Everyone seems to be talking about it lately: Dropping their WoW account and switching to Warhammer Online. I don't know if this is prevalent everywhere, but on my realm's official forums, quite a few folks, including at least one major guild, are planning a mass transfer.
I love the sense of community on my server and will be really sad to see people go, but I do not intend to follow (and not just because I have to start paying grad school loans this month and am going to be too short on cash to justify two for-pay games).
One of the things that drew me into World of Warcraft so effectively (and into various MUDs and RPGs before WoW) was that in-game morality is not black and white. Oh, sure, the PVP is what keeps me here, but even though I very rarely actively RP with people in game, I do sort of RP with myself. All of my characters have backstories and current stories, and I like that I can play Horde or Alliance and have characters who are good, evil, or in between on either side.
I love that I can have a blood elf (arguably the most "evil" race in WoW alongside the Forsaken) who is snob but also a total pushover white hat and it's not out of character. I love that I can have a troll healer who respects life but totally doesn't get the ban on cannibalism because it's such a waste of good meat. I love that I can have morally ambiguous characters on both sides, who do questionable-to-evilish things that make sense to them (night elf rogue and undead shadow priest = love — I may dislike the playstyle, but they're still among my favorite characters).
So when people started talking about how awesome the PVP in WAR was going to be and how you could level through PVP (OMG COOL), I immediately headed to the website to check it out, and found that you could be ... order or destruction. Neither of those sounded fun, really, but more importantly to me, it seemed like one side was being cast as good (why people associate order with good, I will never know — balance would be more appropriate) and one as evil. And from the reading I did on both the website and various forum topics, it does not sound like that initial impression was totally wrong. I'm not seeing a lot of nuance there.
I don't care how awesome the PVP is, I don't want to be locked into creating one-dimensional characters. It takes the RPG out of MMORPG. I want nuance, dammit, and I will stick with WoW until I can find something that is both better at game mechanics and better at providing those shades of grey.
EDIT: It's just as well I had not planned to try this game, as it seems to be a PC-only release and I roll on a Mac with no intention of switching any time in the near future.
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I'm trying WAR during the beta period because I try everything (and I do it during beta if I can to save money). I'm talking about it somewhat, which I normally don't much do, because there's a pet class that is at least a bit like WoW hunters.
But I can already tell you that I won't be staying with this game. It doesn't have the feel I'm looking for. *shrug*
Hmmm, just think if I dropped WAR I could dual box WoW and have many many lvl 70 alts on triple exp o_O tempting.
Alas I feel I should try WAR because I am determined to feel superior to 'THAT' person who refused to even try WoW... who just so happens to be the one who invited me. I'm a bad person :)
But their pet class doesn't seem to have anything on WoWs and it seems to be more about guild related RVR (PVP) and cycling public quests - so unless I get really attached to guildies I can't see myself 'moving on' and leaving WoW behind.
I just keep telling myself: "hey kid, at least you're not spending it on crack."
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