So Warhammer

I'll come right out and say it right now. I am a Warcraft player. I used to play an enhancement shaman full time, and got sick of the abuse so I rolled a rogue. I haven't started to hate my rogue yet, probably because she's only 68, but I can tell you that PvP, even with the Death Knight bullshit, is still an amazing experience.
Warcraft suffers from some serious drawbacks, though. The worst of it can be summed up in this guy. Namely, it caters to these people. It has to, because this guy- and people like him- are the loud minority, the power players who get to 80 in less than a week, who absolutely dominate PvP, who cleared Black Temple as soon as it came out and started farming it for These Puppies. One of the worst trappings of Blizzard's success with Warcraft has been, ironically, the creation of an entire class of player that is completely obsessed with the game, and as a result consumes the new content like a horde of locusts the moment it is released.
Now, I would describe myself as a casual player. I got my guy to 70 (before Lich King) and I would play him maybe for an hour at a time. However, with Warcraft, once you have hit the level cap, you are presented with two options. You can either 1) Farm battlegrounds for a week to get the requisite honor for an entry level set of PvP gear or 2) do heroic dungeons for the boss drops.
Both options are pretty painful. Granted, if you have decent skill with your character, option 1 is the easier to do alone, but if you are still learning, PvP is a very painful place to mess up.
The real question, though, is "why is this so hard? Why do i have to spend a week doing the same battleground, a month doing the same raids, a year constantly working towards that vision of perfection, pouring endless hours of effort for an imaginary character in an imaginary world? Why?"
The reason is these power players, and Blizzard's attitude toward them. Rather than innovate on the player experience with each patch- introduce new content that is interesting and original- Blizzard sought to produce more of the same: with the twist that it be more difficult. Keeping these players satisfied was Blizzard's first goal, and the logical conclusion was that the casual players would merely follow in these more dedicated player's footsteps. Eventually.
Of course, the obvious out for alot of casual players is PvP. Since its based largely on skill, a really talented person, even with only decent gear, can perform excellently in Battlegrounds. Since the gear really doesn't have as much an affect affect as in the dungeon content, and since it can be trained with moderate amounts of time invested, Battlegrounds have become something like the amateur leagues while the pros (the Athenes of the game) can duke it out in the Arena.
That said, I'd like an MMO that appreciates a casual players input more. I'd like a game that puts that PvP element front and center, a game that makes sane expectations of its players, and creates content that is both interesting and innovative.
I'm hoping that game is Warhammer.
Warhammer, right from the beginning, has RvR (their name for PvP) front and center. You can level, just from RvR. If you capture a few battleground objectives in RvR, you can get really cool items. All the time you are doing this, of course, you are honing that PvP skill that will make you capable of playing decently at rank 40- and you're still leveling to 40. That is what I mean by a sane expectation. Serious players in WAR will do the PVE content to get even better gear for RvR content, but casual players can still survive in the current climate without being destroyed.
Now, I'll admit, I rolled a Bright Wizard my first go. It probably wasn't the best choice, though I will tell you that, having learned mage tactics from my roommate, I can own with him. I'm not quite the level of being able to take down guys six levels higher than me (yes, he was able to with his mage in Warcraft) but I'm pretty good.
I'm thinking of making a Witch Hunter, just because I liked my rogue so much in Warcraft, though I know they are a different approach to the archetype.
The one flaw that mars WAR are it's graphics. The client is a glutton that, even on the lowest settings, was killing my machine.
If there was one thing for which I could ask, it would be a mac client that runs on a reasonably powerful machine. I'm not asking for miracles, but I own two very capable machines that just suffer under the Warhammer coding.