While I knew WAR was coming, and I did read some about it, I did not watch the videos or pour over every piece of information I could find.

So I wasn’t expecting anything revolutionary. I was expecting a new iteration on the same game we’ve been playing since EQ came out, and that’s what I got. The same basic gameplay as WoW, EQ2, and LoTRO. With some rough edges from the previous games sanded down, some new annoyances, and some new ideas.

So is it fun? Yup. Is it the best game ever that’s going to suck me in for the next year? Nope.

But I got what I wanted, and it’s enough to keep me subbed through the next three months to see how things go.

For now though, I’m heading into Moria.

I’m thinking, primarily, of sites like Massively, which ran dozens upon dozens of previews talking about how awesome the game would be. Never once in all those previews did Massively give the real bottom line: that WAR is like WoW, with a bit more “meh.”

And you know what? Massively et al. did the same thing with AoC, another famously hyped game that failed to deliver. AoC’s failure is certainly more complete than WAR’s, but its pre-release coverage on Massively was just as overwhelmingly positive.

It’s starting to look like a trend, and the lesson to the reader is clear: don’t trust the “professional” blogs and simply ignore all the hype until real players have real opinions.