I'd been watching this one for a while so was good to get into the final beta weekend and have a good look around. Overall my reaction is a mixed one, there's a fair bit to like, but also some issues which are hard to overlook.
POSITIVES
* It's a beautiful looking game, with amazing environments and great attention to detail. It uses an evolution of the Age Of Conan engine, so it does require a fairly good rig to get good framerates. Mine (Nvidia GTX 260, 8GB ram) is getting a bit old now but coped mostly ok. I found myself really getting drawn into the atmosphere of the game. The gameworld feels real, gritty and believable, not the usual MMO theme park.
* Lore and storyline is great, especially if you like Cthullu, Lovecraft, Stephen King, occult, horror, conspiracy theories etc. It's a modern setting, but full of occult magic, intrigue and horror. It came across as a mish-mash of Cthullu, Lovecraft and zombie series like The Walking Dead. I found myself getting really immersed in the story and wanting to know more about the plot. I'm not sure the whole faction thing is as prominent as it could be, but the beta only revealed the early game and this may well develop.
* The mission system is very good. You aren't tied to progressing from one quest hub to the next as such, you can wander around picking up quests where you find them. Missions come in different flavours (combat, puzzle, storyline, dungeon etc). You have a strict limit on the number of active missions, but it doesn't matter if you get sidetracked as you can pause a mission and pick up where you left off (usually, I hit a few glitches with this though).
* Gameplay is very challenging. This is not a dumbed down MMO. There's some good puzzle missions where you actually have to think and work stuff out. Combat is damn tough, partly because since there's no levels and no colour coding of mobs. So there's no easy way to judge if a mob will kick your arse or not (I liked this a lot, made things exciting). And partly because they seem to have deliberately tuned the difficulty high. Mobs fight hard and use some good abilities and tactics which keep you on your toes and some of the mission bosses you have to face solo are complete beasts. This makes combat exciting. Sure it can be rather frustrating at times, but it feels like you're actually in a battle you might lose if you don't use your abilities well. No doubt the WOW whiners will get this changed though :/
NEUTRALS
* Combat animations. The combat is challenging, but the animations are rather lacklustre and spoil it a bit. There's the same sort of wooden animations we've seen so many times before in SWTOR, Warhammer etc. I realise this is partly down to technical limitations. WoW can have more fluid animations because of the low poly count. But there has to be a happy middle ground and TSW doesn't find it. End result is combat doesn't feel fluid enough, it's stiff and mechanical and it reminds me a lot of Warhammer actually and that's not a good thing at all.
* Skill system. Some love it. Some hate it. I'm on the fence. Yes it's a huge wheel of abilites you can learn based on weapon type. The weapon and weapon skills you learn determine your role, be it dps, tank or healer. This is good. But the sheer choice is overwhelming and there's no respec. So if you make the wrong decision you have to change by spending hard earned points in a different weapon. In the long run many players will learn most skills they want (as per EVE) but in the short run there'll be a lot of whining as people make bad choices they are stuck with. Also, you can only equip 7 active and 7 passive skills at once. That's it. Not sure what I feel about this, but already in beta I was struggling to get all the abilities I wanted on my hotbar. GW2 is similar. Perhaps I just need to adjust.
* Character customisation is a mixed bag. The main problem is everyone will be the same bodysize. There's absolutely NO sliders to adjust height or body shape and they've said there won't ever be for technical reasons. Facial customisation is distinctly average with limited choices. Even if they add more, it's not the sort of system which lends itself to creating a unique looking character. This is a HUGE issue for someone like me who likes to spend a lot of time messing around with character appearance. However, on the upside I think the costumes will be fine. Appearance is not dictated by gear, all your upgradeable gear that control your stats is in the form of talismans. So your appearance is cosmetic, which is wonderful. So you can put together a good look and stick with it if you want. There's a lot of scope for them adding lots more clothing as the game develops, though I worry the best stuff will be via a cash shop.
* PVP. I only briefly tried the PvP. The good news is there's three factions (yay at last!) the bad news is its the usual zergfest (groan). The instanced battleground seemed very limited and sub par. The persistant battleground (currently only one) was much better, but during beta it was a pretty horrible zergfest (but maybe this will change as players learn the game). There's potential here, all depends if they give it sufficient attention and make sure there's sufficient rivalry between the factions. Unlike SWTOR the PvP is at least an intended part of the game rather than a bolt on.
NEGATIVES
* The UI isn't very responsive. Interaction with the menu and clickables in the game world was sluggish and erratic and sometimes would stop responding for no good reason. It was of course a beta client and hopefully the release client will be better. But it reminded me a fair bit of the sluggishness in the Warhammer UI, which worries me because WAR never fully overcame the problem.
* Cutscenes and voice acting are generally of high quality, not as good as SWTOR of course, but much better than most. BUT ..... Funcom have decided not to give your character a voice. They claim this is a 'design decision' but it's probably a financial decision. But this is fine, opinion is split on if full voice acting is desireable in a MMO. That's not the problem. The problem is how they've handled it. They've gone down the 'silent protagonist' route but decided to still have your character feature in the cutscenes. So your character just stares blankly off into the distance during all the cutscene interactions with mission NPCs, even when they directly address you. It's like watching some disinterested emo teenager. The end result is jarring, irritating and quite frankly ludicrous. I did find this worked slightly better when I made a character who looked like Lisbeth Salander though, heh.
* Bugs. There's quite a lot. No huge show stoppers or client crashers, so that's good. But lots of little niggly ones, such as UI bugs, quest problems, mob issues and so on. More than I think they can realistically fix before launch. So if you play at launch, expect lots of niggles I think. Might be one to let the dust settle a bit. However, then you miss out on being part of the launch community and experiencing the content at the same pace together, before some players get uber powerful.
* This is yet another in a long line of MMOs that don't feel very multiplayer. Sure there's lots of players around you and a nice chatty and helpful community. But in the game world there's little incentive to group and it has a very old school approach to quest mob tagging and co-operation with other players. Guild Wars 2 does this MUCH better. In GW2 you are pleased to have other players assist you because most quests are public and designed to be co-operative, even if you aren't grouped. In GW2 you don't lose any loot or xp by them doing so. In TSW as with so many other MMOs you do, so there's competition not co-operation. Sad.
* The monthly fee. This is the real elephant in the room. I don't feel this game is worth a monthly fee in its current state. The MMO industry is moving towards F2P and the GW2 box fee + cash shop model. TSW has box fee + monthly fee + cash shop which seems VERY greedy. No surprise to see EA are the publisher then. This alone could put me off playing. If this had no monthly fee I'd definitely play it, and if the character customisation was better they might even make some money out of me in the cash shop! But as it stands I'm not sure. Perhaps I will approach it as I did SWTOR, knowing I'll probably only play 1-3 months (which will fill the gap to GW2). Will think about it.