Looks like I'm a convert.
Finally had a chance to play this new version. It's quite a change from, well any other RPG I've ever played. It's still definitely an RPG even with all the boardgame like components. But the mechanics play out in a boardgame like fashion. I mean you still are absolutely free to dictate your actions and generally react and behave as you would in a traditional RPG. However you can also use action cards to augment what your doing. So instead of just attacking you may have an action card that can be played to perform a special attack or you may not even attack at all you could bolster your allies look for weakness etc... Lots of options on these action cards and they really fit the setting of Warhammer and worked well with the whole story telling experience.
The dice pool mechanics took about 30 mins or so to get use to but then it was very quick to work out and make your pool up. The pool mechanics are very freeing for a GM because positive and negative modifiers are not absolute which means you are more free to use them. For example in past versions of WFRP if you handed out a -10% penalty that was pretty significant to new players often lowering their already low 35%(on average) chance to 25%. However now adding a penalty dice only potentially increases the difficult there's only a chance it'll cancel out an effect. It's really very useful in making the narrative more impactful without really hindering players.
Other nice changes the initiative system is fantastic. Unlike most other RPG's where everyone rolls init then takes actions in turn. You still roll init but it's a group initiative. Which means that the group gets to decide who acts when. So even if you rolled the lowest initiative you may go first because it's more beneficial tactically for the group. It's really cool and it's benefits were immediately apparent on the first round of combat. It allowed a couple archers that rolled lower in init to get off some arrows and pepper the enemies before the melee fighters moved into range. Now other rpg's often have mechanics for holding actions and the like to still allow for this but it adds extra book keeping to the whole thing. This way you roll init once and everyone just acts to their advantage.
There is a thing now called the stance meter. It's a mechanic to show how cautious or reckless your acting. It's a nice little tool which alters types of dice your rolling typically increasing your chance for success but potentially making you succeed but act slower, or succeed but take fatigue/stress. It's a nice little tool that adds flavor but personally I could take it or leave it.
The rest of the board game like mechanics basically just are a set of various types of counters and tokens so that you can visually track things on your character sheet instead of using paper and pencil. You can use them as much or little as you like.
Now as for actual flow of play. I would say that in terms of speed this game isn't any faster or slower then previous versions of Warhammer. In the 4 hrs we played we had some story based situations and a couple combats. That's pretty normal for a night. Combats themselves take about the same time to play out. However the actual events of combats change. So instead of having two opponents trade blows back and forth whack-a-mole style. Instead each phase of combat took a little longer but felt like more was happening. I have to say that I prefer this style of play. The whack-a-mole feel of combat feels very dated and something most RPG's have just been held over from legacy rules. Combat in RPG's has never really been a simulation it's always been abstract and WFRP 3.0 is just one more step in abstracting combat into a story and with the dice and action cards I think it does it rather well.
Overall I'm not going to say that WFRP 3.0 is better then past editions, it's just different. There are some things it definitely does better and others that are a wash. I did enjoy it and am looking forward to playing it again and can see playing it in a long term kind of way. I can see the potential in WFRP 3.0 and despite all previous hesitations I had those have been calmed.
Now as for a critique of the actual context. For $100 you are getting less overall world content then you did in previous games, less careers, less world options etc... However you get more content for those that are included. Each career feels more full, the existing magic sections are more interesting, the actual core mechanics provide for more options. The components themselves look great and work well together. So $100 doesn't seem like to much for what you get. It's less of A but more of B. Also as the product line continues and it looks like there is no chance of that not happening the missing parts will get flushed out.