camelot

3.  Lord of the Rings Online

4.  World of Warcraft

5.  Everquest 2

I list this in order to frame my review by what I like.  

So I have been playing since Beta (elder Beta Tester) for the CE head start I created my Disciple of Khaine on a Core server.  I have gotten him up to level 15 RR 13 so far.  I have also spent some time completing some of the funny titles (like Emperor, Voyeur, Vain, Easy Target, etc).  I have participated in Tier 1 and Tier 2 Scenarios, Tier 2 Keep sieges and open RvR, Innevitable City Dungeon crawls (level 13, 15, 17), Public quests up to chapter 7, and numerous PVE quests.  

I will start with the bad first (which I think there are a few).  

1.  Queues are both good and bad (good because they show the game is healthy in players) but mainly bad due to difficulty getting back into the game if you have a crash (more on crashes later).  Also they are pretty large on some of the servers.  My server (a CE head start Core one) has regularly close to 300 person queues everytime I try to play.  I think they should hold a spot if you do crash for you for a couple of minutes to let you log back in without losing your spot on the server.  

2.  Loot Link.  It is practically unimaginable that there is no way to link loot to guild chat, tells, or general chat.  This is a needed feature.  How can you honestly share loot without being able to link it.  Plus everyone loves to link a new item they upgraded to. 

3.  Mail Box.  The 20s timer has to go plus they need to add the ability to mass mail items in one email. 

That is pretty much my major complaints for the game.  The starter dungeons are pretty basic but they are only level 13,15,17 dungeons so I won't use that as a complaint until I get more time to explore the higher level dungeons fully. 

The good. 

1.  Fun. The game is just plain fun (imho).  I haven't had this much fun since Dark Age of Camelot doing keep raids honestly.  I find the game and especially the RVR to be the most fun I have had in a long time playing an MMO.

2.  Ease of RVR.  This game puts to rest a lot of the complaints of the "hardcore" vs "casuals".  Bolster allows you to start RvRing right away and the system allows you to earn XP, Money, Reknown, Items all from RVR without ever having to PVE if you don't want to.  It also evens the playing field more then pretty much anyother MMO for RVR.   The one question mark will be reknown rank skills.  Will they end up being like Realm Abilities in DAoC or did Mythic learn their last mistake.  In DAoC RR skills could make you massively more powerful then a equal level player who was new (hence the level 51 people would list as their character level in DAoC).  So far it looks like Reknown Rank skills will not do this but only time will tell. 

3.   Stability.  I said I would mention Crashes and I will.   So far it has been extremely stable to play.  Every single person that I have spoken with who was having issues it was found to either be a driver issue or too low system specs for the game.  My guild leader is running vista with 2 gigs of memory and still doesn't have any major issues. 

4.  Did I mention that it's fun? 

Personally I won't predict a WoW killer but I wouldn't be surprised by a new NA/EU number 2 in the marketplace with a huge amount of subscribers.  It has pretty much all of the positives with few negatives.  It has a good launch to build on and relatively little bad press. 

so, its those things that you dont think about unless it is missing. And yes, those you mention, i have to agree on them. i have chosen on a high population server in Europe, but i havnt experinced any problems logging in after a crash ( have only had 1 over 3 days) the thing that annoyes me most is there is no loot link whatsoever. i got a rare sword today (not soulbound) but coulndt really link to ask in the guild if anyone wanted it.

about the fun: Yes, bolster is a great idea - who wants to gank ppl in scenarios that is 5-6 levels below you? it just makes it more fun, and more fair for everyone.

RVR: so far it is REALLY FUN :)

PQ: another great part of the game - it gives xp, loot, and you can just walk into it and have a blast. beside that, its really fun to try them the first few times.

guild level: this is also something that i really think is a great idea. as a guild you will have to put effort into it, making everyone in the guild feel more "alike"

Classes: so i have been trying some different classes, and finally decided to go for the bright wizard - really fun class ( have allways been caster) but tbh the Archmage is also ALOT of fun!!! never had that much fun being a healer class. works really great :) also, when being in a rvr area, the tanks really owns compared to other MMO games. they can take a beating and are not only a caster target.

that brings me to balance - this is something that makes this game really great - defensive tanks can in fact beat a dps class:) to me it all seems VERY balanced, and there will therefor never be a class that dosnt show up in the battlefield :)

Originally posted by Cabe2323

So,

I have played almost every MMO on the Market.  My top 5 games have been:

1.  Asheron's Call

2.  Dark Age of Camelot

3.  Lord of the Rings Online

4.  World of Warcraft

5.  Everquest 2

I list this in order to frame my review by what I like.  

So I have been playing since Beta (elder Beta Tester) for the CE head start I created my Disciple of Khaine on a Core server.  I have gotten him up to level 15 RR 13 so far.  I have also spent some time completing some of the funny titles (like Emperor, Voyeur, Vain, Easy Target, etc).  I have participated in Tier 1 and Tier 2 Scenarios, Tier 2 Keep sieges and open RvR, Innevitable City Dungeon crawls (level 13, 15, 17), Public quests up to chapter 7, and numerous PVE quests.  

I will start with the bad first (which I think there are a few).  

1.  Queues are both good and bad (good because they show the game is healthy in players) but mainly bad due to difficulty getting back into the game if you have a crash (more on crashes later).  Also they are pretty large on some of the servers.  My server (a CE head start Core one) has regularly close to 300 person queues everytime I try to play.  I think they should hold a spot if you do crash for you for a couple of minutes to let you log back in without losing your spot on the server.  

I like this idea.  I've been getting frequent disconnects when the server is close to or at full capacity and then have to wait 25 min to get back into the game.  VERY frustrating.  I've been playing Rockband 2 during these long queues.

2.  Loot Link.  It is practically unimaginable that there is no way to link loot to guild chat, tells, or general chat.  This is a needed feature.  How can you honestly share loot without being able to link it.  Plus everyone loves to link a new item they upgraded to. 

Also they need to have an option to see how the item will look on your toon.

3.  Mail Box.  The 20s timer has to go plus they need to add the ability to mass mail items in one email. 

That is pretty much my major complaints for the game.  The starter dungeons are pretty basic but they are only level 13,15,17 dungeons so I won't use that as a complaint until I get more time to explore the higher level dungeons fully. 

The good. 

1.  Fun. The game is just plain fun (imho).  I haven't had this much fun since Dark Age of Camelot doing keep raids honestly.  I find the game and especially the RVR to be the most fun I have had in a long time playing an MMO.

I'm having a blast with WAR too.  I went in not expecting much as every mmo i've tried since wow has been a disappoitment but I HAVE noticed that ranged/magical toons are a LOT more fun than melee toons.  I've been going through creating different types of toons and have noticed that ranged/magical classes are much more fun than melee, but I havent been through all of the classes yet.  Paladin/Warrior Priest was fairly fun though.

2.  Ease of RVR.  This game puts to rest a lot of the complaints of the "hardcore" vs "casuals".  Bolster allows you to start RvRing right away and the system allows you to earn XP, Money, Reknown, Items all from RVR without ever having to PVE if you don't want to.  It also evens the playing field more then pretty much anyother MMO for RVR.   The one question mark will be reknown rank skills.  Will they end up being like Realm Abilities in DAoC or did Mythic learn their last mistake.  In DAoC RR skills could make you massively more powerful then a equal level player who was new (hence the level 51 people would list as their character level in DAoC).  So far it looks like Reknown Rank skills will not do this but only time will tell. 

The only thing i've noticed is on scenarios with Order there was a lot of Chaos lvls 9-11 while Order were all lvl 4-6 bumped up to 8 so we were getting killed.  Destruction has been winning most scenarios I've done whether playing on order or destruction.

3.   Stability.  I said I would mention Crashes and I will.   So far it has been extremely stable to play.  Every single person that I have spoken with who was having issues it was found to either be a driver issue or too low system specs for the game.  My guild leader is running vista with 2 gigs of memory and still doesn't have any major issues. 

I have found the game to be stable and pretty lag free except when the server gets close to or full capacity.  Then I'm getting pretty frequent disconnects and 18-25 minute queues to get back into the game.  I've got a 5 month old PC 4g ram 8800 GT, Quad core 2.5 with all updated drivers so this is definately server side.

4.  Did I mention that it's fun? 

I completely agree.  I havent logged into WoW since I logged into WAR on friday.  May not until WOTLK lol.

 

Personally I won't predict a WoW killer but I wouldn't be surprised by a new NA/EU number 2 in the marketplace with a huge amount of subscribers.  It has pretty much all of the positives with few negatives.  It has a good launch to build on and relatively little bad press.