Originally posted by: Playmaker
I'll probably give WoW a try, though. With 10m+ subscribers I feel like I have to at least do that.
Going to stress this 1 more time because people are still calling everyone in WoW idiots, find a group you enjoy playing with.
- You can be flagged for PVP in your safe zones by attacking enemy players in that zone or helping (IIRC) people attacking enemy players. In contested zones you are always flagged. Choose a PVP server IMO, the difference isn't too huge, but it does seem to be the way the game was intended.
- If you liked enchanters in EQ, WoW mages have the CC skill sheep, shadow priests have charm, druids have root and some other sleep spells, priests have undead root. So what you are looking at is the enchanter spells basically pawned out to almost every class. By and large when I played WoW mage was the key CC class though with sheep.
- Warriors actually have decent skills above and beyond taunt in WoW as do Rogues, both classes have a lot more depth than their EQ counterparts. If you have any sort of preconception about these classes being boring wipe them from your mind before starting WoW because it's no longer true.
- You won't be grinding mobs unless you are factioning or farming loot in WoW. What you will be doing is a process where you jump from quest area to quest area and complete them as efficiently as possible (get 6 quests, do as many at the same time as you can, return and get 6 more). It's worth mentioning that the quests in WoW are actually more enjoyable than pretty much any quest system in any MMO. The dialogue can be engaging and funny and some of them are pretty unique. So the scenario changes from "find a group grinding xyz mobs" to "find a group that is at a similar point in this zone as me". So just like EQ, having a static group that you work with is about 10x better, just for different reasons.
- Make as much money as you can from the get go and save all of it for your mounts. They are key money sinks.
- Get trade skills as soon as you can, doesn't matter which ones, for a first char it is good to get as many resource-acquiring trade skills as possible, like mining, herbalism and skinning. You can level these extremely effectively if you do it at the same time you exp. They are far less click intensive than EQ trade skills were.
- The entire UI in WoW is extremely customizable, similarly to EQ's but with a much larger modding community. Try the default, if you have any quirks that you don't like check the community asap and I guarantee you will find a replacement for whatever annoys you.
- The 3 bastard hybrid classes of WoW are the Paladin, Druid and Shaman. However none of them get crapped on as badly as the original bastard hybrid classes of EQ, but it's worth noting what you may be getting into. If any of the 3 classes interests you, make sure you look at the other 2 as well and compare.
Oh and modelworks, reputation exists in WoW, the reason I originally quit the game is because I could not log into my druid, any hour of the day without receiving a group or raid invite within seconds of my connection. It was a massive drain on me to the point where I no longer wanted to logon because of the commitment requirements. That's a pretty damn good reputation considering I wasn't even a priest and people would ask for me as a priest replacement in small group runs.