It's not that World of Warcraft is bad; in fact, I'd go so far as to say it combines the best bits from all the other MMOGs I've played. The problem is it combines the best bits from all the other MMOGs I've played. And therein lies the disappointment... I've already done this stuff before.

I've done the interchangeable character design. The picking-of-the-name. The logging in and clicking on the guy with the quest to kill 20 thingies and loot 10 wossnames. I've fought through the hordes of thingmen to kill their leader and return triumphant with his head on a pole. I've done the annoying near-random death because this time 50% of my attacks missed. I've not done underwater swimming and fishing, but only because I quit DAoC and AC before they were added. It's not even as if the player races and opponents are fresh - they're sourced from generic fantasy world #1024.

It's very well put together though. The interface is clean and streamlined, not taking up too much of the screen. It's extensible too and people have been building addons for it (I tried out one that replaces the somewhat basic in-game “who” window with a breakdown of all the people on the server - thanks RJO). It's got all the stuff you'd expect: hotkeys (twelve of them, which is nice), quest panel, inventory (expandable by adding extra containers a la AC) and paper-doll with slots to put your armour and weapons in. All the usual stuff. There's a double-tabbed chat panel split between talk and combat. It's unresizable and fades out generally so you can't see anything on it. Presumably there are settings or some facet of the interface extensions that can improve that.

Combat, as you might expect, revolves around the hotbar. Characters get a basic attack they auto-use in combat plus a number of special abilities they can trigger according to set rules. These generally have differing “pools” to draw from: the Shaman, the class I first played, uses a classic “mana” pool design, with abilities limited by mana cost and time to “recharge”. One the other hand, a Warrior has a “rage” pool which fills up as the character does damage or takes damage. This is an interesting idea, though it does seem to result in a you having to wait through the first few swings as your character builds up enough rage to use the special abilities. In addition, all classes get a “unique” feature to help differentiate them. For Shamen it's “totems”, immobile spell-casting devices that can be called in action (somewhat akin to AC2's turrets, but with more abilities). Warrior's meanwhile get “stances” that allow them to alter the balance between defence and attack (though, like many other systems, WoW uses a passive defence model).

Finally, WoW has perhaps the worse graphics of a recently released MMOG. Granted it's supposed to be somewhat cartoony, but that doesn't mean you can get by on low-resolution textures and low-poly models. Pushing the settings up to max doesn't help much either, so it's not as if they've built any future-proofing into the system.

In conclusion them: well made, well put together, but rather soulless.