This is hands down the best MMORPG I've explored. However, it frusterates on many levels that other similar games do.

User Rating: 6.3 | World of Warcraft PC
MMORPGs are an interesting lot. They typically have excellent ideas and intriguing plotlines filled with wonderful characters of fantasy, heroism and horror. Many RPGs have those same aspects but MMORPGs take eveything a few steps furthur by allowing you and thousands of others to be the main heros in the story. The intial thought of such a concept filled me with awe, epic honorable battles of Horde versus Alliance while on the side you have trekking through amazing dungeons and investigating political corruption; If I had any time left over I could even craft my own potions and sell them to other heros to aid the Alliance! Enter reality. The biggest advantage MMORPGs have is that they have tons of people in them that like RPGs. The biggest disadvantage MMORPGs have is that they have tons of people in them that like RPGs. Yes, people are the most frusterating part of the game. While the fact that the chat channels will fill with people spamming this and that about Chuck Norris is inevitable, the people that follow you around to kill your character time and time again is painful. It would be a fair thing if they were potentially defeatable, but often you will find that they will 'camp' your body for hours with a character that is four times as powerful as yours in every aspect. Next you have the people that will irritate you by failing to assist in you in party combat because they appear to have either bought their character illegally from an online website or are simply horrible players.

I covered the tip of the irritation iceberg from players; imagining that you are able to avoid all of that you have the game's 'end-game' problems. You seem to be left with three choices once you have powered up your character to the highest point (60 or 70 with the expansion.) 1. You could raid. Raiding involves tons of time spent organizing a dungeon crawl with 19-39 other people plus tons of time spent preparing the necessary equipment for said adventure. Then the actual raids take many hours of time. Sadly, this is usually done when most people have time available, which often seems to be every single night. How so many can devote so much time to raiding I may never understand, but somehow they have the time and they pull it off. 2. Okay, so maybe raiding isn't for you. Try Battlegrounds. The battlegrounds are not so much battles as they are minigames with battles involved. One is a capture the flag one is a hold the point game and one is a 'run past everyone else and fight their NPCs' game. These can be fun, but also involve lots of time spent to climb the ranks. You will often need a group of friends to play with because the organization of random groups is typically pretty sad. The initial concepts behind the BGs are pretty good. However, some classes aren't outfitted for battle as much as others, especially in the hold the points game. Also, the most epic battle that could have been a true warzone (Alterac Valley) has devolved into a mad rush to see who can kill NPCs the fastest. 3. You can reputation grind. This is the least used option. It involves killing monsters almost endlessly to gain reputation with factions who will then sell you powerful items. This is the only one you can really accomplish on your own time, however, some classes will take significantly longer than others to complete this long grind. It yeilds the weakest rewards of the three options and possibly the least enjoyment, but you can at least do it on your own time, and not on someone else's insane schedule. Don't get me wrong, I quit WoW and explored most of the other options and eventually came back to WoW (I recently quit again, not looking for more.) WoW IS the best MMORPG there is, but for the gamer that has to work, go to college, and maintain other hobbies and responsibilities, MMORPGs and WoW in particular can be too frusterating and too time consuming to be viable.