Honest Review from an MMO Fan
I am also not some fanboy of any particular MMO or a particular faction. Generally when I play an MMO I try to enjoy all aspects of the game and usually wind up leveling characters to cap on all factions just to get the full experience of the game and a better understanding of the mechanics as well.
I came to this game after having left WoW about a year ago and fresh off of quitting Age of Conan which really didnt live up to its promises. I had high expectations for WAR from jump which will sort of show through in this review.
Overall, WAR did a lot of things right and if you enjoy RvR (i.e. pvp) I would purchase this game. Its worth the cost even if you just play if for a few months which is what I did. I still have an active account, but I have cancelled my sub because I have pretty much reached the endgame and I'm starting to get bored with the overall limited scope presented for endgame content. (More of which I will discuss later)
When you first get into WAR, the game is very fun and a fresh change from the more-pve oriented WoW. Graphically, the game looks amazing. Word of caution though, this game has higher system requirements than WoW, and a low-end old pc that can play WoW wont run WAR in an enjoyable state.
You can level via RvR and all of the classes are fun in their own way. I personally leveled a Black Orc to 40, an Ironbreaker to 34, a Squig Herder to 25 and various alts to 20 or so on both factions. Initially there were major class imblances, but Mythic has done a good job balancing for the most part. I wont get into which faction is better than the other. Many people often complain but all in all the game is somewhat balanced. (Order players gripe that Destruction has better aoe CC which gives them the advantage in the endgame, Destruction players argue Order has better ranged dps which gives them an advantage in Keep seiges, blah blah, IMHO the game is balanced well enough to where if you have skill you can overcome your faction's shortcomings)
For the first two tiers the game is very enjoyable and if the entire game had the essence of the first two tiers this game would be a great game.
But (and theres always a but) WAR does suffer from a few major problems. I know the game is still relatively new, but there are a number of issues that cause the game to be not very fun:
1. The first major issue is the chat interface is very cumbersome, and causes a strange phenomenon where hardly any people actually talk in game. To a person that enjoys the social aspect of MMOs, this is almost gamebreaking as a new player, as the game is designed to allow you to pretty much level to cap solo so often you can play for days and never actually even talk to another player. I understand this can be alleviated by joining a guild, but overall, I personally think this is one of the major flaws in the game that I dont understand how they allowed to actually go live. Granted, Mythic does take player feedback seriously and have worked to make changes to the chat interface, but the akward silence in game has kind of become the standard so even after the fixes, most people dont really use the chat. Often I would join warbands (raid groups) that were doing PQs and we would have 20+ people working on the encounter and no one even spoke.
2. The Public Quest, Influence and crontribution system is flawed. In the lower tiers the PQs are fun, but they made them so you can grind the influence by repeating the 1st stages of the PQs over and over and still receive the elite rewards, so when leveling up most people dont bother finishing the PQs (which actually become decent pve encoutners often if you finish them to the end) they just grind stage 1 over and over then leave. The way the game works each zone has area influence which when completed goes toward a zone wide contribution system that eventually looks down a zone and allows you to move to the next zone. Eventually after locking down all the zones and taking all the keeps and battlefield objectives you eventually reach the other factions capitol city where you can sack the city and kill their faction leader. The problem comes in from the fact that the way contribution works, the actually loot distribution for taking a keep is just generated randomly (a change is coming with the next patch) so a person just standing around doing nothing can get a major reward after showing up and standing there for 10 minutes after the other 40+ people have been fighting to take the keeps for 2+ hours. On top of this, the system doesnt allow people to pass on the loot so often the same people get all of the same loot over and over which makes it hard to actually set goals as far as advancing your character is concerned since the odds of actually getting loot are slim to none and random in keep seiges.
3. The endgame forces you to PVE. The way the current system works, the game has endgame dungeons which ramp up based on gear. You basically have to have the full set gear from the prior level dungeons to actually be able to complete the next set of dungeons, since the gear has wards which reduce the damage that boss mobs are capable of producing. Basically each ward lowers down their damage output by a certain percentage which starts out at 250%, down to 100% which makes the boss a normal mob. So if you go into a dungeon without the proper warded gear its impossible to defeat the bosses there because you will be fighting a boss thats hitting for 250% damage.
Now the problem is the only way to get some of these set pieces is to get the 1st place rewards from keep seiges, which often never happens since the contribution system is random as I stated earlier. I have personally participated in 30+ keep seiges and have never won a gold bag.
The way guilds often work around this is by raiding keeps a late night hours, basically making a keep seige which is supposed to be the highlight of the RvR system into a PvE fight verses the npcs and keep lord, since in odd hours real life enemy players may not show up. So the flaw is the highlight of the game which is supposed to be RvR is reduced to boring repetitive dungeon crawling or actually avoiding RvR to be able to take a keep so you can get gear.
To give them credit, Mythic is addressing the contribution issue in an upcoming patch.
4. The game does have a few coding issues. Many abilities in the game are bugged due to server side lag issues. IMHO the biggest issue with balance is caused by the fact that many abilities arent working as intended because of these lag issues.
5. The crafting system is very basic and could use some fine tuning.
To be fair, WAR does get a lot of things right though:
1. The RvR in this game is outstanding and group pvp is very fun and well done. After playing WAR for a few months I recently returned to WoW to try out WotLK and the pvp in WoW seems like child's play compared to the fast paced action in WAR. WAR really shines in the fact that you actually do have large scale battles with 40-100+ players on both sides which requires a lot of group coordination, unlike WoW which is mostly just ganking in the open world outside of BGs and arenas.
2. WAR gets rid of a lot of tedious annoyances from former mmos like death penalties, eatting/drinking, travelling downtime, repairing gear. Its pretty much run and gun.
3. The class design is very original and the game mechanics are innovative. Tanks can tank in RvR, healers have to deal damage to actually heal more effectively, the support classes like Magus and Engineer have unique abilities.
To be quite honest, after trying out WotLK, I found that Blizzard actually 'stole' many of the new additions they added in WotLK from WAR. The achievement system is pretty much a rip of the Tome of Knowledge, Wintergrasp is pretty much a rip of the RvR lakes in WAR, the Death Knight has many abilities that are blatant rips from WAR (like the fetch ability of the White Lion/Marauders) even many of the character models look just like characters from Chaos.
That said, all in all WAR is a good game, it big flaw is that it doesnt have enough to keep people playing for the long run. there are just so many times you can run the same scenarios over and over and so many times you can do seige the same boring keep layout before you get pretty bored. Even leveling alts gets bored because even if you are in different starting zones, your characters are all doing the same things over and over again.
WAR is a good game and if you like pvp I would give it a try. I also commend Mythic for actually interacting with the player base and making changes based on the player feedback but overall the game just needs more things to do to keep you interested. The big flaw like I said is that you can hit a wall and have no real way to make progress with your character except just from blind luck, which in the long run wont hold that many people's attention. Eventually anything gets boring and the rest of the game world in WAR just doesnt currently offer its players enough alternatives when the dungeons are on 3-day lockout timers and the keep seiges just offer rinse and repeat generic layouts.