Its much better than I expected
What makes Defiance different? To say that it breaks the standard rules is fair, the first MMO was Everquest and it set the tone for future MMO's such as World of Warcraft and Warhammer. No matter how recent you go the basic setup never really improved on the Everquest design, in fact games like wow became a monster like this which then relied on you having mods and macro's to be competitive with other players. Defiance moves to a first person shooter system which isn't unique but it is not standard. The only other i know is Planetside 2, never played it myself.
Defiance will need work there is no doubt, it has bugs and people will get bored quickly if they don't put the work in. However if the work is put in this could be a very successful MMO. Never judge an MMO on launch state because its not a true impression, taking a game like Wow on release was full of bugs and sever crashing ect. A true impression would be 6 month's down the line probably and see how much they have fixed and added.
It has great potential whether they do enough to reach it...we will have to wait and see.