Allow me to explain why one MMORPG lover was disappointed by WoW.
My first few minutes in the game world were surprisingly revolting. Once I adjusted my graphics settings I breathed a sigh of relief, but I was still troubled by how similar all the toons in one class looked to each other. The character creation process, in terms of look and feel, was extremely limited. The toons all looked rather childish too. But my thinking was, this would improve in later levels with different gear and such. -This is what happened in my old favorite MMO UO. As you bought colored dyes, and different armors and weapons, toons began to look less and less alike.
Then the next strike came. The running speed was amazingly slow. As soon as I had to travel a considerable distance I began to wonder... 1) Were the devs restricted by technical issues, or 2) were they trying to drag the game out ? Either way, it made me feel like I was wasting time. -I told myself "hey mounts will be faster", and soon found out, even mounts seem to be running in slow motion.
Another big strike was the lack of option to team with toons of different lvls. I had buddies that took a week off work to lvl up, and we could no longer team. It took a huge amount of value away from the game that might have compelled me to play far longer.
Another problem I had, was with the monsters in the game. They seemed to be wandering around like broken robots. While this is not uncommon in many games, City of Heroes added behaviors and interactions among mobs that made them feel more legit. To step backwards to monsters staring into space and re-spawning like wildfire (which later the devs adjusted I read) was really unsatisfying.
The final death blow came with the spell list. At first it looked long, but then when I started getting 50-11 versions of Fire Ball, and no very weird or exciting spells (e.g. UO has over 64 different spells), I could go no further.
Adding all these factors together, Wow never hit my RPG joy button. Crafting and potions were not enough to recover the game from these glaring let downs. Make no mistake, this is not a hater review. I truly wanted to love WoW. But I couldn't.
Bottom Line: If they ever improve the graphics engine, triple the starting travel speed, add travel powers for lowbies (like fly, super speed, teleport), triple the spell list and dump repeated spells, I will be back in a flash to give it a 2nd chance.