Now that NDA has been lifted, I can talk about my experience with beta, and to a small extent the alpha which I didn't play more than 20 minutes of. This game appears to be catering to the console gamer who has never played an MMO before. If you are a veteran of massively mutliplayer online rpg's, then I can't imagine how you would be anything other than bored after 2 hours. Enemy AI in the game is dreadful, straight out of a Korean f2p, and they spawn out of "monster closets" all over the world (seriously hope you like mobs popping out the back of S.W.A.T vans where the devs of this game couldn't even be assed to have a door opening and closing animation iirc)
Shooting mechanics feel hollow and janky, and it gets old quick clicking on enemy heads for kills. Mobs are pretty boring and generic as well, and there is hardly any variety in the zones I was in. Quests are what you would expect. Fed-Ex, point A to point B to point C, repeated over and over and over again. The vehicles handle like riding a zombie pig in a molasses pool, and the graphics, while decent, paint a very uninspired world. It's the worst kind of theme-park, where everything looks like it's just standing around doing nothing or or shooting at shit or waiting for you to click for your Fed-Ex quest or click to head-shot.
And the UI. Holy. Shit. It's. Bad. The fact that you have to click multiple things and dig around in a menu just to quit the game was the proverbial straw that broke the camels back. The chat makes Asheron's Call 2's chat seem revolutionary, and that game was released in 2003. Did you guys like rifts in Rift? Hope you did, because they phoned it into Defiance, by providing the same "gameplay" via alien invasions surrounding a big rift, err rock, that people spaz out on killing mobs. There is no deep game-play. There is no character development (besides the generic abilities you can purchase - ooooh overcharge and cloak!!!). There isn't any real loot worth getting excited about. There seems to be zero reason why I should give a shit about what is going on in the world due to generic cut-scenes and boring NPC's. Apparently aliens invaded and some ship crashed near the starter zone.
If you like thoughtful, addictive, fun game-play, in an interestingly designed world then this isn't the game you are looking for. Maybe give it a shot in 3 years when it is on sale through steam for 4.99 and it's February and you are bored off your ass and have 3-4 hours to waste. How they are charging 60 dollars for this I will never know.
BTW, this was my favorite part of the email I got announcing that the beta NDA is down, and I quote:
"This is just the beginning. We're building a massive world and Beta is only part of what you see. For us, launch is when the fun starts. We patch to respond to your feedback. Like in a relationship, we put effort into making it work. "
Translation: Thanks for agreeing to be in our paid beta when you purchase the game. We will try to not make the game suck if you keep complaining about stuff.