IMHO, this is one of the best and underrated MMOs I've player on my entire gaming life (20 years of gaming so far).
Why, you might ask me? I'll tell ya.

STORY:
The background story is amazing and it mixes Fallout series, Mad Max movies and also A Boy and His Dog references (if you ever saw this movie, you, sir, consider yourself lucky). The game has an unique atmosphere aswell. Not only a futurist set, but a post-apocalyptic one, finely made.

MAP:
The map is HUGE, I mean, HUGE (already tell ya that ♥♥♥♥ is huge?!). You could spent like 8-10 hours to cross the sectors on foot, if you make it alive.

CRAFTING:
Forget everything else about other's game crafting. This is THE ♥♥♥♥.

You can craft your own vehicles or train your own animals! Ride a mutant chicken or a horse (you can have many, many different kind of horses) or go in a bad ass mode on a bike.
You can craft almost everything, even tents, campsites and stuff like that to get temporary area buffs.
Craft armors, firearms, melee weapon, explosives, medicine, steroids, recipes, foods, drinks, mutagenics... the list is so big that probably I'd spend all the reviews talking about it.

Also, you need to craft ammunition for your weapons and gas, diesel or biodiesel for your vehicles, besides ration for your animals and repair kits for heal equipment damage from fights.

After all, even if it bothers some people, I must say that I LOVE the time required to crafting. Everything you make by crafting need proper time to get done, from just a few secs to hours or even weeks. A single tire for a car requires 8-12 hours.

COMBAT:
It's a partial FPS where you need to land your blows and aim to shot manually. No auto-target, which is great for PvP. Headshots cause a lot of extra fatal damage, rewarding you for your skill player.

The game have a lot of customization, meaning your character can max various skills to fulfill different roles on a party or even solo. You could be a mutant DPS or a healer, a gunslinger, a rifleman, sniper, fight with a big axe, two tires, be a sneaking rogue, a buffer/debuffer leader or pretty much anything.

PVP:
Awesome.
The game is partial-PvP. I mean, it's not a full PvP map, but, instead, we have PvP zones. On these zones, players need to fight over rare resources like petroleum! People can build settlements and siege-like stuff aswell.

The game has 6 factions which the player can join. Each one has it's owns charateristics, RP-related and PvP gear. These factions are at war/alliance relationships with each other.

The game also have a lot of player's guilds and alliances and people Pvping over resource nodes and PvP zones.

MORE PROS (MORE AWESOME IN YOUR AWESOMENESS):
- Not just more of the same. It really brings something NEW and FRESH to MMO players looking for something special.
- F2P (doesn't matter to me, but it's nice to try for free if you're not sure about it).
- Buy, craft and dye clothes and use them over your regular armor on cosmetic slots. You can even paint and customize your car, bike, etc.
- Active, nice and helpful GMs; 24/7 on chat.
- A LOT OF DANCE MOVES, including MJ and the awesome Carlton Banks dance (Alfonso to his close friends).
- A LOT of creative skills that you don't see everyday.
- Welcoming and active community (don't let the Steam numbers fool you, cause the most people playing it are using the non-Steam client).
- Deep and beautiful scenarios.
- Scary voiceover (turn it off, man).
- You have a flashlight.
- Immersion feel on every step you take.
- Level up takes a long long time, giving you some sense of importance in the world.
- Awesome PvP.
- You can fight while riding or driving! Man, EVERY SINGLE MMO should have this. Drive fast while unloading a submachinegun clip on a pursuit, why not? Not a Fast & Furious type? You can do the cowboy Texas style aswell and shoot you Colt Anaconda on the horseback.
- You can have a dog! (anyone remember Dogmeat from Fallout 2?)
- Different paces of walking/driving/riding. You can walk, jog or run and drive/ride at speed as you like. Not so fast, no so slow, the way you want.

CONS:
- One thing I dislike in this game is it's name. Should be called Awesome Earth.
- Performance issues on some PCs.
- "Dated" graphics (I've player UO for 11 years, ask me if I give a dame for graphics?!)
- "Hardcore", even not having a full loot system like Darkfall, Ultima Online and Mortal Online (love them all). What makes this game "hardcore" for some users is the fact that you need build and plan your character very carefully or it could be useless or disapointing at some point.
- Unfriendly interface and learning curve.