You would be missing out on the most popular and successful MMO ever
Firstly, that *can* be the same as missing out on a McDonalds hamburger. No loss there.
Secondly, in a very real sense the OP has missed it anyway because WoW is OLD and as another poster said Vanilla WoW is so different to what WoW is today.
I tried WoW and lasted just a few months. Both points above applied to me.
You would be missing out on the most popular and successful MMO ever
Firstly, that *can* be the same as missing out on a McDonalds hamburger. No loss there.
Secondly, in a very real sense the OP has missed it anyway because WoW is OLD and as another poster said Vanilla WoW is so different to what WoW is today.
I tried WoW and lasted just a few months. Both points above applied to me.
Your post doesn't negate the obvious red one liner.
Wow is just as old as its latest expansion. That applies certainly for Azeroth 2 in Cataclysm. ALL basic continents in old Azeroth redone. All 3000 old quest deleted and on par with the newest technologies applied (phasing). All classes were redone.
Also in every expansion Blizzard ups the graphics: my very new 465 NVidia now runs at ... 45 FPS with all setting on ultra.
Magnificent views in Beta.
And with every patch the game is updated in techniques : since the last patch you can level on professions. The next is the rated competition in Battlegrounds, getting guild wars and open world pvp with Archeology.
All this because the game rakes in far more than $1 billion per year.
If you would miss on that, you miss the reference point of present day MMO design.
You would be missing out on the most popular and successful MMO ever
Firstly, that *can* be the same as missing out on a McDonalds hamburger. No loss there.
Secondly, in a very real sense the OP has missed it anyway because WoW is OLD and as another poster said Vanilla WoW is so different to what WoW is today.
I tried WoW and lasted just a few months. Both points above applied to me.
Your post doesn't negate the obvious red one liner.
Wow is just as old as its latest expansion. That applies certainly for Azeroth 2 in Cataclysm. ALL basic continents in old Azeroth redone. All 3000 old quest deleted and on par with the newest technologies applied (phasing). All classes were redone.
Also in every expansion Blizzard ups the graphics: my very new 465 NVidia now runs at ... 45 FPS with all setting on ultra.
Magnificent views in Beta.
And with every patch the game is updated in techniques : since the last patch you can level on professions. The next is the rated competition in Battlegrounds, getting guild wars and open world pvp with Archeology.
All this because the game rakes in far more than $1 billion per year.
If you would miss on that, you miss the reference point of present day MMO design.
His post directly addresses the red one-liner. Just because something is popular and successful does not mean it is worthwhile or impressive.
If you played MMOs that came before, you do not miss the "reference point of present day MMO design" as WoW did not and does not innovate -- they took everything that worked in the past, and put it together in a shiny package. It's only effect on MMO design has been rather unfortunate -- every publisher considers anything less than WoW like numbers to be failure, and they try to capture WoW's audience. Given that even WoW had a pretty messy launch, every MMO that has attempted to copy it has failed to equal the polish WoW has since achieved, and the subscribers trickle back to WoW.
WoW is good at what it does, and it is highly accessible both to hardcore gamers and new gamers. But it is not revolutionary and it is not a must-play.
2. the most cohesive lore and art style on the market
I honestly think LotRO beats WoW hands down in this regard. WoW's lore is all over the place in terms of quality.
I can certainly see this point of view because LotRO obviously is solid in both of those areas, however my opinion is clouded from reading LotR as a teen, so I developed my own 'art style' in my mind, and where I feel the movies closely matched the way I envisioned middle earth, LotRO does not - I admit it is purely subjective. However, in LotRO the first time I had a 'kill ten rats' style quest I asked myself, 'where in the books did they get that from' - I guess 'kill 10 rats' didn't bother me in WoW as I didn't have a preconceived notion of WoW's lore....again pretty feeble answer, but most opinions are ).
At the same time, while I admit that calling wow's lore cohesive is also subjective, the first thing that came to my mind was, have you read the quests like a novel or did you click accept and then kill rats without knowing why?
And WoW would have had to copy EQ2 as that launched two weeks earlier.
Correct - but imo, WoW did it better, and when EQ2 saw that, it seems that they began re-vamping to emulate WoW....which, is a common rant of people who left EQ2 in disgust "they saw the money Blizz was making and changed our game to copy WoW".
EQ2 did it first.
WoW did it better.
EQ2 changed itself to copy them.....
Pretty subjective I know...but that's how I see it.
You would be missing out on the most popular and successful MMO ever
Firstly, that *can* be the same as missing out on a McDonalds hamburger. No loss there.
Secondly, in a very real sense the OP has missed it anyway because WoW is OLD and as another poster said Vanilla WoW is so different to what WoW is today.
I tried WoW and lasted just a few months. Both points above applied to me.
Also in every expansion Blizzard ups the graphics: my very new 465 NVidia now runs at ... 45 FPS with all setting on ultra.
Just a quick point here, but the GPU doesn't affect WoW nearly as much as the CPU. For example, upgrading from a GTX 260 to a GTX 480 (both of which I've overclocked to a rather high extent and which I've tested my CPU does not bottleneck) didn't really give me an increase in FPS, while upgrading from an old dualcore Athlon to an i7 processor was quite an increase.
Though, average FPS is difficult to measure in WoW as in Dalaran during the day my FPS would be 60-170, while in other, not nearly as heavily populated zones I would have an FPS of 500+.
Also in every expansion Blizzard ups the graphics: my very new 465 NVidia now runs at ... 45 FPS with all setting on ultra.
Just a quick point here, but the GPU doesn't affect WoW nearly as much as the CPU. For example, upgrading from a GTX 260 to a GTX 480 (both of which I've overclocked to a rather high extent and which I've tested my CPU does not bottleneck) didn't really give me an increase in FPS, while upgrading from an old dualcore Athlon to an i7 processor was quite an increase.
Though, average FPS is difficult to measure in WoW as in Dalaran during the day my FPS would be 60-170, while in other, not nearly as heavily populated zones I would have an FPS of 500+.
I have a i7 processr: complete new system with SSD and 465 NVidia and setting is 1650 * 1050.
With ALL settings on ultra, I downgraded the Anisotropic to x4 to now get the 60 FPS.
All others are on ultra (shadow, view distance, liquid detail, environment etc...). View distance details were certainly upped with this patch.
A technical noob friend of mine (who couldn't give me his specs) said he ran Dalaran now at 2-3 FPS after the 4.01 patch. He ordered a new computer. Before the new patch he still could run Dalaran at 10-15 FPS (his words).
All he could do is change his new talent trees for his 43 (sic) characters he said. Apparently his computer was 5 years old.
Sorry he couldn't give any details, but looking back I would think he would speak of the 6800 generation (probably the lesser version) and single processor CPU.
Also in every expansion Blizzard ups the graphics: my very new 465 NVidia now runs at ... 45 FPS with all setting on ultra.
Just a quick point here, but the GPU doesn't affect WoW nearly as much as the CPU. For example, upgrading from a GTX 260 to a GTX 480 (both of which I've overclocked to a rather high extent and which I've tested my CPU does not bottleneck) didn't really give me an increase in FPS, while upgrading from an old dualcore Athlon to an i7 processor was quite an increase.
Though, average FPS is difficult to measure in WoW as in Dalaran during the day my FPS would be 60-170, while in other, not nearly as heavily populated zones I would have an FPS of 500+.
I have a i7 processr: complete new system with SSD and 465 NVidia and setting is 1650 * 1050.
With ALL settings on ultra, I downgraded the Anisotropic to x4 to now get the 60 FPS.
All others are on ultra (shadow, view distance, liquid detail, environment etc...). View distance details were certainly upped with this patch.
A technical noob friend of mine (who couldn't give me his specs) said he ran Dalaran now at 2-3 FPS after the 4.01 patch. He ordered a new computer. Before the new patch he still could run Dalaran at 10-15 FPS (his words).
All he could do is change his new talent trees for his 43 (sic) characters he said. Apparently his computer was 5 years old.
Sorry he couldn't give any details, but looking back I would think he would speak of the 6800 generation (probably the lesser version) and single processor CPU.
I tested some stuff out and noticed that Shadows were a much larger drain for the GPU than I had expected. I've always played the game with the maximum settings except for ground clutter and shadows, which I've had turned off for years.
The Reduce input lag option is also a drain but not for the GPU. Standing still in the exact same camera position in the swamp of sorrows at a certain spot gave me 250 fps without the option turned on and 175 fps with the option turned off. Anyway, there's a lot of optimization one can do with the game.
What do I write ? This is going to be long so skip it if the trip down memory lane is not worth it.
Well I played WoW when it sort of launched and I think it was different then . People call it vanilla WoW. I feel that is not a very nice way of putting it because if you look back to 2004 and think about what the MMORPG scene was then.What did we have. Old Everquest and then the new very buggy EQ 2 which I also played at launch and dropped fast but I came back to it a year or so later and loved it even more than I did WoW. Then we had City of Heroes which is a great game but you can only do so many missions before you run off screaming. Anarchy Online which I thought was a very good game plagued by a very very buggy launch. FFXI which I played to death and loved . DAoC was there but it was not a game I liked so much the PvE made me very very sleepy and I never got to the RvR which I hear is the cat's pyjamas. Then Asheron's Call and UO too were still going on. Just trying to set the scene for you.
Then this game came on the scene and the graphics were loud yes I mean that the colours were jarring initially. In fact when I looked at the screenshots I was like OMG what is with these horrible green and red combinations of X'mas decor and what an awful palette. Then I played it. The art just gelled there is no other way to put it. It looked so unpalatable on the screenshots but in game it was art. That the world just sort of blossomed out from this garrish colour and they just looked alive.You fit perfectly in with your skin green or purple skin colour if you did not play a human and the outlandish shoulder pads and huge weapons the Taurens slugged about looked perfectly in place. The art worked because their artists were brilliant and what was more amazing they worked with far less polygons because it was genuine talent showing.
Now the world. I tried out several human characters but the game was not grabbing me at all. Then I tried an orc shaman.I loved the go beat up the lazy orcs sleeping quests and generally the whole atmosphere of the Durator. The shaman quests blew me away. So well done and it made so much sense. Oh the trolls and their Jamaican accent that was inspired because they do have all that voodoo stuff. "Stay away from the Voodoo !". Orgrimmar sealed the deal.
I decided to give a night elf hunter a run for my next toon. The very first thing that caught my attention was how beautiful Theldrasil was ,yes pink trees work for some odd reason. The quests involving the Emerald Dream which I did in a group. A great small dungeon experience. The whole manner in which I learnt to become a pet owner and the quests were well written including the tragic huge spider story line ....sorry cannot recall her name now. I took up fishing to feed my adorable cat pet. Suddenly that involved getting cooking too. I decided I wanted that white bear I saw in shots of Lake Modan and I went on this huge adventure getting killed like crazy just to get that pet. Had a whale of a time. It was about then I decided I would make an orc hunter and run to Teldrassil to get the owl from there. That was some trip as I was Horde and Teldrassil was well within Alliance territory. I think that adventure gave me a heart attack a few times especially when the huge tree in Darnassus killed me.
All this plus the absolutely responsive UI really makes an impact. You do not appreciate how well a UI is that when you hit a key it immediately responds. That is how WoW spoilt me I looked for that in other games too and sadly many games do not respond as well.The combat is fluid and this means that your animations work when you fight.
I guess the thing that really sealed the deal for me was when they introduced the battlegrounds. Oh I loved it. I remember how I slowed down this flag carrier with my slow shock again cannot recall the name and the others managed to kill her. I was so happy that I had made it possible for them to get to her. Yes I felt important. I was actually contributing me who never ever played PvP before was loving it to bits.
Oh there are so many more things I would love to talk about like Darkshire that twisted place with the quests that were very disturbing and sad. The atmosphere in Darkshire someone deserves a prize for that place.
I do not think Burning Crusade ever gave me back that feeling but to me the original WoW was a wonderful world that was well worth playing in. I did not do the raid thing much at level 60 and I never got to 80 ,the highest I got to was 65 or so ,so I have no idea about what the end game in WoW is like. I have long since left WoW and come back to it in brief spurts but nothing ever gave me back that initial awe.
But what is + side of WoW can be - side of WoW. Lets take a look.
1) Means graphic is not impressive - Wintergrasp is still laggy even with "bad" graphic.
2) MMO - massive multiplayer online - where is multiplayer if you can solo to max lvl?
3) Fast dungeons are ok but most ppl want to run i as fast as they can, if you are not equiped or you cant do it so fast they will be mad at you. Also its about what you prefer - I like more dungeons for longer time and with more fun, not just boss boss boss , small group, boss , the end.
4) Also mean a lot of id*ots etc.
5) Game with some addons is like playing game for blind ppl if you can see. Addons make some stuff freakin easy.
I tried WoW, did lvl 80, hated dungeons there. PvP is kinda fun but arenas are taken from FPS games. Open world pvp is realy fun - if you have best PvP equip, more players on your side and more addons. :P PvP is way unbalanced - you need equipment thats all what measures. (also skill but only against someone with same equip or similar) I think WoW could be realy fun when it started or maybe even BC but Wotlk just pissed me off. But leveling to 80 is kinda fun - what i found out bad was I did it in group with 1 other member and it was sometimes too easy - cause its done for soloing.
Played: Lineage 2,Guild Wars 1 and 2, Age of Conan, Ragnarok Online, LOTRO, World of Warcraft, League of Legends, EvE online Tried: KAL Online, Face of Mankind, ROSE online Playing: CS:GO
1. You can level several ways: Questing (fastest and easiest), Grinding (most boring to me), BGs starting at level 10 (very long at first, best to wait till higher levels), Dungeons starting at level 15 (fastest leveling for tanks and healers), and now through crafting at level 5 (moderate leveling rate, right now I'm leveling a hunter through this, only mining and herbalism gives you xp, but in cata archealogy does too).
2. Tons of friendly people. I noticed the more mature communities in wow are on pve servers, or the minority faction in all realms, like Cho'gall alliance ,<---don't go there first though, way to small for a beginner. Trade chat sucks, so try to get in a leveling guild quickly.
3. Fun story and world to explore.
4. Hunter Class, best class ever Actually, all the classes a very well done, while certain classes are harder to level then others, all have the ability to level solo. Many games have a bunch of classes, but they feel the same, none of the wow classes feel the same.
5. Lots to do at endgame. Most games either have one thing to do at the end, or really nothing. Don't get lost in the ideology that you have to raid, you don't. These are the things I do : raid, do dungeons, explore the world, duel, do achievements, collect mounts, collect companion pets, Fish, do events, BG, arena, craft stuff, listen to chat, help out newbies, do low level quests, and try to get some world pvp going (not a pvp game lol).
Despite what some people say pvp isn't 100% armor based, one of my hunters just has swiftarrow gear (level 78 pvp gear) and can easily beat out an average wrathful geared person (highest pvp gear in game). However, don't come into the game thinking it is a great pvp game, it isn't, but pvp is fun, if you don't take it too seriously.
Comments
Firstly, that *can* be the same as missing out on a McDonalds hamburger. No loss there.
Secondly, in a very real sense the OP has missed it anyway because WoW is OLD and as another poster said Vanilla WoW is so different to what WoW is today.
I tried WoW and lasted just a few months. Both points above applied to me.
Your post doesn't negate the obvious red one liner.
Wow is just as old as its latest expansion. That applies certainly for Azeroth 2 in Cataclysm. ALL basic continents in old Azeroth redone. All 3000 old quest deleted and on par with the newest technologies applied (phasing). All classes were redone.
Also in every expansion Blizzard ups the graphics: my very new 465 NVidia now runs at ... 45 FPS with all setting on ultra.
Magnificent views in Beta.
And with every patch the game is updated in techniques : since the last patch you can level on professions. The next is the rated competition in Battlegrounds, getting guild wars and open world pvp with Archeology.
All this because the game rakes in far more than $1 billion per year.
If you would miss on that, you miss the reference point of present day MMO design.
His post directly addresses the red one-liner. Just because something is popular and successful does not mean it is worthwhile or impressive.
If you played MMOs that came before, you do not miss the "reference point of present day MMO design" as WoW did not and does not innovate -- they took everything that worked in the past, and put it together in a shiny package. It's only effect on MMO design has been rather unfortunate -- every publisher considers anything less than WoW like numbers to be failure, and they try to capture WoW's audience. Given that even WoW had a pretty messy launch, every MMO that has attempted to copy it has failed to equal the polish WoW has since achieved, and the subscribers trickle back to WoW.
WoW is good at what it does, and it is highly accessible both to hardcore gamers and new gamers. But it is not revolutionary and it is not a must-play.
Playing: Eve, LoL
Played: EQ, SWG, EQII, MxO,DDO CoX, WoW, & LoTRO
Awaiting: GW2, Rift, Earthrise, TOR
I can certainly see this point of view because LotRO obviously is solid in both of those areas, however my opinion is clouded from reading LotR as a teen, so I developed my own 'art style' in my mind, and where I feel the movies closely matched the way I envisioned middle earth, LotRO does not - I admit it is purely subjective. However, in LotRO the first time I had a 'kill ten rats' style quest I asked myself, 'where in the books did they get that from' - I guess 'kill 10 rats' didn't bother me in WoW as I didn't have a preconceived notion of WoW's lore....again pretty feeble answer, but most opinions are ).
At the same time, while I admit that calling wow's lore cohesive is also subjective, the first thing that came to my mind was, have you read the quests like a novel or did you click accept and then kill rats without knowing why?
Correct - but imo, WoW did it better, and when EQ2 saw that, it seems that they began re-vamping to emulate WoW....which, is a common rant of people who left EQ2 in disgust "they saw the money Blizz was making and changed our game to copy WoW".
EQ2 did it first.
WoW did it better.
EQ2 changed itself to copy them.....
Pretty subjective I know...but that's how I see it.
Just a quick point here, but the GPU doesn't affect WoW nearly as much as the CPU. For example, upgrading from a GTX 260 to a GTX 480 (both of which I've overclocked to a rather high extent and which I've tested my CPU does not bottleneck) didn't really give me an increase in FPS, while upgrading from an old dualcore Athlon to an i7 processor was quite an increase.
Though, average FPS is difficult to measure in WoW as in Dalaran during the day my FPS would be 60-170, while in other, not nearly as heavily populated zones I would have an FPS of 500+.
I have a i7 processr: complete new system with SSD and 465 NVidia and setting is 1650 * 1050.
With ALL settings on ultra, I downgraded the Anisotropic to x4 to now get the 60 FPS.
All others are on ultra (shadow, view distance, liquid detail, environment etc...). View distance details were certainly upped with this patch.
A technical noob friend of mine (who couldn't give me his specs) said he ran Dalaran now at 2-3 FPS after the 4.01 patch. He ordered a new computer. Before the new patch he still could run Dalaran at 10-15 FPS (his words).
All he could do is change his new talent trees for his 43 (sic) characters he said. Apparently his computer was 5 years old.
Sorry he couldn't give any details, but looking back I would think he would speak of the 6800 generation (probably the lesser version) and single processor CPU.
I tested some stuff out and noticed that Shadows were a much larger drain for the GPU than I had expected. I've always played the game with the maximum settings except for ground clutter and shadows, which I've had turned off for years.
The Reduce input lag option is also a drain but not for the GPU. Standing still in the exact same camera position in the swamp of sorrows at a certain spot gave me 250 fps without the option turned on and 175 fps with the option turned off. Anyway, there's a lot of optimization one can do with the game.
The answer to your question is simple and can be answered in one word " Beano ". Its the trip getting there.
Dragon's are like Sandcastles
Death Who ?
MAGA
What do I write ? This is going to be long so skip it if the trip down memory lane is not worth it.
Well I played WoW when it sort of launched and I think it was different then . People call it vanilla WoW. I feel that is not a very nice way of putting it because if you look back to 2004 and think about what the MMORPG scene was then.What did we have. Old Everquest and then the new very buggy EQ 2 which I also played at launch and dropped fast but I came back to it a year or so later and loved it even more than I did WoW. Then we had City of Heroes which is a great game but you can only do so many missions before you run off screaming. Anarchy Online which I thought was a very good game plagued by a very very buggy launch. FFXI which I played to death and loved . DAoC was there but it was not a game I liked so much the PvE made me very very sleepy and I never got to the RvR which I hear is the cat's pyjamas. Then Asheron's Call and UO too were still going on. Just trying to set the scene for you.
Then this game came on the scene and the graphics were loud yes I mean that the colours were jarring initially. In fact when I looked at the screenshots I was like OMG what is with these horrible green and red combinations of X'mas decor and what an awful palette. Then I played it. The art just gelled there is no other way to put it. It looked so unpalatable on the screenshots but in game it was art. That the world just sort of blossomed out from this garrish colour and they just looked alive.You fit perfectly in with your skin green or purple skin colour if you did not play a human and the outlandish shoulder pads and huge weapons the Taurens slugged about looked perfectly in place. The art worked because their artists were brilliant and what was more amazing they worked with far less polygons because it was genuine talent showing.
Now the world. I tried out several human characters but the game was not grabbing me at all. Then I tried an orc shaman.I loved the go beat up the lazy orcs sleeping quests and generally the whole atmosphere of the Durator. The shaman quests blew me away. So well done and it made so much sense. Oh the trolls and their Jamaican accent that was inspired because they do have all that voodoo stuff. "Stay away from the Voodoo !". Orgrimmar sealed the deal.
I decided to give a night elf hunter a run for my next toon. The very first thing that caught my attention was how beautiful Theldrasil was ,yes pink trees work for some odd reason. The quests involving the Emerald Dream which I did in a group. A great small dungeon experience. The whole manner in which I learnt to become a pet owner and the quests were well written including the tragic huge spider story line ....sorry cannot recall her name now. I took up fishing to feed my adorable cat pet. Suddenly that involved getting cooking too. I decided I wanted that white bear I saw in shots of Lake Modan and I went on this huge adventure getting killed like crazy just to get that pet. Had a whale of a time. It was about then I decided I would make an orc hunter and run to Teldrassil to get the owl from there. That was some trip as I was Horde and Teldrassil was well within Alliance territory. I think that adventure gave me a heart attack a few times especially when the huge tree in Darnassus killed me.
All this plus the absolutely responsive UI really makes an impact. You do not appreciate how well a UI is that when you hit a key it immediately responds. That is how WoW spoilt me I looked for that in other games too and sadly many games do not respond as well.The combat is fluid and this means that your animations work when you fight.
I guess the thing that really sealed the deal for me was when they introduced the battlegrounds. Oh I loved it. I remember how I slowed down this flag carrier with my slow shock again cannot recall the name and the others managed to kill her. I was so happy that I had made it possible for them to get to her. Yes I felt important. I was actually contributing me who never ever played PvP before was loving it to bits.
Oh there are so many more things I would love to talk about like Darkshire that twisted place with the quests that were very disturbing and sad. The atmosphere in Darkshire someone deserves a prize for that place.
I do not think Burning Crusade ever gave me back that feeling but to me the original WoW was a wonderful world that was well worth playing in. I did not do the raid thing much at level 60 and I never got to 80 ,the highest I got to was 65 or so ,so I have no idea about what the end game in WoW is like. I have long since left WoW and come back to it in brief spurts but nothing ever gave me back that initial awe.
1) You can run WoW on every PC today.
2) Possibility to solo to max lvl without help.
3) Fast dungeons.
4) Lot of players.
5) Addons.
But what is + side of WoW can be - side of WoW. Lets take a look.
1) Means graphic is not impressive - Wintergrasp is still laggy even with "bad" graphic.
2) MMO - massive multiplayer online - where is multiplayer if you can solo to max lvl?
3) Fast dungeons are ok but most ppl want to run i as fast as they can, if you are not equiped or you cant do it so fast they will be mad at you.
Also its about what you prefer - I like more dungeons for longer time and with more fun, not just boss boss boss , small group, boss , the end.
4) Also mean a lot of id*ots etc.
5) Game with some addons is like playing game for blind ppl if you can see. Addons make some stuff freakin easy.
I tried WoW, did lvl 80, hated dungeons there. PvP is kinda fun but arenas are taken from FPS games. Open world pvp is realy fun - if you have best PvP equip, more players on your side and more addons. :P PvP is way unbalanced - you need equipment thats all what measures. (also skill but only against someone with same equip or similar) I think WoW could be realy fun when it started or maybe even BC but Wotlk just pissed me off.
But leveling to 80 is kinda fun - what i found out bad was I did it in group with 1 other member and it was sometimes too easy - cause its done for soloing.
Played: Lineage 2,Guild Wars 1 and 2, Age of Conan, Ragnarok Online, LOTRO, World of Warcraft, League of Legends, EvE online
Tried: KAL Online, Face of Mankind, ROSE online
Playing: CS:GO
I am a little ashamed all that and I did not actually list 5 things. Back to the drawing board.
1. You can level several ways: Questing (fastest and easiest), Grinding (most boring to me), BGs starting at level 10 (very long at first, best to wait till higher levels), Dungeons starting at level 15 (fastest leveling for tanks and healers), and now through crafting at level 5 (moderate leveling rate, right now I'm leveling a hunter through this, only mining and herbalism gives you xp, but in cata archealogy does too).
2. Tons of friendly people. I noticed the more mature communities in wow are on pve servers, or the minority faction in all realms, like Cho'gall alliance ,<---don't go there first though, way to small for a beginner. Trade chat sucks, so try to get in a leveling guild quickly.
3. Fun story and world to explore.
4. Hunter Class, best class ever
Actually, all the classes a very well done, while certain classes are harder to level then others, all have the ability to level solo. Many games have a bunch of classes, but they feel the same, none of the wow classes feel the same.
5. Lots to do at endgame. Most games either have one thing to do at the end, or really nothing. Don't get lost in the ideology that you have to raid, you don't. These are the things I do : raid, do dungeons, explore the world, duel, do achievements, collect mounts, collect companion pets, Fish, do events, BG, arena, craft stuff, listen to chat, help out newbies, do low level quests, and try to get some world pvp going (not a pvp game lol).
Despite what some people say pvp isn't 100% armor based, one of my hunters just has swiftarrow gear (level 78 pvp gear) and can easily beat out an average wrathful geared person (highest pvp gear in game). However, don't come into the game thinking it is a great pvp game, it isn't, but pvp is fun, if you don't take it too seriously.
-I want a Platformer MMO