My observations... (Score 2, Informative)

I was in the closed beta briefly, and have been playing the open beta since it started. So far, my observations are:

• The game feels very linear. Actually, it doesn't feel linear, it *is* linear. There is a well-defined path from where you start to where you need to go next. Sure, you can travel to the other starting zones, but that's just one more direct path to the last tier.
• For a given career, all the gear looks basically the same. This is especially true for the two careers I've played the most--Zealot and Witch Elf. Upgrades look exactly like your old armor.
• Regarding variety, some careers are very limited in what kind of gear they use. For instance, Witch Elves dual wield daggers, period. Zealots uses daggers, period. Etc.
• There's nothing that really sets one [DPS|tank|healer] career apart from the others. In Wow, shamans have totems, priests have shackles, mages have polymorph, etc. Nothing like that, really, in WAR.
• Somewhat related to the above point, Rune Priest (dwarf healing career) and Zealot (Chaos healing career) are functionally equivalent--just the names of spells are different. There are other pairings, too, for instance in the tank careers.
• Cultivation is pretty cool, or at least pretty novel. However, it should have been a crafting profession instead of a gathering profession.
• Crafting is pretty much non-existent. You have Apothecary and Talisman-making, and that's it. And your characters can't take two gathering professions--you're limited to one crafting and one gathering.
• The game seems to be very much *not* dependent on gear, which I suppose is a good thing. But it also takes away the joy of coming across a good find.

Overall I like the game, but it's really only for PvP. If you're not into the PvP in other games, there's really nothing for you in WAR. Being so heavily PvP-based, though, Mythic has made sure all of the classes have a decent survivability.

The pace of the game is very fast--on my healer, just a few seconds of not casting is enough to fully replenish my action points (WAR's version of mana/rage/energy). The fast pace makes the RvR scenarios very chaotic at times. I suppose you could say that WAR is to MMOs what Diablo was to RPGs.

There are a few other things about the game I don't care for, but I think these they will eventually end up tweaking. For instance, the mail system is a pain to use, and there's no auto-loot feature.