Okay, I do believe this is the first time I’ve ever said this about a game, but I judged it too soon.
I got an invite for the open beta and Racy and I haven’t been playing WoW for various reasons – mostly b/c we’ve done most of the content that didn’t involve the random dungeons.
Gotta say, my second impression is far, far, far better than my first. Enough so that, we went ahead and used our Founder’s Membership at Fileplanet to get us a discount (15%!) off the collector’s edition, so that we could get early entry and a few other goodies, like a mount and a bag at launch. Better pricing too – like $10/month if you sign up for six month plans. (Sixty bucks for seven months (to include the free one with the purchase of the game) not bad!)
Here’s the deal. The graphics are really quite good. They’ve also blatantly ripped off a lot of things that “work” in other games.
I see the lofty ideals of Aion – light vs. dark in an epic battle, where the players (PCs) are treated almost as risen gods. Large scale PVP, randomly generated into zones, far in the back of what might be considered “safe.” However, at least on the PVE servers, it’s largely opposing side NPCs, which adds a certain amount of electability to the fighting. You can elect to fight the Rifts or not. The rewards are nice, though!
Warhammer - the comparison’s may go further, as I haven’t gotten near the end game yet. However, they have public quests, which tend to be the Rifts – so they combine Aion’s warp holes to the “other side” with Warhammer’s public quest to make randomly generated pseudo-PVP all over the place. And Anyone of a certain level can make a rift open.
WoW – Every game borrows from WoW at this point. The interface is similar, though the graphics are more on par with Warhammer. Jumping in game is a cinch. Num-lock for autorun. Settings>Interface>Action Bars to select more hot bars. “!” over quest giver heads. And lots of other little things – a warrior spec that REALLY plays a lot like a DK. That’s not even the tip of the tip of the iceberg…
LOTRO – Achievements. I refuse to credit this to WoW since it was LOTRO that first came up with the concept. But, yeah, they’re in there!
EQ2 – Collection quests! Yes, the little shinies on the ground have re-appeared in 2011. Collect the books, leaves, fae items, what have you – and xp and loot is yours. Just for keeping your eyes open and dropping the items into your collections.
And it’s got some new things all their own. They give a lot of interesting equipment slots – like planar abilities, planar focus, etc. The fact that my cleric can wear chain mail! Yaaay.
More to come. What once bewildered me about the classes, they’ve made a LOT easier to figure out. You can see the talent trees of every class before you choose to select it. I’ve managed to make a cleric that has four instant damage spells (go pew pew!) as well as an instant heal, a 2 second cast heal, a faerie pet that also heals, and I have a kick ass damage shield. All by level 10! Yesterday, I had a ranger who did crazy damage and, oh yeah, I picked up stealth by taking a nightstalker (I think that’s the name of the class) and so.. yeah, a ranger that can hide and has crit out the wazzoo.
This ain’t no cookie cutter game. If you can’t figure out a spec that you like in this game, you never will!
Oh, and on a final note – our tests have shown that the “good guys” have sexier costumes. Take a guess which one we’ll play. 
