The game is epic.  This is the one of the few games that has actually put me into the action.  For example, one night (in the game) I was transporting a bunch of goods from one city to another, and while I was going through a mountain pass I was jumped by three bandits.  My heart was actually pounding while I was trying to get away on my horse.  I rode into a forest, manuevering through trees to block their arrows and looking back to see if they were gaining on me.  When I was finally out of sight, I hid behind a rock until I thought it was safe, nervous about being killed or robbed the entire time.

The game is epic.  This is the one of the few games that has actually put me into the action.  For example, one night (in the game) I was transporting a bunch of goods from one city to another, and while I was going through a mountain pass I was jumped by three bandits.  My heart was actually pounding while I was trying to get away on my horse.  I rode into a forest, manuevering through trees to block their arrows and looking back to see if they were gaining on me.  When I was finally out of sight, I hid behind a rock until I thought it was safe, nervous about being killed or robbed the entire time.

I played the open beta for about a month. It was kinda fun but extremely glitched. Actually it was unplayable lol due to an awkward desync problem that persisted all through that month I played. There were tons of glitches. And I'm a glitch lover actually but even for me this was too much.

It's a very hardcore MMO. A so called sandbox MMO. It's made by former Ultima Online players as sort of a modern Ultima Onlina in first person. No chatting system (unless they added a primitive guild chat of some sort in the last minute). No global chat, no PMs to other players. You just shout in the open and everyone within a 20 meter radius can hear you but that's it lol. That's kinda cool but made it extremely hard to group up and organize. So either u have to invest a lot of time in-game to meet other people and hook up with them, wait, meet up etc or u have to join a guild through a forum and then do all the comunication through Ventrilo.

Game play is not very much like Oblivion. But yes, if you use a skill you level in it.

PvP and murdering innocents in particular is a huge part of this game. And a big problem. All the players in the community quickly developed a very cautious playing style because of the high level mounted bandit posses who were out on the plains killing every innocent man they could spot. So players typically stayed in the towns, which are safe thanks to guards, and then went for short raids in the wild to harvest minerals or meat. Expeditions to actually kill mobs was very rare.

Another big thing is thievery. You can specialize in thievery. If you don't watch your pockets a thief will steal from you. So nearly everyone walked around naked in towns in fear of getting their good stuff stolen. It was kinda cool but there was a lot of anger when people got robbed lol.

Player housing and that stuff is important. Needs lots of money and investment and co-op, obviously. Actually to get good gear you are very dependent on other players. Most good stuff comes through crafting.

MO is really the type of MMO that needs dedication and a big investment of time or else you won't have fun.

If I had the time, and assuming the worst bugs were fixed (which I assume they are by now) then I would probably have stayed. It is quite addicting, feels original and mostly fun.