I'll be picking it up on the 360 on the first day. If I like it enough, and the experience is different enough between the two, I'll probably pick it up on the PC, as well.

I've been waiting for another game like this since playing Deus Ex and System Shock 2 originally. IW didn't live up to my expectations, but I'm hoping this one will.

There are zones like in WoW, but they're much smaller and each has to load separately. Each zone tends to have a lot of invisible walls, though fewer in the more recent games. You end up having to choose one path or another to get to your destination. Once you get to a town or fort/mission zone, you get a marker on the map so you can warp back and forth. It's still fairly non-linear, but the map unfolds along with the storyline. And the pathing tends to make the outdoor areas feel more like a level than a countryside you're roaming through on the way to the next town.

In Prophecies, there are a lot of "runners" who already have the town markers on their map and will run you to the next place so you can warp back and forth later on.

I tend to prefer the Horde. I've played both on various servers. On PvP servers, I haven't noticed as much difference between the two as on PvE servers, which are usually about 2/3 Alliance. Alliance usually has the advantage of having a lot more of a selection on the AH, and it's also generally quite a bit easier to get a group together if you need one. There are some days I'd love to have access to the Alliance AH again. Especially when I need a simple item for a quest that could be found at any time of day on the Alliance side, and usually in decent quantities.

On the other hand, I've found the Horde population to be more mature overall. There's a lot of annoying kiddie types on the Horde, especially after TBC was released and droves of BEs started showing up. There are a few rude players who demand free services, or spam group invites, but I haven't encountered this nearly as often since switching to the Horde. I also haven't found many clingy types. Most folks I've grouped with ask politely, send an invite, and we get whatever we were wanting to do completed. We usually go our own way after that, unless there's something else one of us might need help on. It was far more common to find people who had to group, or who had to have your help any time you were logged on when I was playing my Alliance characters. I have found people like that on the Horde, but it's far more rare.

It's also nice to win at PvP more often. :p

Anyway, this is probably more a result of the smaller population on the Horde than anything else. When the server population is closer to 50/50, you tend to get more asshats on the Horde like you do on the Alliance.

LOTRO and GW both have a fairly linear storyline that develops through cutscenes and storyline based instances/missions. All three also have a large number of quests to complete. Beyond that, they're not much alike. GW is basically more like Diablo, but with an MMO interface. The world map is all instanced outside of towns, which act more like lobbies.

I just picked up Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance 2. The most recent prior to that was Jade Empire and Black.

Picking up the PS3 a month or so back, I started checking out some of the better games for the PS2. I've also been trying to get more of the better Xbox games that I never got around to picking up before.

I haven't played too far into either, but I'm enjoying Lost Planet considerably more than Dead Rising. DR is awesome in concept, but the execution left me wanting. It was far too structured, and the time limit pretty mandated multiple play throughs to experience everything. Really, DR should have been GTA with zombies. That would have been a game worth soiling pants over. Instead, the best part of the game is what you can play in the demo. Run around the mall and kill some zombies.

Bioshock for sure.

Out of those listed in the poll, only Bioshock, Halo 3, and Mass Effect interest me.