What is World of Warcraft like?

I have not played any online games, and am interested in World of Warcraft (I am in Australia). I always like stealthy characters, like the rogue. Is WOW worth handing out my money on a monthly basis? What is it like anyway? Is it good or bad?

usernamesux wrote:I have not played any online games, and am interested in World of Warcraft (I am in Australia). I always like stealthy characters, like the rogue. Is WOW worth handing out my money on a monthly basis? What is it like anyway? Is it good or bad?

WoW is EXTREMELY addictive, so only play it if you have much money and time to spend.
It's a great game with tons of content, but it's also very repetitive. You need to solve quests, those however are usually quite simple, kill x amount of monsters, kill x amount of monsters and collect x amount of items, collect x amount of items, get x monster's head, talk to ms./mr x... Well, you get it. I was able to play it like this for more than 6 months, but then, I lost motivation in it. From lvl 40 on, leveling will take much time. You usually can make 1, maximum 2 levels per day which requires about 3 to 4 hours of mindless monster slaying. So you absolutely have to love your class, otherwise you will like me restart and pick another class or character(or maybe even faction).
A very sad fact is that the fun in WoW depends on who you play with. I happened to start on servers with immature brats which made me change the server 3 or 4 times.
The Class you prefer would be Rogue in WoW. It's not easy to play, you need to be very patient at times and also very quick.

If you're looking for an alternative, I can recommend Runes of Magic, it's almost same, but free to play. Be careful though, you can buy specific items with real money. RoM should also offer a Rogue like character, I think it's the Scout.

Thanks for the advice Dark Mayu! I might check RoM out, it sounds good. I may even investigate WoW more.

I had a bit of a look at Runes of Magic, and it looks interesting. The rogue in RoM is called a rogue ;) You can dual class one class with any other class. Care for a mage/scout (bow & arrow expert) for projectile master? Or warrior/knight for the ultimate in melee?

It has some interesting and far reaching character customisation options. Ever since Baldurs Gate, I love dual classing

Ah, yes right. I forgot about that already.

In WoW on the other hand, you have some soft of "tech tree", from lvl 10 on, you get 1 point per level up. You can invest them in specific abilities. The tech tree offers 3 branches, e.g. Affliction, Demology and Destruction for a Warlock. You can either invest all your points into one branch and specialise on something specific which will also affect your playing style, or you can spread the points you get on all branches to unlock many abilities and providing more flexibility. However, this customisation is by far not perfect. Thanks to cookie cutter builds, you will be forced to invest into specific abilities, otherwise you won't get far in PvP...