It's main problem , I believe , will be that most will find it not worth paying for monthly ,

I played in the closed beta in early June untli getting into the Warhammer beta in early August and I enjoyed it at first , (other than the horrifying avatar looks and combat - I just felt the towns were thrown on late in the dev cycle and it showed next to the polish the seas portion had) , but I slowly realized there was no way I would pay a fee for the game -

And it's not because I am cheap or anti monthly fees - I've had dual accounts in EQ (triple at times) to WoW so 15 bucks a month isnt much to me , but I find the game just doesn't meet a "virtual world" feeling at all and warrant a monthly fee

As far as the towns go , the towns feel on "rails" as in there are places you cannot go that simply make most of the town simply eye candy , and I dont mean just certain buildings , I mean places where you simply can't walk even though it's a wide open space in front of you , and this ins't uncommon or rare , in fact it's more the rule

And the ship combat is well done as are the graphics in the instances but again that destroys any "virtual world feel" to me , in that every battle you ever fight will be in an instances - not my cup of tea either

Pardon the pun but they also missed the boat on the open seas part where they could have had weather , waves , currents changing , storms just "something" to change it always looking exactly the same -

Little things like constant instances , towns on rails , no day/night , no weather effects eventually add up to make many mmorpg's just not feel it's worth a fee

I think it will sell "ok" at first then quickly dwindle into another game that stays on life support only because it will be part of SOE's all-access pass -

It's not horrible by any means but I dont think it would survive past 2 years if it wasnt for the SOE pass ,

If they had just concentrated all the time on the ships , open sea and instance combat , and left the town portion out I think it would have been better

(they honestly only tacked on the town part in the past year and it shows - it feels almost like a decently polished 2007 sea game mixed with an mid 90's horrible game when it comes to the avatar part)