So here's some relevant info about my experience with World of Warcraft :
Immediately after installing, I created six characters. Just because I could. And the simple act of having that much choice makes a huge difference; if I get bored or frustrated I can always pick another character, and switch to that one, without penalizing myself and having to lose progress on some character.
I heard complaints about the graphics and their cartooniness. And yes, the minute I log in I'm stunned. Now I am basically Mr. Anti-graphic; I want gameplay. Even I said "Jeez, this sucks!" But I find out that WOW installs by default and uses the lowest possible graphics. Five minutes fiddling around with them and I think, well, they're cartoony but they look fine. And subsequent days I hardly notice the graphics and concentrate on playing the game, which is a good thing.
There are eight races with nine professions. I plan on playing one of each class, both Horde and Alliance. That's a total of 16 characters across at least two servers. Now, I can experience the entire game Blizzard designed, if I choose to invest the time. This is not possible in EQ2 without purchasing extra games or the station pass; in fact you need two accounts with the access pass to play one of each character class. About $44 per month versus $15 per month - big difference.
The server downtime is pretty bad. If you play at peak hours, over the last week, the servers are often down. I picked a second server to mess around on when the other servers are down. Then the login servers went down for extended periods of time. Sony has it all over Blizzard for reliability in my book - in my year of playing EQ1 I can remember one isolated login server issue, fixed in a single day. Given my Battle.net experiences, I'm not sure I see reliability in the future, though I hope I'm wrong.
My main character is turning out to be a soloer (Hunter Lvl 11). Any groups he gets into tend to be pickup groups centered around finishing a quest. Plenty of solo content so far, and it's all fun.
I have my professions and I'm working on them. When I need more money for my professions, I go out and do some lower-level XP'ing. Little chance to get killed, little XP reward, but I can grab enough cash to get on with my skinning or leatherworking without it taking days. Plenty of room in my bank - with the potential to buy more room if I want it. I can sell immediately and open up room, via the auction house. I can give stuff away easily via the mail system. In a word - Choices, and lots of them.
So far, the choice is clear for me. I'm feeling frustrated and limited in EQ2. Selling, soloing, bank space, and the 800 lb gorilla of four character slots. I'm irritated if I can't get in to WOW - but once I'm in, the game experience is fantastic. And Sony could make things much more open with the simple step of more character slots, which would open the game up and give more options. Not some pansy half-baked upgrade like "Well, we think you only need FOUR. Pay us extra, and you can get double!". A bunch of slots - 24 is what I want, and if half of them are on the test server that's acceptable.
Anyway - that's my thoughts. Posted here because I hate that the game has been ruined for me by one boneheaded decision.
My character journal - updated daily