Elder Closed Beta Tester. Don't listen to half of reviews. Play past rank 21 and maybe you can have an opinion. Not WoW!
I have experienced Tier 4 content (Rank 30-40). This means 500 on 500 keep sieges in the middle of a massive burning metropolis like Praag. There are siege weapons like oil, battering rams, ballista, ect... This game is all about RvR and anyone in the area can just march on in. The PvP is not instanced except for the Scenarios which are like Battlegrounds except there are like 20 different variations throughout the tiers. Things like muderball where one player grabs the ball and the team protects him. As the time passes they gain points until the opposing team can take it from them. Another simple one is capturing flags and holding them.
The game's launch has been the smoothest I have ever experienced. There are ques, but I believe they are only on the collector's edition head start servers that opened last Sunday. The majority of people want to be on the most populated server. They are slowly increasing the cap of the servers so that they don't crash, and they have gone from having a 700 person que to a max of 100 people at peak hours. I have yet to experience a server crash on my server and have only experienced a maximum down time of 2-3 Hours every other day or so.
There are no game breaking bugs at the moment and unlike AoC the game actually runs well on computers that aren't High End Systems. I compare it to AoC because of how the launch went with another recent MMO. Sure the graphics aren't as good in War, but AoC didn't even run well on top of the line computers when it was released. Please visit the Inevitable City and Tier 4 before you make a judgment as to if it looks like WoW or if it has bad graphics. There is so much detail put into every little thing. Have you actually seen this game played on Max settings? They didn't release any screenshots or videos of Max settings until early September. All beta clients and videos were running on an approximate Medium Settings, there was no option to turn up or down the settings.
The game is based on groups and Warbands aka raids. Leveling in Tier 1 is better solo, but as you progress it is more necessary for you to level in a group. There is actually very little experience lost if a group member joins which encourages cooperation. You gain experience faster the more people you have together. Lets put it this way they intend you to feel like your part of an army not an individual. It is similar to the table top game in the sense that you are just a foot soldier. It requires teamwork to take people down and it is really rare to see people fighting one on one. Healers will always be hard to take down because if hit one their teammates will focus on you and other healers will heal the healer as well. This is all just my experience maybe its because I am always in a coordinated group, but I have noticed that 90% of my enemies are in coordinated groups as well.
Sure the game has balancing issues at the moment I'll give you that, but the developers have stated that they balanced the game for tier 4 RvR. This means 1-30 there are going to be some issues obviously. I just haven't noticed them that much.
The game's PvE is like a story. You have something called the Tome of Knowledge and as you progress through the story you unlock chapters which reveal more about what is going on. It really feels more like an RPG in this sense. You also cannot just level in only your races area. Once you get to about level 14 maybe 15 it is usually a good idea to leave your area and fly to another to do their quests as well. This means going from the Dark Elf Tier 2 to like the Greenskin Tier 2. This is not a long process and only takes about 5 minutes.
There is PvE in this game! There are instances like other games with loot and bosses, and there are something called Public Quests. Public quests are designated to a certain area on the map, and anyone in that area will have that quest as an objective. Ignore it or help, but there are usually something like 3 stages. The first will be for everyone in the area to kill a total of 80 of these guys. Once that is done it moves to stage 2 which is timed. It will be like burn the houses down, but they are guarded by "elite" npcs so it requires teamwork. The final stage will be to kill a boss. The boss will require a full group or even a warband to take down depending on the Public Quest. In the end loot is distributed in a giant chest. People who participated are given a rank depending on what they did for the scenario like heal, take damage, do damage, or support people. The person who contributes the most will have +500 to their roll where as someone in 20th place will have none. Everyone will roll and whoever the people are who rolled the highest will be given a loot bag that can contain a green, blue, or even purple depending on the situation that is for your class.
Loot in this game is great sure their are bind on equip items that are found randomly in the world, but most items that are hard to obtain will be usable by anyone because the item will change depending on the class that is looking at it. Almost all of the good loot is handled in the rank rolling system so it awards those who contribute.
I used to play the tabletop game when I was younger so this is something I have been looking forward to. They seem to have done a good job so far and it keeps those people who love Warhammer lore happy. I think this game will do well, and it is and never will be a game that was intended to dethrone WoW. It is its own identity and if it overcomes WoW then great, but if not it does not make this a worse game. People need to keep in mind that the game has only been out on shelves for 2 days and there will be animation bugs or random things that are just annoying but not game breaking. These things will be worked out over time. People forget that when WoW first came out the servers were not even up majority of the time when it was released due to crashing and bugs. WoW has had its development stage plus its live stage to fix and critique the game into what it is now.