World of Warcraft is a very well made mmorpg but for me who has been playing these games since Ultima Online, I find it to be lacking features and I'm not happy with the changes Blizzard have made to the game since Battlegrounds. I say this because WoW is an online world where the fun to be had is dependant on other people in the world. You'll want to be grouping and having fun playing with other people right from the get go. Now you can't do this when the world is completely dead and there are several reasons for why this is happened and I'll name a few.
Firstly the expansions they've added have added new continents so the whole population leaves the original world and moves to the new zones and stays there. Blizzard havn't added any reason for people to go back to the old world, so they don't. Battlegrounds have also killed the world PVP so that noones in the world anymore hunting players to kill and instead they're always in these instances which takes them out of the world. Now I find it Ironic that you can't capture contested territory. This would have been a better system than instanced battlegrounds because then people would be in the world and it would feel more populated. Another flaw is the level based system which makes mmorpgs top heavy and so new players have even fewer people to play with because everyones at end level. This means new players ahve to be bored grinding 80 odd levels just to be able to play with their friends, which is boring. In a skill based game you can login and play with veterans right away, like SWG Pre CU or EVE Online for example. Finally theres too many servers spreading all the new players out. If you put 1 - 60 on seperate servers and then transfered them over to 60 - 80 servers then you'd see a much better population spread.
What I really love about World of Warcraft though is that it gets combat done so right and every class feels unique and fun to play, which you don't get in anyother mmorpg. I really love the Warcraft lore and the zones in the world are designed perfectly, for the most part. I really love the mix of great PVE and PVP too and I love how the world is mostly seamless.
However World of Warcraft also lacks in having an in depth character customization, so everyone looks like clones which is a shame. Also the guild features are poor where as other games have guild cities/halls and guild levels and guild Rep. WoW doesn't and youc an't manage the guild very well because theres a cap to how many people you can see on the list. Also the game lacks in crafting because the current system they've got just doesn't appeal to crafters like other games such as SWG Pre CU did.
WoW gets alot of things right but it also gets so many things wrong. I hate how soloable the game is too because you get this lonely feeling right throughout the game. Moments like The Dead Mines at the launch of the game will never happen again because people only now group for gear and not for what they once did which was to do fun content and quests. Theres this real feeling of all people wanna do is rush through the game and it's quite sad and not the community I want for an mmorpg.
