I've often thought that one of WoW's big advantages over other MMORPGs is that Blizzard decided to go with a truly stylized approach to their artwork.

When a game instead opts for photo-realism (which is, at best, only barely within the reach of existing technology, and becomes nearly impossible when you factor in a MMOG's limitations), the graphics can begin to appear dated in the span of a year or two. In other words, there's still a lot of room for improvement in the realms of photo-realistic graphics. As these improvements occur within the industry, they may negatively impact existing games whose graphics are no longer at the 'forefront' of photo-realism.

A strong style, on the other hand, is going to be affected to a much lesser degree by the improvement of technology... I think WoW will still be distinct, colorful, and aesthetically pleasing several years down the road, when other MMOG's are revamping their graphics engines yet again.

That said, I'm actually not a fan of Blizzard's single-player games, so it's going to take an excellent beta experience (mine) or a wealth of well reasoned beta reports (from others) and reviews before I opt to dive into WoW myself.

Edited, Wed May 21 19:21:51 2003

I've been looking at this, too...the consensus seems to be that beta will start in Q3 sometime. Further info can be found at http://www.worldofwar.net.