Having a great time with this, it's an incredibly strong start for what is an extremely difficult genre to get right from launch. Unlike other MMOs I find that I really do get to choose how to progress on my own terms - I'm shocked at how easy it is just to set a task and get to it, the game will bend to whatever approach you want to take.

And it works. For the most part. Easily the smoothest launch to an MMO I can remember. The game looks great, generally plays very smoothly, and honestly over dozens of hours I haven't actually seen lag or glitches in the experience - extraordinary for such a complex online game where often there are dozens of other players onscreen at once.

The world is really great. At first I was a bit disappointed how samey it all seemed in the early zones, but that familiarity has grown on me immensely and actually I'm appreciating the subtle variety as I progress. MMOs by their nature often look quite generic, but what is impressing me is that within that there is thoughtful world design that gets better the more time you spend in it. The master-stroke is how often I go back to zones I've already played and how the familiarity grows.

The big plus - it's busy, which for an MMO is everything, it's nothing without a playerbase. That exciting feeling of a fresh online world where a bunch of people are buzzing around it. It doesn't come around often enough in the MMO space, and I'm drinking it in right now.