But, I really had a lot of questions about WoW before finally jumping in and playing, and I thought other people might enjoy my take on how the game compares to EQ. Why is this different than the 1000 other posts about the game?
1) I'm not a fanboi of WoW.
2) I didn't leave EQ because I was fed up with it.
3) I have at least some ability to form coherant thoughts into text.
This is hopefully a very unbiased "review" of WoW, so it may help someone decide to either jump ship and join WoW OR stay in EQ because all isn't as rosy as it appears...this writeup isn't meant to sway in either direction.
Background: 4+ years of playing EQ, max character 66 (almost 67) necro, 215aa, ele-flagged, casual hardcore player, minor raider.
Almost 2 weeks of playing WoW, max level 19 so far (I'm not a veteran by far). Please take this into consideration: I don't know everything there is to know about the game.
Graphics
You either love them or you hate them. Character models are slighly blocky, but good textures hide lots of this. Screenshots of the game really don't do it justice. Some people don't like the style of the graphics, but it grows on you after a while. I liked them from the beginning.
Graphical style is absolutely fabulous. Smooth transitions from 1 "area" to another, varied environments, overall looks nice.
Not having to load zones (except instances) makes the immersion that much better.
Character models look very basic at first, but seeing higher level people in nice looking armor is neat.
Game world interactivity / immersiveness
Actually not bad. You find random treasure chests, usually near an encampment of mobs. Sometimes they hold crap, other times minor treasures.
The immersiveness of the game is outstanding. For instance, in many of the plains areas (at least near towns), you'll see groups of zebra mobs running together like a pack..nice little touch.
You also have non-targetable birds flying, the random wolf mob chasing a little level 1 rabbit, etc. It's all pretty cool, and you almost feel like you're on a safari...sorta.
Quests
So far they've fit one of these molds:
1) Find and kill Mob X or a certain number of mob Xs.
2) Kill certain mobs to collect certain drops.
3) Explore area X.
4) Find items X, Y, and Z (in chests, etc). Usually guarded by mobs.
Most of the quests are your standard fare, but at least they give good reasoning behind them, not just "kill this guy because I want you to." Supposedly there are escort quests (ala Netherbian lair escort), but I haven't run into them yet.
Some quests follow a storyline, getting progressively harder. Some quests are timed, but are usually easy. Some quests are class-specific, and all classes seem to get at least one of these around level 10. For instance, my mage (think wizard) got a quest for a clicky insta-mana regen orb at level 10 (with a 30min reuse timer), and my warlock got his quest to get his level 10 pet. Druids get their quest for their first shape change, and I think my rogue got his quest for a good dagger. I'm pretty sure these happen at level 20, and at least at level 40 also for the paladin and warlock mounts.
Quest givers are easily spotted, which is a feature I find very helpful...the capital cities are so huge, it's sometimes very hard to remember where certain mobs are...but *usually* the quest log will have a detailed description of where the turnin guy is at, and your mini-map will spot them when you're in range.
Other players
This one takes a HUGE ding against it. Yes, there are ********* in EQ, but for the most part I found people helpful.
In WoW, it's basically a crapshoot. Think about this: You have some EQ fallouts, some SWG, a *lot* of FFXI (ugh), and some Lineage, etc.
The quality of people you find playing can vary, widely...very widely. Overally, it hasn't been bad so far. I've played on both PVP and PVE servers, but truthfully I didn't venture too much on the PVP server to actually get myself into trouble...so I can't report on how bad "griefing" is at the moment (much higher level players killing lower levels because they can).
Game Stability and Bugs
This category will take a few dings, but nothing too major.
Over the past 2 weeks or so, I've had only 2 crashes to desktop...not bad. And strangely, they both happened whlie doing the most mundane tasks (shopping at a vendor, or talking to someone).
As for bugs, I've found a couple. There's a "fake mining vein" bug, where you find an ore vein while exploring, start to mine it..bend down to loot...and your'e stuck like that. You can move, fight, etc, but you're stuck in a crouching position and can't loot anything else.
There's a "mob didn't really forget me" bug. At least I THINK this is a bug. Basically, mobs in WoW forget you after a while if you run away...and return to their spawn point. Problems arise if you have a pet that's aggrod the mob also.
For instance: My warlock has a tank pet now, and he can cast fear. Let's say I get jumped by a mob, pet attacks it...I don't feel like killing it, so I fear it, put pet in "passive" mode, and we go about our way. Way down the road, I decide to fight a mob...and outta nowhere comes the feared mob from before...We're normally way past the "forget threshold", but for some reason me having a pet makes the mob come to us.
Overall, though, not many bugs and amazingly stable for being so young of a game...not counting the long beta testing.
Tradeskills
These I absolutely love. First, all characters can learn fishing, cooking, and first aid.
Character can only learn two primary tradeskills...and it's a hard choice! Skinning, leatherworking, smithing, mining, engineering, alchemy, herbalism, enchanting, tailoring.
Some combinations come naturally. Happen to be a rogue (leather)? Pick skinning and leatherworking to make your own [useful!] armor. Warrior? You might want mining and smithing.
The thing is, amazingly, nearly all tradeskill items are cool! At least what I've seen so far...so it's sometimes a tough choice choosing.
For instance, my warlock character has mining for raw materials, and engineering to create bombs, scopes, mechanical squirrels (yes..you heard that), all sorts of stuff.
But, because I took these 2 skills, I'm missing out on tailoring (for my own armor), or herbalism+alchemy for my own potions.
There are two ways to "get around" this:
1) Just buy what you need from the auction houses.
2) Create another character on same server, pick 2 different skills, level them up, then use the mailbox system to send items to one another(sorta like shared bank slots in EQ).
Tradeskills are nice in other ways, besides actually having useful items.
1) When you initially learn a skill, you're given some sample patterns/recipes/blueprints. Clicking on the item will show you what you need to create it. If you have the items, you can click "create" and you'll never fail the combine. You can choose to "make all", make a certain number, or just make 1 of an item.
2) When you reach certain skill levels, other recipes open up for you. You simply pay for the design from the trainer, and you can then create the new item. Some designs are actually mob-loot-only, so you sometimes get lucky and find a nice robe design (or mechanical squirrel!).
I really, really enjoy the tradeskill aspect much more than in EQ, even after EQ made their UI changes.
Group dynamics
Sadly, I haven't seen much of this, and I think EQ wins here (though maybe it's different higher up). This isn't really a fault of WoW, but a design...because all classes can solo in WoW.
So, while it may be fun to group with people, etc, often you'll see people soloing, so it's uncommon to learn at a low level how to work well with one another.
Supposedly this changes around level 20, where grouping becomes viable (while soloing still very possible). But, so far, the grouping doesn't seem to mesh together as well as EQ does.
Character / class depth
First, the races really don't have amazing statistical advantages over one another. It's perfectly viable to have an orc warlock or gnome warrior. Yes, the gnome will be slightly weaker than the orc, but he'll get more dodges in melee, so it's a moot point.
Racial abilities, though, are sometimes awesome, sometimes useless.
For instance, Undead have 300% extended underwater breathing, +10 shadow magic resistance, they can cannabalize undead or humanoid corpses for +health regen (cooldown: 2 minutes), and they have a 20sec insta-ability to become immune to fear, charm, and sleep (useful in pvp).
Humans I think get the short end of the stick.
+10% faction modifier for quests..big deal.
+5% spirit..not bad.
+5 swords..nothing special
20sec stealth detection (activated), 3 mins cooldown...pretty pointless unless you're PVP vs a rogue or hidden druid, and you know they're around somewhere.
The point is, the racial abilities are varied, which is nice. Orcs get +5% pet damage bonus, Tauren have +5% health and an *awesome* 2second AE stun stomp, 2 minute cooldown. Night elves have innate no-move hide, and if they're a hiding class (rogue, druid in cat form), they're harder to detect than other races.
I could go on and on about the races, but there are multiple web writeups about them.
Class depth is decent, although they look simple on the surface. For instance, the mage start off as just a regular spell shooting guy (and pretty much stays like that)...BUT, you start getting spells that let you do other things. You get transformation, which basically turns 1 mob into a sheep for about 15 seconds, and you get various cold spells to either shield you, slow attack speed, or freeze mobs into place.
As you level, you're slowly introduced to new spells, so you get time to learn what they do. Also, in a nice touch, you get new spells / abilities about every 2 levels, so things stay new.
Server Issues
1) Lag. Really bad lag during peak times. Thankfully, this usually happens only on the "HIGH" population servers (login screen shows you the population of servers..high, medium, low).
It's really almost a Catch-22 situation. If you want a larger pool of people to play with, and a more varied economy (with lots of auction house selections), you're better off on a high population server...just beware the lag can become unbearable.
2) Login server always going down. Truthfully I've only run into the situation 2 times in 2 weeks, but it's annoying, and like any video game addict 15 minutes of downtime seems like 15 hours.
Maybe EQ and Blizzard buy their login servers from Emachines..who knows.
3) Server issues. Sometimes a server's AH (auction house) just stops reponding...as do merchants. Sometimes the server just drops out of commission. It's nothing rampant, thankfully, but it does happen.
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I wish I could write a bunch more, but frankly I don't have the time or space to do it ;)
If anyone has questions, feel free to ask. Overall, though, I definitely don't regret buying the game. It's well done, easily accessible, and takes some skill to pull certain things off. But, it's not a huge time sink if you don't want it to be.