OMFG, this is an awesome game! If you know me then you may know that I am super wary of MMORPGs. It goes back to my Reed days when I knew some Reedies who dropped out due to their excessive MUD playing. I felt like I might fall into that same trap (and if you ask Robin, I may finally have). I’ve played a few MMOGs, but never played any for longer than a month or two. They just don’t hold my interest that long because they tend to be either extremely repetitive and tedious after a while or extremely pointless, as in the world never changes and the fight never ends.

Somehow Blizzard got it right, though I should say that I’ve only played World of Warcraft for a week. (I’ve been doing the open beta.) It *feels* like a single-player RPG since all the quests are hard-coded and designed really well. I mean you still have the animal farming quests, but the quests aren’t randomly generated. Additionally, all the quests give much more XP and monetary rewards than if you just went out and killed a bunch of stuff. The quests really drive the game and it makes me feel like I’m actually doing something and the world is changing.

I do have to say, also, that a lot of why I like the game so much is that I’ve been playing with a group of 4 others who are all on a voice chat program. Our party dynamics and communication is top-notch and it is very fun creating characters to complement each other. This is the same group who were playing BG2 with me, but that game fell by the wayside…

I’ll put up some screenshots and a review if I have time… I keep saying that…