I've only been playing WAR a couple weeks now. I've not progressed beyond T2. Typically this has been because I got bored. I'm a roleplayer, like the idea of open RvR so I joined the only OpenRvR/RP server. It had a medium to low pop seemed a wise choice. WRONG!

Advice

My first piece of advice, join a HIGH population server. It makes all the difference between feeling like there's no RvR, scenarios or people running PQ's.

Opinion - Order vs Destruction and their Classes

To all of you who are debating whether or not to play WAR, I've mixed feelings personally. I will say there is definitely an imbalance. Most folks want to play destruction and with good reason. While I don't really like any of the classes all that much, destructions animations, weapon choices and their abilities are all cooler than their Order counterpart. Example, would you rather be the cool bad ass looking Magus floating on your glowing disk  summon demons or a dwarven engineer with a wrench and a tripod turret? Would you rather be a "tank" class who has some attack which bypass enemies armor in a breastplate and skirt or a hulking warrior of chaos with wicked looking armor and capable of "twisting" your auras ( eq1 bard anyone? ) to sap the strength from your enemies.

Opinion - Classes as a Whole and their Lack of Diversity

This is not 100% true, but nearly. In order to make specific classes easy to identify on the battlefield, Mythic restricted most classes to a single weapon type. Most armor upgrades look identical to their predecessor ( destruction has a smidge more diversity ). Basically you are going to look like everyone else of your same class. Everyone in your class is going to wield the same weaponry. Classes and races are tied together. Other than the small handful of "mastery" abilities, you are going to have exactly the same abilities as everyone else in your class. Frankly, I find all this highly disappointing. There are no "fun/utility" spells ( ie. levitate, polymorph, walk on water, summon food, summon water, teleport, fast movement. Utility spells are part of what makes for roleplaying.  Oh, on the positive side you can dye stuff ( most stuff ) from starting out.

Opinion - Crafting

An absolute joke. There are only two manufacturing level tradeskills ( potion making & talismans which you add to your gear ).  The others crafting skills are gathering. Frankly, I normally enjoy crafting but I find it too irritating to bother. Isn't worth the trouble.

Community

Well, mixed bag here. Frankly, people are people. I've not had any negative encounters. Mostly I've played in absolute silence. Not by choice just lack of people in the same area ( until I played on a high pop server ). On the high pop server, there have been lots of folks who help each other but rarely communicate. In a sense I'm let down by the tools available to players for communication. In an RvR world the ability to communicate and assimilate seem crucial.

Game Play

Its unfortunately my opinion that if you don't possess the ability to heal you are gimped. I hate that expression but to give you some idea of why I say it. On the PvE side, as a nonhealing class there is no way I'd ever be able to take out any "Champion" level mobs. As a healing class I've been able to do it relatively consistently and easily. ( If you're gonna be order, you can be a dorking looking hammer welding warrior priest, an archmage, or a runepriest -- those are you healing options. Course on destruction side there is the Disciple of Khaine...an infinitely cooler looking duel sword wielding elf, the goblin shaman, or the wicked looking zealot ).

Why am I writing this

Who knows. Its late I'm bored and considering my future with WAR.

Addendum

The game has some serious memory leaks or something and craps out once ever couple hours. I've a nice box -- take my word on it.

sounds liek to me, this is not the game for you.  oh well, maybe you will find darkfall more enjoyable

Darkfall, Earthrise and Fallen Earth are all on my radar.

Out of desperation for a decent game I may even have to play WotLK. Go figure :p