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World of Warcraft...
... actually downloaded and tried the free version for a bit yesterday. (Well, given how honkin' huge it is, I actually had downloaded it over the prior night).
I doubt I'll be playing it again. It's pretty enough, I guess, and the FMV to start it was impressive, but the controls suck (not surprising, I'm using a keyboard), the tutorial features aren't sufficient, the flexibility in creating a character was minimal, and the icons and text are printed in teeny-tiny print I can barely read even when holding the computer up near my face.
No character interaction or intro; I get more character in Oblivion. And the controls on the PS3 just are totally lightyears beyond anything on a keyboard. (yeah, I presume there's probably some awesome USB joysticks or something out there, but I don't have one).
But I'll leave it on my HD for a bit; I may change my mind and give it another shot.
I doubt I'll be playing it again. It's pretty enough, I guess, and the FMV to start it was impressive, but the controls suck (not surprising, I'm using a keyboard), the tutorial features aren't sufficient, the flexibility in creating a character was minimal, and the icons and text are printed in teeny-tiny print I can barely read even when holding the computer up near my face.
No character interaction or intro; I get more character in Oblivion. And the controls on the PS3 just are totally lightyears beyond anything on a keyboard. (yeah, I presume there's probably some awesome USB joysticks or something out there, but I don't have one).
But I'll leave it on my HD for a bit; I may change my mind and give it another shot.
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This also reminds me how old fasioned World of Warcraft really is, and how much of the enjoyment really rests on playing with other like minded people. Unfortunately I think players on a free account are restricted from talking to and trading with paying players, so it can serve as an intro, but only as a solo experience.
I think you should give it another shot, but I don't expect that you will change your mind.
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The controls are annoying, but hey, I played through Escape Velocity Override and Nova perfectly well with just keyboard commands. I did my original gaming with keyboard commands (Sundog and Dungeon Master on the Atari ST).
But if the main draw is really interacting with people, and I can't interact with them, that's something of a showstopper.
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IIRC on character creation the races are selected on one side of the screen while the classes are selected on the opposite side. I don't recall if they dim the classes you can't pick or hide them, but the choices should be available.
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The new expansion coming out at midnight is very pretty. I played it for a couple of months. I enjoy the game, but I know lots of folks don't.
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That said, the camera zoom, angle, etc. can be adjusted, and I mentioned shift-V above to toggle the type of nameplate display.
(*) There are some specialized cases involving playing in groups where you really *need* a large monitor. But those aren't things you'd do just starting out.
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As an aside, the Logitech F310 gamepad is an excellent controller for not much money.
A huge screen isn't necessary to play WoW, but you may need to adjust the UI scale to make things fit well. I forget how to do it, only that I recall having to do it back in the day. It's a bit of a GPU hog, but turning down shadow quality helps immensely on notebook and other lower-power GPUs.
You've run into one of the reasons why I no longer play WoW: every class is designed and balanced around a couple of very specific builds, and every high-level raid encounter is designed and balanced around those class builds. And the flak from some players that comes with deviating the slightest from these builds. It stopped being fun after not too long. Guild Wars 2 handles it much better, IMO, although I haven't played that in over a year and I don't know how much it's changed.
Still, Skyrim kicks all of their asses. Not needing to be balanced for multi-player lets it have the freedom to do pretty much anything.
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Such as, you might want to give Star Trek Online a quick look. The customisation is massive- easily beating Oblivion hands down. And you can customise your Bridge Officers just as much. The interface is hugely scalable as well.
Controls take a little bit of getting used to, but ever since the Legacy of Romulus expansion, the tutorial/intros have gotten far better, both in terms of story and in instructions. It's Free To Play. The balance there is actually pretty good. You can even get all the paid stuff via in-game grinding, but that takes a long time.
Doesn't have the sheer player-base of WoW, but has it's own core audience of somewhere around 300k-400k.
Its fully possible to fly around in say, a gigantic indoor arena in a ship you named yourself - such as maybe "USS Skylark with Bridge Officers customised however you want them to look or be named. Maybe a First Officer with long blue hair named Ariane, or perhaps an engineer with a black beard named, say Marc. Possibilities are limitless.
What? No, I can't think what I might be referring to there and those suggestions are in no way based on actual experience. :P
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See, STO, like most on-line games, doesn't really offer much customization at all. Sure, you have a wide variety of cosmetic options available but the very first game play affecting decision that you make is to put yourself into a box. That is, you have to pick a class from the MMO holy trinity: tank (engineer), healer (science) or damage (tactical). STO is a bit less restrictive than most MMOs in this regard but still, it's the holy trinity and you're stuck with it.
In Morrowind and Oblivion you do pick a class but the choice is not a box. It's a list of skills that your character is better than average for a player character. Several classes spit in the eyes of the old D&D tropes about how magic and weapons and armor don't mix. Skyrim does away with classes entirely, allowing players to switch up play styles at will without having to roll up new characters. Unless you want to do that, of course, and the mod "Alternate Start" makes that a lot of fun. My last play had me starting out as an Imperial Battlemage heading straight into the civil war. No, the game does not acknowledge that rank but that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
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I havn't played for a year but plan to start after nanowrimo is over to try out the new expansion