Tactical and Meaningful RvR. Everything WoW was missing and more. This is the WAR that was missing in WarCraft.
I decided to give it a try when my guild decided to make this game their primary portal. I'm glad I did. I haven't had this much fun in an MMO ever! I have played UO, EQ, DAOC, SWG, PS, WWIIOnline, WoW, PotBS, AoC, Jumpgate and EVE. I would say WAR is about 80% RvR and 20% PVE. The PVE part even helps out with the RVR.
From the very moment you log into WAR you are thrown into the middle of a battle. Your race's starting point is under seige and you help them out by completing quests. This is the PVE part of the game.
As you continue along the storyline you come upon your first Public Quest or PQ. This is a really great idea where players all compete during the quest. At the end you get a loot bag if you finished in the top 5 or so.
The loog bag reward is based on a random roll with an added bonus of how many times you have done the quest.
Eventually the PQ's start to compete with the opposite faction to determine who wins the PQ and eventually the gold loot box (where you get your reward bag).
Anyone who as played Battlefield or BF2 will recognize Scenarios. These are instanced battles where players compete for various objectives. Some are capture the flag. Some are capture and hold the murder ballor a flag. There is even a Elf scenario that after you touch the flag a nuke spell goes off killing everything within a radious of the flag. The first team to 500 wins the scenario.
The last part is Realm vs Realm. In each zone there are 2 capture points and a Keep or other central objective. Each zone is placed into a Tier. There are at least 2 zones per tier for each faction's race. There are 4 tiers 1-10, 11-20, 21-30, 31-40. If a faction can control the zones then they will have a chance to attack the opposite faction's capital city.
The capital city is where the Auction Houses and Banks are, amoung other things. Don't worry you cannot loose your stuff if your capital city is sacked but you will loose bonuses and such.
There were a few graphical bugs and sometimes the occasional CTD. But nothing to really complain about for me. Mythic is great about patching the game and they are waging their own WAR on gold farmers.
Death penalties are very minor in this game. You get a 15 minute and 10% debuff to your health that will stack up to 3 times (I think). You can pay an NPC healer to take is off for about 1-5 silver depending on how many you have died.
So if you want something really fun and your on the fence about buying this game; I would say that for me it was money well spent. I will be playing this game for a long time.