Defiance - a game that should have been made a lot time ago.
Imagine playing Freedom Fighters -
http://www.gamespot.com/freedom-fighters/
Except you don't have a platoon of troops to order around, and its an MMO, where you can do all the typical MMO stuff: group with other players, do quests, make your dude look cool, kill lots of stuff for XP and loot out the @$$, get involved in a cool story, and level up in skill trees.
Then you throw Borderlands guns and gear, driving, and powers on top of this -
http://www.gamespot.com/borderlands-2/
Except it is on steroids, because you can upgrade your guns with 4 different mods, instead of the lottery system that is Borderlands. The driving feels about the same. The powers, while different than Borderlands, serve the same sort of function.
Now put all of this in a Setting that is sort of a mix between Fallout and Star Trek - and BLAMMO - you've got Defiance in a nutshell. There really isn't anything about the game that doesn't have the potential to be insanely awesome.
So, how does it really fare?
Well - here's the deal. You've got similar problems that every MMO has when it first launches:
1. Balance
So, there are some issues with gun and power balance. You never really notice this until you start to PvP, though. Honestly - I'm not even remotely worried about this. If this were something like WoW where you have 8 different classes, and each one has 30-50 different abilities, all of which have to be perfectly balanced with one another... I would say that is a problem. You would never get that balanced, which is exactly why traditional MMO's are NEVER balanced... EVER.
Defiance doesn't really have this problem. All they really have to worry about is gun balance. This can be achieved, or at least, to a better degree of success than something like WoW. This will be ironed out in time.
2. Technical
So, there are some technical issues in the game, most notably - there are some major Chat/Voice problems. There are a few other bugs littered here and there - but again... all of this is expected in a first launch MMO. I am not even remotely concerned about this, either.
3. Content
The Content in the game is varied:
- Main Quests that follow the Defiance story and lore (these have cool cutscenes)
- Episode Quests that follow the story arcs of the TV show characters (these have cool cutscenes)
- Side Quests that provide you with a reason to blow crap up... as if you need a reason (no cutscenes, these are just to give you stuff to do.)
- Ark Falls are world objectives that give you a chance to get some sweet gear and level up in a massive impromptu RAID (there are major and minor Arkfalls)
- Reputation Quests and Contracts are world objectives that spawn in random locations where you stop and help some folk out for reputation that can later be used to buy some sweet gear. These are actually cooler than I make them sound - they are very important to giving you this sense of being important in the world (Role Player flare.)
- Co-Op missions are instanced missions where players group up to do some kind of a big quest.
- PvP Arenas are basically just that - instanced PvP battles like any other shooter.
- Shadow Wars are essentially what provide you with open world PvP. I personally have no participated in this particular part of the game, so I cannot say exactly how it works.
So... there is a good variety of stuff to do. My only question is whether or not there is enough of it. Typically, I would be incredibly worried about this. However, Trion Worldz is behind this game. They are the ones behind Rift. In this day and age... you basically have 2 options for a AAA MMO experience that is worth a subscription fee. WoW.... and Rift.
To me, it says a lot about a game and a company when they can stay financially sound with a subscription model. Not even SWTOR could make that happen. But Rift... out of nowhere... is the only MMO that can stand toe to toe with the Behemoth WoW and say, "No... you're not so good you can't have competition."
Now, I don't play Rift - but that is because I am tired of the traditional MMO gameplay. But - that's why I am a huge fan of Defiance. It is an MMO (which I like) but plays like your typical TPS (which I also like) and is run by a great company (which I also like.)
Defiance is a good game. It needs some time to mature... but it is a good game.