WOW, and no not the game.... this thread... I about choked on the first page. Lots of biased opinions and mean sounding retorts. Very fitting considering the title of the thread. That said my opinions are:

I've been playing wow since close to release, and I was in the WotLK beta. I didn't get to struggle through the original release of WoW so I won't compare the games there. I played WAR however through a good portion of the beta and into release.

Graphics, gameplay: I think the graphics are far superiour in detail even though they are not the same style. The fact that there are large enemies right off the bat was a nice touch to keep the attention of seasoned MMO veterans that didn't want to kill 100 boars per quest for the first 10 levels. The game idea of WAR is well done and competes with WoW on several levels.

PvE: There is junk for a point to endgame PvE in WAR. You might as well do PvP scenario's from rank 1 on. As you progress through there is plenty of questing to break up the leveling process. The dungeons have some cool ideas but the gear is no better than what you get from simply standing in equivalent rank PvP for a bit. The best of the best gear will be gotten from PvP.

PvP: Supremely disappointing in the low levels depending on your class. The point of the entire game. Honestly I don't think they did a better job on balancing then WoW. Healing is win. My zealot can solo heal a tank through the entire other teams assault. I realise your supposed to just blow the healer up but on more than one occasions a few melee and tanks were able to wall off a hallway or staircase and nobody could get to me anyway. Even then, my zealot can live through a hell of an assault and with self rezzing for my entire party it will make for wicked fights. The PvP is very good and different. I like WoW's PvP better because of the horrid smoothness of actions in WAR.

Playability: The complete lack of smoothness in WAR is AWFUL! I cannot get an instant cast spell off sometimes because of the sluggish response of the characters in WAR. Several of my friends quit WoW to play WAR and this is their only complaint as well. It seems like playing with lag and I can promise you thats not the case as WAR's servers seem very strong to me. I get great latency and yet it's STILL sluggish and packed with smoothness=fail. Walking seems bad. I have troubles casting instant spells behind me with the jump turn method I got so used to in WoW. Not a huge deal you learn the timing and keep in your head that War != Wow. The lack of smoothness has driven me away from WAR and the only thing that could bring me back is better PvP balance. (you heard me I think the PvP balance in WAR BLOWS especially in low levels.) Which I believe WAR will be the best PvP balanced game we've ever seen after a few months or years of progression and polishing. I'd like them to add an arena system cause thats my favorite thing in WoW but meh it's not really in the style of WAR.

I am keeping my WAR subscription but have all but quit it to go back to WoW. I still am leveling my zealot on off hours and intend to stick it out til the polished years or death of WAR. I will be playing WotLK on release though as I believe it to be a far superiour game for replayability and WAR will get boring and old very quick with the same town/keep/castle seiges and the complete lack of a point to doing anything else in the game but PvP.

Edited for spelling etc.