If a friend asked you if he should start WoW and why, what would you reply?

[Deleted]

Like what?

Uhm, let me see. You start your character, you pick a race, a class and a faction. When you're in the game you can pick a specialization, which gives you different talents and additionally you can pick 6 out of 18 extra talents. You can also pick glyphs to change your spells and give you new spells. You can pick professions. You can earn titles, you can unlock over 150 different mounts and a multitude of non-combat pets. You can get lots of different tabards. Your guild can customize their own tabard. You can reforge your gear, you can enchant it, you can put gems in it, you can use item upgrades. And you can completely customize your gear through transmogrification.

[Sj]

Uhm, let me see. You start your character, you pick a race, a class and a faction. When you're in the game you can pick a specialization, which gives you different talents and additionally you can pick 6 out of 18 extra talents. You can also pick glyphs to change your spells and give you new spells. You can pick professions. You can earn titles, you can unlock over 150 different mounts and a multitude of non-combat pets. You can get lots of different tabards. Your guild can customize their own tabard. You can reforge your gear, you can enchant it, you can put gems in it, you can use item upgrades. And you can completely customize your gear through transmogrification.

A lot of that isn't character customization though. Picking a class is a permanent choice, and while changing factions and races is possible, it's not financially feasible to do on a regular basis for many people. Specs, talents and glyphs are customizable, but it's done better in other games. Most people don't consider mounts and pets to really be character customization, just "stuff" to collect.

Titles are great, and so are tabards. Guild tabards being customizable is great in theory, but not when 90% of the icons are awful. Optimizing gear isn't character customization, and really WoW's gear optimization is standard fare for games that came before and after. Transmogrification was a much needed addition to WoW, but it's utter shit when compared to appearance tabs a la RIFT and Age of Conan, gear dyes in Guild Wars 2, or completely cosmetic clothing in The Secret World.

WoW's customization is much better than it was when it was released, but it's still by no means as good as it could be. The person that brought up customization was talking about for RP purposes. All characters of the same race and gender are the same height, same build, the only differences will be hair style, hair color, skin color, and face, all of which only have a handful of options each. Out of those options, namely faces and hairstyles, only a few look good. WoW's not really much for variety except in the race department.

That's why I think the other posters and myself would suggest another game if they were looking for customization. WoW's serves its purpose well enough, but there are better options available.

[Solidsteel]

Hell no, the game has gone to shit.

[Djuntas]

I would ask if he has the time to play MMO's at first. I would not recommed him even the trial before that.

Tired off MMO players who think they are entiled to stuff when they dont put inn the time. Not all players that thinks like this, but most do.

If he does have the time (20 hours a week or so atleast) I'll tell him what to exspect, and tell him how to buy wow cheap. Trial dosen't tell much about wow really...its a rather crappy trial. And then I'd proboaly go on about what is wrong with wow and how X is better than Y, and how I wish classic/TBC servers would open...

[Deleted]

i quit a while ago, i would say:

The game gets better the more time you spend on it on a schedule for raiding. If you do not want to play that much or on a regular schedule, there are better games for you.

What this guy said, i would only recommend it to people i would raid with atm. I dont have time nor do i know enough people to grind arenas, havent had since tbc really.

[YouAreAllWrong]

Depends on his/her tastes.
For expample a friend of mine likes story telling and exploring. I recommended SWTOR, GW(1and2) etc.
Another friend is an adventure gamer. I recommended TSW, Uru live etc.
I would recommend WoW only if we tend to play together. Level toons, hit some dungeons or do some arenas and BGs.

[Icaras]

"Yes do it, its fun. Roll on my server, and I can help ya sometimes."

[Deleted]

Depends on the person, they'd have to understand what an MMO is and what's involved or they'll just waste their own time.

[judgementofantonidas]

I would, and have, reply that although I imensely enjoy playing the game they need to realize that in order to experience all it has to offer they will end up devoting a lot of time to it. The game is designed to be adictive and if they have the kind of personality that falls easily prey to addiction they should probably steer clear.