The setting, story, most of the writing and voice acting is some of the best I have seen in an MMO, or even among recent RPGs. I actually found myself compelled to progress the story to see where it goes.
The first instanced dungeon was solid. There were 5 bosses and about as many trash pulls, which seemed to be used more to impart the setting than to challenge and extend the clear time. The bosses themselves were standard fare of tank, heal, avoid puddles of shit, avoid boss cleaves, etc. Loot was useful and varried. And although I am enjoying the references, Funcom owes the H.P. Lovecraft estate a royalty check for the final boss.
I spent some time in the persistent battleground and had some fun. It was entirely Templar controlled when I began with 2 other bros. The objective was to control a series of compounds in some Asian city. Each compound is protected by a turret and a big robot, roughly equivalent to an instance boss and a raid boss in terms of difficulty, respectively. It was fun organizing the Illuminati through the (then) unused faction chat channel to smash our Templar overlords and eventually control the entire map. Controlling the PVP zones confers substantial buffs to your faction as well.
The character building system is interesting and facilitates a near endless amount of possibilities, though I assume "ultimate mandatory" builds will soon surface. The system has you pick 2 weapons from a pool of 9 (3 melee, 3 casting, 3 guns) and build a "deck" of 14 (numbers could be off) skills, 7 active and 7 passive. This is great for the veteran MMOer or the nonretarded, but I have been seeing a lot of people with entirely worthless character builds, completely lost. There are a dozen or so premade decks you can follow, but most rely on expensive, end game abilities. It's not uncommon to get into a dungeon with a healer with no viable healing skills because his deck hasn't really provided them yet, which can be frustrating and jarring to the inexperienced.
I have the game preordered and recommend it to my prestigious MMO peers. At least for the free month.
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