Hi, i think i would class myself as a gamer, especially MMoRPG's, starting from Runescape... and several computers later WoW. But Warhammer Online really looks appealing, i love the lore behind it, i played the tabletop game at one point, but i have a few questions.

1. Can casual gamers get far? due to medical conditions, i have to go into hospital for a few days 3/5 weeks, and i want to know, do i have to be online alot to keep up? i can play for hours at end when im an home, but not in hospital.

2. Can you 'do what you want' in groups, what i mean is, in WoW when you play a tanking class, or a healing class, people wont allow you to do anything else unless your lucky, are the boundaries less strict here? do you even have groups? i seriously got no idea. because the warrior priest appeals to me, but i dont want to be pidgeonholed into healing, if i can't just slam things with a 2h hammer then ill roll a different class

3. Is world PvP (RvR i think it is called?) active? will i run into enemy players often? and is PvP always enabled, if so, will i get ganked alot trying to level?

thanks in advance

edit: 4. Which side would you say has the most mature players too, after playing as Alliance on World of Warcraft and being told that the Horde has more mature players, i would seriously like to play a game whilst not being surrounded by imbeciles who think its fun to spam the trade channel. i can imagine destruction has lots of marauders going "Look at my arm lolz"
i dont mind if the 'mature side', has less players too, in fact, i like playing at the underdog.
Ok

first  

Q1. yes casual gamers can play and get all the way to rank 40, you can jump on a run into a Public Quest (PQ's) and pick up gear, get xp and the like real easy. the game is designed around fun, not staying online to get the "Best gear" cause as has been pointed out before it's about player skill over gear

Q2. the careers/classes are archtypes, so a tank is a tank, but in saying that there is a fair degree of variation in there. mastery paths can make you a real defensive tank, or you can play an offensive tank with lots of AoE's (although it does depend on the career a little bit)
The Warrior Priest to my mind is the class that merges the best of healing and off tanking, the mechanic behind the WP is that you must gt in an smack things accross the face with your 2h hammer to generate power to heal. my warrior priest is my fave alt, running around at lvl 13 atm, mostly Heal over Time spells atm, but a pretty good offense

there are groups, but most of them are pick up groups, which is not a bad thing cause you run into a zone the game tells you there are these groups that are open to join and join in and away you go, if there aren't then do a bit of solo work, or move to a different zone

Q3. as for the RVR thing, depends on what server you join into, core server rules mean that the only PVP is in scenarios, and inside the RVR lakes in the various zones, on the map there will be a shaded area that denotes that area is RVR. how often you run into players depends on the server your on, but in a medium to full server it's fairly constant. ganking in the true sense can't happen, although there is a chance you might come accross a group of enemy players that will steamroll you, but you won't have a rank 40 come along and camp your corpse till you log out

Q4. can't comment on which side is the more mature, but i play on the order side and whilst there are some immature players around and on a core server there are some immature names about, it's not too bad, there isn't a great deal of spamming

hope that helps
Thanks for teh answerz. It was a good bit of knowledge for me.
A1: Yes, WAR is casual friendly. You can log in for just a short time and play a scenario or do a quest and it will be fine. You do not have to be online all the time to grind, or play dungeons to hope to get the piece of gear you need.
Gear is easier to get and you can get it several ways. Also, it is not as important as in other games.

A2: Almost all classes are really what many call "hybrids". A tank can still do good damage. A healer likewise.
The warrior priest is a melee healer. They MUST do damage to be able to heal. They also have many abilities that do damage and heal at the same time.
Also healing mid combat is easy, since in WAR you have both a friendly and enemy target, so you wont have to switch targets to heal.

Still, the warrior priest is a healing class, so just ignoring that part of the class leaves you with a character that is ok with doing damage and ok with survivial, but not great by any means. What makes them really strong is the ability to do all that, and heal, at the same time.

A3: Yes, RvR is active, but if you play core ruleset you wont run into enemy players often, unless you chose it. The PvE areas are separate for the different sides. They have also taken serious measures to prevent ganking. If a character flags (which they do automatically in RVR areas and in enemy areas, I believe) and they are in an tier lower than they are, they will be turned into chickens. And chickens are not so tough.  
However, RvR is FUN and a lot of thought has gone into it, so you should definitly try it!

A4. I havent noticed any marked difference between the sides.
thanks, i cancelled my WoW subsciption, that game gets boring with the grinding tbh, got like £70 in gamestation vouchers and im gonna buy it next wednesday, hopefully they'll start stocking the pre-paid game cards too, because i doubt ill buy anything else with the vouchers.

see you ingame, i think ill play a warrior priest, or a white lion, they both look pretty cool.
One thing to be aware of is the fact the game cards are retailing @ £24.99 which is just a few pound less than a 3 month subscription using a bank card online.

not good value for money in my opinion
that would be just to use the rest of my vouchers up, i generally would pay with a card, but with the vouchers i got as a gift, its like getting the game and 2 cards for 3, so 5 months free playing