Warhammer Online delivers some hope, all will not be lost in the mmo market, for this year anyways.
It can be a touch overwhelming the first few levels. It takes a level or two to get the feel of the game design.
Right out of the gate if you wander a few paces in one direction you can quest and pve, move off in another direction and your in a large public quest zone fighting with or competing against fellows players depending how you see it for npcs that pop with staged objectives. Also move a touch and you can que for your first pvp scenario. Furthermore you gain two or three levels you move slightly down map and your in your first rvr zone. This format of everything being quickly accessable runs throughout the whole game.
This game is well designed for the casual gamer. Everything is within reach in a moments time. Groups are very easy to come by. All groups by default are considered open. So if you need help just click the open group button sort by distance and join. If your running with you buddies and have a closed group you must open party options and actually close it to others. Its a nice twist putting the onus of a whole rival side to work together.
There is a ton of fun classes in this game and many peeps will take forever to leave the early game stages because they will just have to try them all. Its also important that you cannot have an Order character and a Destruction character on the same server. So no logging out and logging back in on the other side to be a part of the bigger zerg.
As fun as this game is there is some rather large flaws IMHO.
First off the npcs are stupid. I mean so stupid they might be the bottom feeders of the whole mmo world. They are various (good), rendered well to the art direction (good), solid animations (good) but dumb. I mean, really stupid dumb. For an example- 5 npcs henchmen surround to protect their leader you need for a quest. So what to do? Ermmm just tap the leader and pull him out, the henchmen will stand there like nothing happens. Theres also some pathing issues and dead mobs that dont drop, therefore the next guy comes along taps and gets a 'this npc is dead' message.
Warhammer's largest flaw is it's need for a very large population to function. Large populations also means que times just to log in. Public quests, rvr, scenarios all fail if your the only one there. Pqs are basically unsoloable to most classes, rvr is dull if your running map to find a fight, scenarios wont que at all. These things are all tied to server population and a balance between Order and Destruction. The good news it is something Mythic is aware of. They do all they can to ease up. But when it comes right down to it, its hard to force players to play their second choice just because of massive que times to get on their preferred character. Example Mythic is really trying to get players to roll more Order characters for server balance.
A few minor issues- limited bag space, crafting is very shallow. These are minor issues because really its all about the ongoing war.
What about the ongoing war? Its fun as hell. Simple staight forward jump in and go go go.
For $49.99 its worth the entry fee.
Cheers All