Is it worth playing?

[Elysaine]

Cool. Everything that's been mentioned sounds really promising. Now the only thing I have left to worry about is how to get my laptop up to par (which should've been my first concern). I don't really know anything about graphics cards, but unless I've been researching incorrect information, they're the main source of the game's efficiency when it comes to resolution quality. I've seen that the GPUs recommended by Heavensward are pretty expensive, so I don't really know what to do about that.

Problem with laptops are that you can't upgrade the graphics card / chip. My laptop is 4 years old and runs the game pretty decently on 1080 res with it's not so great Radeon HD 6650M. My 7 year old gaming PC with it's Radeon HD 5850 does a better job though. PC I have settings on normal, laptop on low. But even with low settings the game still looks very nice.

[Niwashi]

If you think that down the road you'll have a better PC or laptop, one option would be to play until then on your PS3. For leveling content (and a fair amount of endgame content) it performs just fine. Raiding and occasionally Hunts (basically any time you're going to have lots and lots of players and/or mobs clustered together and need to still maintain combat-speed responsiveness) are where the PS3's specs start to struggle a bit. Until then, the differences between it and a higher end system are slightly longer loading screens between regions and lack of a few minor options on your HUD setup, neither of which is much of a hindrance.

Starting with one platform and later changing to another does mean buying the game twice, once for each platform type, but since each of those copies of A Realm Reborn comes with a month of subscription time, and (in the $12 to $20 range) costs only slightly more than a month of sub time alone ($13 to $15), it's not much of an extra expense. [Note: The Heavensward expansion does not include additional subscription time, so it's a bigger expense to go multi-platform on that purchase. Unless you really have your heart set on playing an Au Ra, I'd hold off on the expansion until you've finished ARR and moved on to either PS4 or PC, then buy the expansion just for that one alone.]

[Mehweweh]

Now I have to wait even longer to be able to play. Using my PS3 for the free trial was okay and all, but it was such a hassle sitting so close to the tv so I could see the text in dialogue boxes. My tv is a good size, but it was like everything at the bottom was trying to scrunch together and overlap. I don't know. The gameplay was fun, but everything else as far as the screen resolution and the UI went, it was more of a hassle to try and focus.

[AriaEnia]

I'm surprised no one is giving their recruitment code here yet.