So..... With me not paying attention and realizing this weekend was an open beta weekend... I didn't attempt to get a key until yesterday morning, and with the download, install, something about Mom's and BBQ's going on :D I didn't get a chance to jump in it until ~5:00PM EST last evening. I played on/off until ~1:00AM.
Overall, I will say it was.... OK, not great, but not bad by far. I am aware that the current tutorial in game was put there just for the Beta's, and the final tutorial will be changed/upgraded. The lack of "quest hubs" took a little to get used to and was a nice change. I never ran out of quests/missions to do, some of them were the normal kill x number of y (at this stage "y" was zombies :p) The tiering of missions was nice, and the fact that you could phone in the end of the quests, instead of having to return was very nice.
The combat was nice as well. Like GW2, you could tab target and attack that mob and splash damage would hit those next to them. Also, if there was a group in front of you, you could just set off an ability and it would automatically hit the closest target, or if it was an AOE spell it would hit them all. I went with Katana/Blood. Imo, it was a nice mix of ranged and melee abilities. It took a little bit of reading to figure out the AP's and SP's but they were somewhat straight forward.
Crafting had no intro or tutorials, I had to look to the forums for info. And of course you can't disassemble "white" weapons, it has to be green or better. I didn't find that out until I sold 4 or 5 green weapons to the vendor - which is when I found out that there is no buyback from the vendor. So even though I had ~30 pieces of differing assembly items in my backpack, I had nothing that could make anything. For someone who likes to craft, this looks like a very interesting crafting game.
Overall, it's a game I probably will not buy. With D3 releasing tomorrow, and GW2 already pre-purchased, I have 2 "non-subscription" based games that I enjoy. It's hard to justify a $10-$15 month sub for something that isn't mind blowing great (for me at least). I will try whatever remaining Betas that I can get in to - to give it a fair shake, but from the 5 or 6 hours, not sure anything will change for me.
