It is just too much not working yet to buy it now.
I started my career as Dark Elf, usually my favourite race, and instantly recognized my mistake. All polls show, that in fantasy MMOs Elves usually are the most favourite race, and the Elf starter areas are swarming with people, so the FPS was in the cellar. Ok, so I decided to play one of the less desired races and started as a Gnome. I was alone for quite a while, and given that Gnomes are ugly and weak, it's no real wonder. With my Athlon 2600, ATI 9800 with 256 MB and a 1 GB Ram and DSL connection I could use max setting there all the time, while in any player populated area I have to use the lowest settings, and even then I get a huge lag. Given that in my line of sight in the Elf areas I saw about three dozen players or so, I can only think the idea this game is for 500.000 players on one server as humbug. How huge battles and castle sieges are supposed to work with that lag is beyond me.
I will give DnL that credit, that is has potential. I guess that's why so many people are angry now, because we all see the potential still, but see how much this game is still a very beta ruin at best.
One thing I found by far the most annoying thing is the movement. The camera tilts and swings widely behind my character, as I'd play on a small sailboat in a storm. The character reacts very unprecise to anything; it takes a few moments after I press "run" before he starts walking, he keeps walking a few steps when I stop and so on. The very cumbersome movement makes playing, fighting and exploring very, very tedious. I could ignore a lot of missing features, but the movement and camera just make me dizzy after a while. This should be the top issue to correct.
The graphics is likely the most disputable thing. Some like the great distant sights, the wideness of the world and the feeling of freedom. Compared to the small, cramped spaces of WoW it feels indeed more like a real, huge world than many other games. I always got a little claustrophobia in WOW after I was lv 40. But no size can replace the feeling of emptyness. The DnL world feels very artificial, partially because a mayority of the land is empty, wide plains, and most parts look like generated from a fractal editor of the early 90ies. Goldshire or the Feerrott may be very small compared to the DnL Kingdoms, but you see that in WOW or EQ2 every tree, stone and house was designed and carefully placed. In DnL, despite the realistic size, it sorely lacks the feeling of a real world. The buildings of DnL villages or cities may not have fewer polygons like any WOW city, but the textures are so terribly boring, it looks like one of the earliest 3D games. Added the few stationary and ugly NPC models in that villages and cities, you never get the feeling of awe and wonder I had when I was the first time in cities like Qeynos or Ironforge (EQ2 and WOW).
There is no tutorial of any kind. You are plunged into the world and you are on your own. Some MMO professionals may not need a tutorial, but it surely is no place to start your MMO career, and even though I played half a dozen MMOs in the last 3 years, I was quite lost with the very unintuitive interface. Since there is only a very basic manual, most things are either found by try and error or forum requests. It is those tutorials, like Isle of Refugees, Tanari Point Station or WoW starter areas, which make players feel welcome in a world. The lack totally takes this away from DnL, which makes leaving it much easier, since you didn't get any warm welcome anyway.
The character models and animation are quite behind anything standart today, it reminded me painfully of the sub par graphics I have seen trying out DDO. It seems that "Dungeon Lords" uglyness is becomind fashion these days, alas. None of the characters I have created has appeal; a few very blocky hair styles which more look like old wigs, no faces to choose from and one standard clothing no matter how or with what character you start. Being used to the great diversity of City of Heroes, SWG or even EQ2, the characters look dull and ugly. The combat animations are boring and repetetive and not interesting to watch at all, combined with the bad camera and movement it's like fighting with a heavy hiccup while being drunk. Even a game with the most mindless grindfest like RF Online has at least a decend control and good animations to watch.
Some things are just broken or incomplete. The entire mage class is unplayable, since all spells are interruptable, and once any creature comes close, you can't fire any spell at all, since all are interrupted. Group XP is lower than solo XP. Some level ranges are totally missing at the starter areas, so you start wandering the enire big lands seeking some lv 5 creature, if you chose a wrong race. DnL said to have monster migrations. It sounds cool, but if you have to seek out the entire big realm for the next mobs, I began to realize it is much less cool than it sounded to me at first. After searching 2 hours for some Level 5 mob to kill with my Gnome, I just gave up on this toon and tried out others.
There are very few quests, 1-2 for each starter area, and they do not point you in any way where to go or what exacly to do, so besides grinding there isnt really anything to do, and the simple and empty landscapes do not call for exploring, since there are few interesting eye-catchers to find. Sure, the Gnome village on the water looks pretty at night with all the lanterns over the water, but it is so very few of those things. It really made me wonder, how those beautiful looking screenshots were made; they are misleading at best, and look heavily cheated to me now.
I didnt hear much music, and the few sounds are clanky and outdated, but in that way they fit to the outdated and simple animations. (Forgive the irony, I could not control myself.)
Overall, it has potential, but the question is, do you want to pay for a game that *maybe* someday has something to offer? I'd rather stay away from it now, and I just don't review and rate a game based on what it could be someday. I usually do not review things so shortly after launch, but this is so crystal clear and lacks so many very basic things, I'd rather warn people to stay away for now. I sincerly wish DnL luck to evolve, but given the history of DnL there is good chance this game will have quite a short lifespan. With all the high goals and innovative aims, it was a risky gamble from start, but the lesson to me is that more conservative and pragmatic approaches maybe offer more satisfactory game experiences like the aim for too great innovations. In a long run we will see pragmatic approaches like WOW or EQ2 will hardly be topped, no matter how much we may dislike this truth. There just are no miracles.
EDIT: I have added some notes after playing the game a few days longer to keep you updated. It does not alter the rating in any case, but just confirms my point with other examples.
A mayor problem of DnL is, that many things are too complicated and obviously worked on a desk but never tested. DnL has added many innovative features merely for the sake of making them different. Creatures for instance have long, descriptive names like "Crik'Crik of death", which means they belong to a certain faction or god. (Every mob, including spiders and flies.) Now if you kill enough "of death" and a vendor has that belief, he will never sell you things again. The result is, you can loose faction points in your home town for killing the newbiw mobs around! This, like so many features, may have sounded nice as an idea, but is totally unpractical in real gaming. Also mob level isn't mob level. A lv 30 deer is an easy kill for a low level fighter, while the same player will easily die from a lv 10 wolf. There is however no indication what creature level is regarded in what way, so it is, as everything in the game, guesswork. Since there is no tutorial and practically no manual, this causes extremely frustrating experiences.
And a recent patch has just make things worse: the only working thing right now, mob grinding, has been made more difficult and giving less experience now. Instead of focussing on bugs and adding new fun and features, they are spending their time with XP and difficulty tweaking. However correct or not this may be in a finalized complete game, at this time this is the most wrong thing they can possibly do.
Why Farlan, the developing company of Dark and Light, makes everything much more complicated than necessary is beyond me. The overly complex system make the idea to study Nuclear Physics like a funny and easy thing.