Is WoW worth it after all the hype?

[Cryptic]

To buck the trend, I would recommend WoW whole-heartedly. When I find a good game, I tend to play it heavily with friends – so I plan on getting about 70-80 hours a month in, with a minimum of 40. (That leaves time for work, sleep, friends, home business, movies, and relationship. Not necessarily in that order!) So, at worst, having paid 6 months in advance, I’m paying $12.99 a month, or $0.32 an hour. Realistically, about $0.17 an hour unless I go on vacation or take a weeklong break. So unless you’re broke, you’d have to be against the *principle* of paying for a game, not the *amount*, to consider WoW a bad deal.

That being said, I’ll give my very quick capsule review based on my opinions of D1 and D2. All of this is IMHO, etc. etc. One person’s informed opinion.

Addictiveness: High. Better than D1. Better than D2. Whether or not this is a good thing is a matter of individual taste!

Atmosphere: Beautiful world, but not perfectly cohesive. Worse than D1. Better than D2.

Depth (interesting complexity): Lots of interesting crafts, talents, spells, etc. Better than D1. Better than D2.

Freshness (ability to surprise): Better than D1. Worse than D2. With a caveat, though – after you’ve played 200 hours or so, WoW will still be adding content while D2 goes stale. So I would say if you’re in for the long run, better than D2.

Friends: Good guild system, decent chat system, instances encourage grouping with good new people and thus meeting them. Better than D1. Better than D2.

Fun: Worse than D1. Better than D2. Entirely subjective.

Gameplay: Worse than D1. Better than D2.

Graphics: Better than D1. Better than D2.

Interface: Worse than D1. Worse than D2. Takes some getting used to and the task bar needs to be much bigger.

Items: Better than D1. Worse than D2. Most items just increase stats and only a few have interesting modifiers.

Longevity (will you still be playing in 2007?): Better than D1 (contentious, I know). Better than D2.

Maturity: Credit card required for play, which is weeding out 50% of the bad apples. Better than D1. Better than D2. But still not great.

Monsters: Worse than D1. Better than D2.

Quests: Better than D1. Better than D2. Caveat – none of these games are known for their atmospheric, storytelling quests.

Sound: Better than D1, mostly. Better than D2.

Strategy: Worse than D1. Better than D2.

Support (customer service): Better than D1. Better than D2.

Tactics: Worse than D1. Better than D2.

Trading: Very good auction system. Better than D1. Better than D2.

Updates (frequency of new content): Better than D1. Better than D2. Assuming, of course, that they’re not lying.

So, WoW gets 11 of my 1st place votes (out of 20), 8 of my 2nd place votes, and 1 of my 3rd place votes. Rating compared to other games out there, A. Rating compared to Blizzard action RPGs, B+.

Hope that helps, and I also hope the classic lovers don’t start a flame war.
:P