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I was given a mission to kill some filcher birds because they were stealing ammo, due to it's shiny nature. The next day I notice that after killing a thrax soldier with a filcher nearby, the filcher swooped in and stole the loot off the thrax's body! I couldn't loot it anymore.

I imagine TR as being what the world was like thousands of years before Anarchy Online.

Eve is about as far removed from TR as one can get.

EVE is basically a second job with huge timesinks and a high learning curve. TR is more like a shooter. It's just plain fun.

1. There is no real PvP yet, but there will be in the future.

2.  There is effectively no death penalty. You just have to repair your armor for an insignificant amount of money.

3.  Nobody can speak with any authority of the endgame at this point. Like most MMORPGs most of the end game content is not in at release and will come later.

4. There are no factions, yet. But I guarantee we'll see factions in the future between rebel clans and the official earth forces. Some of the mission storylines already hint at this.

5. Leveling is easy and fun.

6. Yes.

If you're looking for a strait up FPS game then this is not it. It's more of a hybrid third person shooter and MMORPG.

If you want a strait up massive multiplayer FPS then Planetside or World War 2 Online are for you. Planetside being more of an typical sci-fi shooter, with WW2OL being a hardcore simulation of infantry/tank/plane combat.

It's a typical MMORPG with large zones. There are some instances, but they are more for story arc missions. The bulk of the strait up fighting will be done in the zone.

No, I can assure you it's just your shitty connection.

It's laughable trying to use a satelite connection for any kind of serious gaming. You're actually better off with dial up because they have faster data transmission even if they can't handle much volume.

 TR has a lot more data to transmit than other MMORPGs, and the delays in response times are simply more noticable because of the way combat works.

Polls mean nothing because people can vote on them without having played either.

Having actually played the games, I can tell you that there's no comparison - Vanguard blows LOTRO away.

Graphics 8/10
The characters and weapons look great. There's a large variety of nice looking armor. It has some neat special effects and awesome lighting. But I found some of the weapon effects and explosions to be very underwhelming. Some of the logos powers simply look like crap in either their effects or animation, and I don't get a kick out of using them as a result.

Sound 9/10
The sounds of battle and weapons are great. So is the music. NPCs (friendly and enemy alike) that shout contextual things during battle like one would expect from a single player FPS.

Content 9/10
The game is packed full of fun missions and immersive content. The instanced missions are well crafted experiences with multiple objectives you can often complete in varying orders, with some optional missions you can undertake to make your main objective easier.

Story 10/10
The story is top notch, and well integrated into the world's content to unfold as you play through almost like a single player RPG would.

Atmosphere 10/10
The world feels alive. It's highly immersive and interesting. Battle is raging constantly. it's hard to write much about it because you've just got to experience it for yourself.

PvP 5/10
Unfortunately there's no meaningful PvP at this time. It amounts to little more than individual and clan dueling. Although I must admit that PvP wouldn't make a whole lot of sense for the story, unless they add in content later on where the human forces start to divide into seperate factions.
There's potential here for some good, meaingful, zone control style PvP if they decide to make it a focus of later game updates.

Stability/Performance 8/10
I'm running the game on a top of the line machine. I can run the game at max settings with no slowdown. Bugs are very limited for a new MMO release. Sometimes the lag can be annoying because there's a delay in firing or hicups, but it comes and goes. I've only crashed to desktop once in about 30 hours of play.

Crafting 6/10
Incomplete, but I like what is there.
You melt down looted weapons with mods on them, with a chance of extracting raw components from them. Then you combine these raw components with looted recipes to modify your weapons and armor.
You can't actually create armor or weapons or devices yet. The tradeskills don't seem to have any purpose.

Combat 8/10
A huge improvement over existing MMORPGs. Combat is actually fun and engaging. You use cover to increase survivability. Crouch to increase accuracy, damage, and reduce damage taken. Moving reduces accuracy and damage except on weapons like shotguns. You've got a wide variety of weapons with unique capabilities, each having their role in combat.
Points deducted because it's still not as engaging as a strait-up FPS, and specialists are boring in team combat when basically all they do is pull out their healing device and spam it to keep the soldiers alive.

Funfactor 9/10
It's just a damn fun game to jump into and blast things.

Overall: 82/10

A recommended buy for anyone who's interested. So long as you aren't banking on the PvP or Crafting to be your main area of interest.

25% for level 5 is way too low. 50% would be the bare minimum to make the power worthwhile.

It should also be a single target buff.

I am a soldier who never even uses rage, and I still have more fun than playing a specialist.

I don't need to heal when my armor can absorb so much damage.

Specialists can't actually kill anything because they're too busy trying to heal themselves to stay alive.

You have to pretty much ignore the naysayers on forums like this, because anyone who is actually subscribed to the game will post on the official forums. The naysayers on forums like this generally aren't up to date with the latest changes and in fact probably never put even a full month into learning the game when they last did play.

The whining on the official forums is at an all time low, player activity ingame has spiked four fold, and the silent majority is absolutely loving all the changes.

Having been here since the start, I know how to gauge the state of popular opinion in the game based on forum activity.

And for the past months there has been an incredible absense of whinining about the game. In fact, there has been alot of accolades thrown around regularly.

I bought the game through NCsoft but can't figure out where the trial key is to give to a friend who wants to play.