WAR

The factual information Mike detailed is spot on, however I would disagree with the subjective evaluation.  The game, for me, has lagged from the beginning just as it does now.  The most annoying bug for me was when I would root monsters in melee with me and they would appear to "stick" to me when I moved until the root broke, then they would teleport to their actual position.  The could not attack me, so the game counted them as in the correct place in every way except visually.  That bug has been fixed with the most recent patch.  Compared to any other MMO I've played, it is almost flawless.  None of the bugs is game-breaking and most aren't even that annoying.

The reward of renown and experience in Scenarios (think WoW battlegrounds, only much better) and World RvR (outdoor areas where you become flagged for PvP) is a bit mysterious.  There does, at first glance, appear to be some bias in favor of those who do damage.  However, I'm not certain this is as true as it first appears.  I have done almost twice as much damage in some instances and recieved less experience and especially less renown than healers and tanks.  Capturing battlefield objectives, healing, kills, death blows, and other factors all count toward these rewards.  I think where the deficiency in the system lies is not so much in how damage is rewarded, but how passive actions which lead to the win are accounted for.  I have held the flag in one instance and been responsible for keeping the other side from capturing it, while other players pointlessly battle all over the map.  Much of those specific battles I stood by, just watching the flag.  I could easily have left the flag and topped the damage charts (not bragging, I was top of the Tier level-wise and I'm playing the heaviest hitter in the game, the Bright Wizard), but we would have lost the game, because the flag would have been captured repeatedly (nobody else was watching it).  Also, there is no reward for leadership, which is the single biggest factor in a win versus a loss between evernly matched teams.  This does affect tanks the most, because their contribution is the most passive: soaking up damage from their healers and dps'ers, snaring, taunting, and other things which are hard to measure.  However, I have led the battle in damage, experience, renown, death blows, and kills with a Swordmaster, and performed very well in many battles.  I've also done poorly.  A lot of it depends on how the battle goes and the choices your opponents make.  In one fight, I was fighting from the gun until the whistle blew, and never died (great healing, Mel), and in others I've been running back from my spawn point half the battle and ended up on the bottom of the charts.

In a perfect fight, the dps'ers will probably out-perform the tanks.  The healers can hold their own, if they are in the thick of things and don't die.  Playing the tank is the most challenging role in the game, and in my opinion, the most vital.  Taunting, protecting healers, guarding nodes, snaring the right targets, and pouring on the damage at the critical moments takes practice, quick reflexes, and timing.  If you are playing against an organized, intelligent opponent and your side is not cooperating, you will be taking a dirt-nap.

The biggest problem with the game that I've seen is a result of it's great strength.  The designers have created a game which by its very design rewards players who work together.  It depends upon it.  If there are too many players on one side or the other, you get long queues for the Scenarios.  If there are too few players on the server, long queues.  Too many players on the server, long queues.  Our server seems to have a moderate amount of players which means some waiting for some queues, some problems finding enough players to do public quests (but not always, it really depends) and not a lot of competition for quest items/kills.  The problems pale in comparison to any other game I've played, including WoW.  (As I've stated before, DDO is not included in my estimation as I don't think of it as massively multi-player).

Their are two large problems for the Order side.  First, the most popular RvR zones appear to be in the Empire.  The Empire does not have a tank class.  Hence, you often find yourself in RvR battles with no tanks, while the Chaos side has tons of them.  Second, the most popular healer on the Order side seems to be the Empire healer, the Warrior Priest.  Players of this class seem to greatly favor the Warrior part and forget the Healer part, except when healing themselves.  One of the great flaws in every game of this type ever made is every class can do some damage, but not every class can heal, which forces the healing classes to not be allowed to do damage since other classes who can't heal do it so much better.  When you get into an RvR battle with half-way decent opponents, they will target your healers first.  With no tanks (or tanks intent on "just let me finish this guy off before I keep that melee dps from eviscerating you) the losses are horrible.  Add to that a lack of general strategy and cooperation and you can quickly despair.  In those battles where 4 or 5 of us go in with a balanced group and tell the other players what we're doing we generally win, and sometimes quite convincingly.  Sometimes our opponents are just as balanced and organized and those are the best Scenarios, win or lose.

For the record, I will tell you what the two single biggest factors are in who gets the most experience and renown.  The first is your level, and the second is how much you are involved in the battle.  If you are maximum level for the Scenario, you will get more experience.  Minimum level and your experience will be much less.  Tanks can, and often do compete quite nicely.  But since tanks are the best to guard nodes, they often are idle during portions of the battle, which is what hurts their rewards.  Dps'ers (especially selfish ones who are trying to top the charts rather than win the Scenarios) are often fighting throughout.  Everybody earns enough renown, experience, and other rewards to have an outstanding time.  If other classes getting more rewards than you ruins a game that is a blast to play, I don't know what to tell you.  I don't expect perfection, just fun and WaR is really fun.

WAR is not perfect.  But it is easily the best launch of an MMO ever, nothing else even comes close.  I think it's the best game, but it is not going to be for everyone.  For a group that pressures those who play with it to only play when and how the group wants, it's going to cause tension.  There's just too much to do and people have varying habits, predilections, and preferences.  I wish everybody liked the game as much as I do and I look forward to playing with anybody who wants to give it a try.  In all honesty, though, it might be best to stick with DDO if you expect this particular game to be fun just playing all together one night a week.  The best part of this game is in being part of a large, active guild, not limiting game play to 6 or 7 of us.  There will be massive, server-wide battles going on in the future.  The truth is, the game doesn't even really start until everybody is 40th level.  We won't really know about game balance until then, or at least until a good number of people are in Tier 4, with the majority of their abilities.

Hmmmm.... I might have been a bit hasty...

I have now played a character to third level.  Once I figured out how the UI works, things improved greatly.  Combat is VERY Wow-like, not a plus.  This is NOT a first-person shooter type game where targeting and twitch skills rule the day, at least not at low level when you have few abilities.

The initial quests are utterly standard fare, kill so many of this and take this message to them, etc.  However, not too far into the progression, I received a quest to help defend an important location.  I accepted and then entered a queue, much like the battlegrounds in WoW, except you don't have to go to a distant Battlemaster to join, you do it anytime and anywhere you want, from your UI.  The Battle lasted about 10 or 15 minutes and wasn't anything special, but kind of fun.  My side got their butts handed to them, but I still got credit for the quest.  I was returned to the location I left when I entered the Battle (not where I hit the button to join, there was a delay while enough players joined and I was able to keep questing during the delay).

If Mythic is targetting WoW players, (and if you don't think they are, talk to me later about some choice Florida real estate you simply MUST have) they may have something here.  I suspect their combat model is a rock/paper/scissors type of thing and not very interesting at low level, but looking over the ability lists at the trainer, there is some potential for tactics.  Perhaps the second biggest plus in the game is the Warhammer/tabletop feel of the game.  If you ever wanted to play as a piece in a Warhammer Campaign, you might want to give it a try.

The biggest plus is the UI and I haven't taken the time to understand all the features.  It takes a bit to understand how things work, but once you do, managing your quests, figuring out where to go next, and navigating the world becomes very easy, something I like.  I would say it's better than WoW's.

No clipping, Griffon, we're all ghosts.  Ugh.

This might be a fun game to play with a good, active guild, but for small weekly game play, I really don't think it will be a good choice.  I don't know if there are any instanced dungeon crawls, or if the focus is totally on levelling up to take part in RvR combat.

I've seen enough pluses to say you might want to check it out.  I don't advocate it as a game for the Avatars.  For those who want to play, hooking up with House Ancora or another group might be the way to go.  A strong, large guild will have fun and apparently Mythic has designed some innovative features to make guilds fun, interesting, and worth maintaining.

Technically, the game is solid as a rock.  I have not had any lag, glitches, or other problems.  The gameplay is polished, on par with Wow several weeks (months?) after it was released.  Like AoC, who knows if that extends to the higher levels of play?

I played a Shadow Warrior, basically an Archer.  At first level you have two abilities, a long, slow aimed bow shot and a quicker sword slash.  Target, boooowwwwwshhhoooottttt, wait, slash, slash, loot, rinse and repeat.  Boooorrrrinnnng.  At second level I got an instant bow shot.  Not much more interesting, replace one of the slashes with the new bow attack.  At third level I got another bow shot, almost as slow-casting as the aimed shot, which does moderate damage and debuffs the targets armor and chance to block for 10 seconds.  You start to get the idea.  I noted a snaring shot in the list.  Also, as a Shadow Warrior, there are three paths to take, each with its own stance.  Some abilities, like the Debuff Shot, require the character to be in a particular stance to use.

The above are Core Abilities, and all characters can get all of them, as far as I can tell at this point.  However, starting at 11th level, characters earn Mastery Points which they can spend on abilities which require a specific stance, which is where individual customization of characters occurs.  I don't know how varied classes will be.  Other classes don't necessarily have stances, but there is some kind of similar mechanic for all of them.

I don't care enough about crafting to study it, but it is much more limited in WAR than WoW from what I've seen/read.  You can, however, dye your armor (at least some of it), which will make the fashion mavens among us happy.

You might want to take the time to download the Beta (unless you are defending morally outraged sensibilities) and see what you think.  The game will become a huge time sink for those who get addicted to it, of that I have no doubt.  DDO seems like a much more fitting game for our crowd.