agreed
i am horrified of typical pvp, because to me that's just gank city with a handful of dicks just ruining your day. that's what it was like for me in WoW, that's what it was like for me in Conan
it's not like that in WAR. if you play the core, your pve areas are protected and you get warned if you are heading into pvp so you can leave if you're not ready. the scenarios are a lot of fun, basically capture and hold, and while it's frustrating to no end if you don't have a good coordinated group in the scenario with you, if you find some good teams it's absolutely heavenly. it's like UT2004 for the RPG set.
the PVE is fairly varied. the collect quests aren't wow horrible with drop rates in the 10% or below. the hunt and kills are kind of fun because they actually train you in a subset of moves for certain RVR strategies, the public quests are a TON of fun. I would usually just grind them out until i got the elite ratings and the level of friendly competition is good.
a few things did stick out in my mind in the betas and previews. elf healers don't heal. i dunno why they chose that class if they want to play mages. PVP players can safely evade tanks and just beat up on the weak character classes and you can't do much about it, which is really frustrating (esp if you're a tank).
there is pretty good level balance. if you know how to play your character, i've noticed that healers can kill tanks if they're careful and think out their moves (i was routinely able to stomp orc tanks as the dwarf healer). tanks can tear through DPS classes. but then DPS classes can tear through whatever they want.
one of the most fun things i was doing was running scenarios on the last day of open beta as a high elf ranged dps w/ other rangers (or whatever they were called). we would set up artillary barrages and cluster together so that we could dominate the play fields. tanks would try to charge us and we'd just let loose on them and they couldn't even get with range of their one distance attack.
maf, i'd say pick up WAR and give it the free month and see if it jibes. they have real mages. a few of them. one even lets you run around as an elf in skimpy clothing.
