Exciting at first. But dull and boring after a month or so. Planned future patches might fix that.
Ill start with my take on crafting since it seems to be the thing people talk about most. When you first start getting into crafting there seems to be so many recipes at the early levels that it feels like it will be overwhelming for a long time. For example there are probably 5 types of pants in each of the "pants" book you can learn at skill level 9, 15, and 30. It creates the impression that every handful of levels you will be able to create 5 more unique looking pairs of pants. However, after level 30 there is only 1 more book to learn with actual pants in it, after that it becomes thigh pads - no new pants. Same goes with shirts, at level 30 there is a book with 5 shirts - and that is the end of shirts in the game. After that it is just a few new pieces of armor every 5 or so levels. From here on out, everybody is running around in either black pants or a red skirt and 1 of 5 different shirts on under their armor. (a red flannel, blue flannel, a black or green long sleeved shirt, or a tank top from a quest.) I like to customize my avatar so i was very disappointed when i realized this.
All of the crafting is like that, all ATVs look the same but there are 3 colors, all motorcycles look the same but there are 3 colors, all dune buggys look the same (but the are all the SAME COLOR.) And as you go on you realize that the new armor looks just like the stuff from 10 levels ago... I started to notice this around level 15 when everybody in the towns that were in that range had the same helmet, same shoulder pads, same jacket, etc... Also, melee users all had the same melee weapons, rifle users all had the same rifles, pistol users the same pistols...
And with crafting there must be gathering... Gathering in this game is a bore and a chore. You walk (or drive) around looking for scavenging nodes, when you find a few you get off your mount (it takes like 5 seconds) walk to the node and click on it - then you watch your guy bend over and search the node - this also takes 5 seconds - which is increased by a few more seconds by lack of an auto loot feature. Griping about 5 seconds here and there might seem lame, but you must realize this - some recipes/blueprints in the game call for over 500 ingredients/parts, You only get 1 - 3 of an item per scavenge. Do the math, if it averages out to 2 items per scavenge attempt, then that is 5 seconds times 250 just to get the parts for your item. That means 20 minutes of just staring at the screen watching your guy bend over just for that one crafted item! And that doesn't include the time it takes searching for the piles and getting on and off your mount! There is no fast travel so good luck driving all the way back to those gathering hot-spots you have found.
People also say its cool because there are no classes! well guess what? in MMOs no classes means no reason to party. With no reason to party this might as well be a single player game. Boring!
PvP - there is no pvp! pvp in this game is walking around in an empty zone or walking into a starter zone at level 1 to find a level 20 just killing anybody who enters. And again, there is no fast travel so you can not log your main and go kill him - unless you want to drive for 20+ minutes just to hope he is still there when you get there.
PvE - this is pretty poorly done. the mobs of enemies just stand around in an area like a herd of cattle. Missions include killing a bunch of guys out of one of those groups, grab missions, retrieve a hostage missions, all the standard stuff. Then there are defend the position missions - These missions are bugged pretty bad. Sometimes the enemies never show up and you just stand there for 5 minutes until the quest auto-completes. When they do show up, one or 2 men will spawn right on you, you kill them, then wait 30 seconds for 2 more to spawn right on you... this continues until the quest is complete. Another type of quest is a search and kill quest, during this quest you follow a red X until it just randomly stops somewhere. At that point a guy spawns right on top of you and starts attacking... After you kill him you must drive all the way back to the quest giver...
End Game - There is no end game. Once you reach max level there is nothing to do. There is no PvP to do, nothing left to craft, no raids, no team instances...
Heh, I really didn't mean to slam this game in this review, but as i think about the state of the game I realize that it is not worth your money. Its $50 for the game and $15 a month... NOT WORTH IT AT ALL!!!
I do know that they plan on adding a lot more to the game and after they add more it might be a great one! But until then I recommend that you STAY AWAY from it!