The problem is that no one can play it long enough to give the game a fair review.

Overall it seems like a good SimCity game, but I only have about 7 or 8 hours into it.  I'd recommend it if you like SimCity games, just wait a week until all of the server issues get worked out.  The server issues go well beyond just DRM complaints.

It's not a wow clone for sure.

The game plays differently than other MMO's in that there aren't quest hubs persay.  Sure there are quests (events) that you go do, but they just sort of come up while you are running around doing other stuff.

If the goal is to race to the end of the game then you probably won't enjoy it.  To me it feels like an MMO Skyrim.  I go do whatever I want to do (explore, quest, craft, pvp) and I get rewards for just playing the game in the form of drops and xp.  I haven't gotten too far into it level 20, but I haven't seen anything that looks like grinding yet which is a plus to me.

As someone that played WoW for 3+ years I got tired of the grind for admission to play the game stuff and that turned me off from even wanting to look at TOR.  The GW2 team set out to make a different type of MMO game, in my opinion I think they pushed the envelope enough that it adds some new gameplay to the market, even if it isn't 100% groundbreaking.

The learning curve is a little steep early on because the game does so many things differently that it takes some time to adjust, but it always feels like what you're doing has some merit.  While the newness of the game might be what is driving my excitement at this point, I do find myself having to drag myself away so that I can go to bed, which is a positive.

So far the 4 reviews that I have seen on metacritic seem fairly unbiased, and I'd watch the impressions on this website to get a better idea.  User reviews are going to be just that, one mans treasure is another mans trash.  

Yeah I'm missing NCAA 08 for the Wii.

After playing WoW for 2 1/2 years and LotR for all of 3 days.  I'll say that WoW is the better game, but that doesn't mean it's the one to buy or play.  I think that the gameplay is more flushed out and the stability on it is really good.  There is a deep lore in WoW now that might be missed if you do grind out to 70 without paying attention to it, and the lore in LotR is great obviously but I'm concerned that it might get limiting to the games development as you only have the 2 books to base the game on.

My initial opinion of LotR is that it is a quality game and I'm having fun with it.  I'd rate WoW the better game, but I'm not planning on playing that in the near future as it has just grown sooooooo stale.

One other note:  I played AC back in the day and one of the great things was that Trubine always did a monthly update where they added new content, and they had some live events that changed the world.  In my time in WoW nothing in the world has actually changed.  Sure they added instances and stuff, but the barren is the barrens and has never changed.  To me the world just isn't dynamic and I'm hoping to see that out of LotR based on my history with Trubine.

WoW is a 9/10 all time

LotR is an 8/10 right now and that could go up.