World of Warcraft....WoW

MMORPG's as a genre have always intrigued me, but I could never justify paying $50 for a game that I have to pay $10-$15 a month extra for to play. The game is a total paperweight if you don't like it. That said, I tried Star Wars Galaxies because I am a huge Star Wars fan and I just couldn't resist the concept. The price was always a sticking point for me though. I played for about a month, and I just couldn't get into the game. Things didn't feel done, player cities felt busted to me since no one ever had a reason to go there, and the mission grind felt just like that, a grind. But WoW feels different. I only played the game for a couple days, but I am impressed and I am defiinitely getting the game. First the graphics, character and world, just feel polished. SWG never felt awe inspiring, occasionally that was true, but in general I was not completely impressed. WoW really stands out. In one of the early Orc cities, I climbed to the top of a structure just to look out on the landscape, it was that good. Character models are equally fantastic. But the part that really stood out in WoW was the way the newbie area leads you into missions. Everything is well laid out, and you just don't kill monsters on the landscapel, you actually get into a dungeon on like the fifth mission! Maybe other MMO's are like this, but after SWG this felt like a revelation. The friend that got me into the Stress Test got to a lot higher levels than I did, so he got to experience the PvP, and he sounded like a heroin addict that can't score another fix for a long time :)