I have experience with ASUS and Gigabyte. I haven't purchased MSI, but people I know who have say they are very hit-and-miss when it comes to quality.
I would put ASUS above Gigabyte when it comes to my personal preference. I've bought two ASUS boards. The coloration did not match with the manuals, but the products both functioned well.
Gigabyte crams in a lot of features. They act as though these extra features will make-up for the occasional defects. I've owned three Gigabyte boards, and worked on a fourth. My experience is that 3/4 boards have at least one feature that is defective. Of those defects two have needed to be returned. Let's remove the socket 2011 board (I'm feeling charitable, but realistically I've returned it more than 4 times so I'm considering this a trash design), and you're still left with 2/3 of the boards having failure, and 1/2 of these failures being critical. When you've got that high of a defect rate either engineering needs to get their crap together, you need to choose better component manufacturers, or QA needs a boot to the arse.
So, yes ASUS has a price premium. Yes, Gigabyte has more features. If it were me, a 10% price premium would pay for itself when you don't have to return the board.
On to a more general topic, AsRock is a decent company. They regularly sell for 10-15% less than competing brands with the same features. You generally have to get an RMA out of the gate, but they are quick about it (with the RMAs always, in my experience, working 100% when you get them back). You end up paying a little more than competing brands charge out of the gate, but you've got a large fully functional feature set. Assuming that AsRock could get a handle on DOA materials they'd be my choice hands down. As it stands now, they aren't a worse alternative than the competition.