I actually played Warhammer Online as a witch hunter and I am sad to see it go. The Old World is a very interesting, very engaging place, with scars of battle and ruins oozing with history and tragedy. It's a sad sad place where everything is trying to kill you, and is inhabited by people who are too hard to kill.
The game really didn't do it enough justice. The implemented system ensures that eventually, the lower levels are going to turn into wastelands, which in turn hurts progression. Best way to level up has always been a mix of PVE AND PVP, and the best way to benefit from PVE is to do it cooperatively. The lack of incentives for players to return to the previous three tiers ensured that you can do PVE...poorly, and hardly do any PVP, slowing progress considerably and turn everything into a chore. The mentorship system and the tokens for free levels are meant to alleviate the tedium, but in all honesty, it simply wasn't enough.
There's also the issue of the cut content. This should be a sign that the game was not released complete, and this impression was, apparently, vindicated when the first siege against the fortresses protecting the capital city (Inevitable City in the server I was in) resulted in not one, but THREE server crashes and a reset in progress in that zone. The warbands, long salivating for the pillage and plundering for the first time, practically raged quit at that point. This was followed by, I think, a slew of various other issues. The game was released prematurely.
And I hear there's been alot of serious balance issues as well. Things like Marauders killing Shadow Warriors in ranged standoffs, Bright Wizards are too OP (we had this complaint since the first year). All that sounded like there simply wasn't enough weight being placed on player feedback.
With all these issues, it is hard to fault GW from withdrawing the license.
And seriously. Altdorf is too safe. There isn't enough horrible things happening in Altdorf. We need a Skaven warband emerging from under your feet every other day and plague zombies hordes cropping up every other week, sometimes coming out of the River Reik, all smelly and with fish bits in their hair and under their armpits. And the bar brawls aren't violent enough. Not enough people are dying. Not enough housewives are stabbing Skaven with kitchen knives. Not enough heretics are burnt, quartered, hung, flogged or flayed. Not enough kangaroo trials in public where every old woman with a wart is charged with witchcraft. Not enough crazy flagellants worshiping chickens with the Twin-Tailed Comet painted on their bum. Needs more of them, man!