Fion I'm dying to know how far into the game you went before making your decision? How many characters did you play and to what level? If you never made it to your first Keep battle then you missed out...
From my experience, there are some pluses and minuses.
CB/PW/OB player.
Got to 21 on my Witchhunter and had a ball. Combat is pretty good. Graphics are nothing to write home about although the DVD with high rez textures should improve the look quite a bit.
RvR: Good fun, played a lot of keep battles, set piece stuff, which was great. Holding a keep outnumbered 2:1 by destro was particularly great.
Public Quests: Brilliant idea. Like an instance boss fight that resets and is publicly available.
Rep Grinds: Influence from PQ's is the new rep. Easy as pie to do 3 or 4 PQ's in an area (usually you only have to repeat one once if you do all of them) and the rewards are pretty good, particularly in T2.
Scenarios (battlegrounds): Excellent fun, you can get in and stay reasonably competitive at lvl 1, so you can get renown gear as you rank up. Varied types (CTF, king of the hill, take and hold etc).
This from a 4 year vet of WoW /retired.
I'm sure WoTLK will have plenty of good new stuff to play with but I think (like a lot of players) I'm just looking for something new.
As for the whole WoW vs WAR thing, bleh, try both and see what you like. The bloody epeen contests (carebear vs "zomg peeveepee hardcorez for example) associated with MMO's are just getting plain stupid at this point. Play what you like and enjoy it and worry less about what everyone else is playing imo.