It is a persistent world, however all the PvP combat is instanced (not totally sure about PvE combat as well). Basically you won't have the zerging and ganking of world PvP to deal with.
The funniest part of it is that the ad's seem completely unrelated to the game itself. It's basically a RTS, emphasis on the "real time." It plays closer to a turn based game simply because it takes a lot of time once you get stuff built up.