For starters, head over to Keen and Graev for an interview with Mark, who also answers more questions in the comments.
My biggest issue with CU is that Mark made WAR, and for a long time I didn’t get the feeling that he understood and accepted why WAR wasn’t as good as it could have been (can’t call it a failure since it was profitable, but that just makes it a weird title that was profitable yet isn’t online anymore). He would always state it launched early as a major problem, but IMO that wasn’t really it. Even if the game didn’t have the technical issues it had with sieges crashing and massive lag in RvR, it was still flawed.
Once you hit the level cap, got your gear (not that difficult), and had seen a capital siege, you won WAR. There was nothing else to do. Not from a character progression standpoint, or a RvR perspective, or for a guild. That, IMO, was the critical and core flaw of WAR. And yes, I think its safe to say most players never hit that ‘win’ mark due to other issues, but ultimately if all of those were fixed, WAR still didn’t have the core design to keep it going.
That remains my primary concern with CU, but based on recent info and what Mark has said, I’m not as worried about it, and I know that if Mark and company are able to get that part right, CU is indeed going to be awesome.
Hardcore Casual 
Surprising to me, you conceding this. I was at odds with the game because of his failures as well. Yet, of all the RvR games coming out, his has the best potential for success. I like that Psychochild is working on the title as well, he seems to have a firm grasp of design principles.
I’m still a little dubious as to how they plan on solving realm imbalances; its the thing that made GW2 most un-fun. When one server is always #1 week after week, it becomes difficult to motivate any of the smaller servers to show up and try to do battle with them.
The downside to their current design is that you no longer have the ability to draw upon a whole server to fuel a faction. In CU they are relying on a single server to be equally populated with players interested in PvP. Thats a stretch in any imagination. Do you know of any WoW servers with a good balance between Horde and Alliance? yea… me either. Its unlikely adding a third faction to the mix is going to solve this.
In the end, no matter how good the design is, you are going to have players deviating towards the easiest route for success. That doesn’t mean joining a losing faction. This basically is the flaw in a RvRvR system and ultimately detracts from the experience to anyone not on the winning faction.
I think the game design itself is such a critical component that I almost don’t care about the class-mechanics or balancing in combat itself. That is such a trivial component now a days. Its easy to tweak numbers based on recorded data. Yet, how do you get to a point where you can record that data? You need a succesful game with well-thought-out-mechanics.
I don’t or haven’t seen any indicators they are addressing realm imbalance in any “new” or impactful way. Thus in my narrow view, the game is doomed to a slow death as players realize they can’t win without bandwagoning onto the winning server/faction (please reference Guild Wars 2 and the #1 server for evidence if you need it).
Using GW2 as a measure for PvP isn’t good IMO, since GW2 PvP is garbage for a ton of reasons, not the least of which is that it doesn’t matter and its a glorified BG system.
Instead look at DAOC; all of servers had realm imbalance, yet it still worked. Could CU get this wrong? Yea, but I have way more faith that they won’t fail in that aspect then I do with my primary concern.
Wasn’t this the whole point of Guild Wars, and the reason they never went with a subscription model? I never played it, but the pointless arena thing is the selling point I remember from back in the day…
Guild Wars one had a singleplayer style pve campaign and arena based pvp wich you could create a max level character for from scratch.
GW2 is mostly the same but with a cross server pvp component that attempts to mimic RvR
don’t get me started on gw2 lol… so much wrong it hurts but it was still fun for a while
Anyway from the design docs I’ve read, discussions on the forums and questions answered it seems they do have the right Idea there. It’s hard to say how it will end up though but they definitely aren’t making the same mistakes.
I think the problem you’re ignoring though, is the population and maturity levels of gamers has drastically shifted. Mainstream gamers tend to be far more fickle. We have large populations game-jumping because something didn’t click for them.
Additionally, most games have a global audience versus 15 years ago when it was almost all entirely US.
I don’t want to be stuck on a server in CU when 15 Korean guilds decide to join my server, but not my faction. Each day I login the Korean have wiped out any progress I might have been able to eek out with my guild. Its not even a faction imbalance when I’m on that can impact me.
To be clear I spelled out a few situations that I’ve run into over my gaming trials on the Keen & Graeves comment section. Heres to hoping Jacobs responds.
I just want an open world PvP game where I can log in and skirmish and go with the flow. I don’t like GW2’s combat, and am not a huge fan of ESO’s either.
If you like full looting and permanent loss, this is EVE. One vs many pvp using fast medium range kiting ships sounds like what you want.
I’ve played eve off and on for probably 7 years. It’s just too much work to me.
I stand by my belief that an RvR game just simply won’t work with todays playerbase. Faction pride no longer exists. It’s all about winning, even at the expense of the long term viability of the game.
Players will inevitably stack their server/faction with as many 24/7 hardcore PVP guilds as possible to ensure victory. Once the other side realizes this, they’ll join the winning side rather than deal with the headaches of organizing themselves.
In short – the players won’t allow an RvR game to be successful, even at a niche level.
“can’t call it a failure since it was profitable, but that just makes it a weird title that was profitable yet isn’t online anymore”
Umm, profitable titles get content updates and expansions, they don’t get shut down. That’s why titles such as Ultima Online and SW:TOR are still updated (because they’re still profitable) and titles like WAR and DAOC have been shut down (because they weren’t when they were shut down).
Classic ASL comment, thanks.