Played it for a year and half starting at it's release. Heck, it's where I got my nick for this forum. 😉
I prefer it over WoW for several reasons including great diversity in races and classes, PvP end game, more fun melee combat, better spell effects (Hibernia natualist lines have a spell that encircles you with upward streaming shimmering gold leaves that take the shape of a tree truck then explode outward at the top like branches before fading out.......still the coolest spell I've ever seen in any game).
Pros. Choose your two favorite primary abilities......melee, casting, buffing, pets, debuffing, healing, etc...and there is sure to be a class in one of the realms that possesses them both. It's not quite that cut and dry, but it does make every class unique. Taking and defending keeps in the contested lands is a blast. The dungeon Darkness Falls is open PvP (Edit: make that open RvR) and is accessible only to the realm in possession of the majority of keeps which gives "purpose" to taking keeps as there are lots of good drops and a store with unique items in DF....but it means when possession switches from one relam to the next that there is a confrontation on the way and it's a wild and furocious 10-15 minutes as one realm sweeps through and another gradually pulls out.
Cons. It has an abundance of PvE content, but the real end game is meant to be the PvP and because of the release of ToA, to be compeititve you need to grind hardcore at the upper levels to max out your gear. It wasn't like that when I quit playing and it deterred me from picking it back up. They just added a new server with the old rules, that might be a good choice. The crafting system is as pathetic as WoW's. When I quit drops were better anyway. Also, this game is the same one you've already played several times now and its been out a while so you'll be a newbie grouping with vet's alts....but only vets without guilds to PL them. Mythic allowed a gross imbalance with Berzerkers to go on a year before admitting there was a problem and fixing it....even with tons of reports and screenshots of it and supposed testing on their own...........it left me with zero faith in them as a company.
A more entertaining and rewarding experience than WoW, IMO....but still a formulaic group and level game. Still, unlike playing WoW, you inflict no harm on the genre by playing for 5 or 6 months. Heck I might even reactivate an account on a trial renewal and see if I have some gold or something. GREAT player made videos over at Camelot Vault too. I even have some screenshots of my Furbolg Hero in PvP action that still make me smile.
