Comparing a game to WoW is fine (and encouraged, in my opinion) because almost everyone in the MMO community played WoW, and almost all of them liked it (a lot of people now who hate on WoW really liked it in the past and just shit all over it cause it's the "cool thing to do" - kinda like people who really didnt know anything about G.W. Bush would hate on him towards the end of his presidency).

So comparing a game to a well known and very successful other game is perfectly acceptable to me. 

It's the "WoW Killer" threads that kill me.

And as to the question, Aion will never catch on like WoW did for several reasons, however there is one thing that (almost?) the entire community can agree on: instanced zones suck compared to non instanced ones.

Aion's instanced zones will be the only reason I will not even try the game (except if it comes out with a 14 day trial and I'm bored)

Also,I think flying was one of the things that hurt WoW (at least in this one you can fight while you fly), and it's way to final fantasy-esque art direction looks bad imo.

Happy Tuesday

 I dont know where you Bouldars Gate fans get your idealized vision of the game, but it was incredibly slow and the combat was horrible. No real strategy to it, just a <spacebar>, click each unit, issue command, <spacebar> watch them do it, <spacebar> etc, etc,

And the system where you had to rest to be able to cast the spell again? lame.

I'm looking forward to SWTOR, and know that it's combat system wont be like BG (thankfully), but I saw all these people commenting about BG's combat being great and had to say something.

And my major concern with SWTOR is that it will be so "class story based" that it turns into a single player game..Or a game where you can group only with your class and when you're on the same mission.

 I agree, it does look very femish

But that's how I think a lot of Asian culture is, the hair cuts that a lot of guys have, the clothes that alot of them wear, etc etc.

But yeah, as a self respecting, testosterone filled, man, I don't care for the graphics at all.

Oh, and it's an entirely instanced game - do not want

 As to WoW's stellar success, it was the first mmo that I personally played, and I fell in love with it.

Since then, I've played EVE, WAR, AoC, and the trials for several others (ff11, swg, ddo, eq2)

The one thing that wow did better than all of these was the user interface (Eve's and WARs wasnt bad though). For instance though: WARs UI was good everywhere except its crafting - of course that could have been a result of their crafting system feeling tacked on. Nothing in WoW ever felt "tacked on" it all felt natural. The crafting was the best I've currently experienced in a game.

You could also only spend a relatively little time, and feel like you "accomplished" something for the day (in b4 accomplishment in a video game comments).

Someone earlier in this thread also mentioned that WoW had something to offer for everyone. I completely agree. I played to be a tank and real world pvp (none of that anymore sadly), my roomate plays to raid as a healer, my girlfriend played just to collect pets and do cooking side quests, etc. No other (recent) game has covered all the ground points like WoW did.

Everyone shit's on WoW for how the game has evolved, but really no other game has learned the lessons that are to be taught by WoW's success - A clean (stable) UI, A solid chat system (dont get me started on AoC's), and a game in which the animations follow the action (WAR and AoC the actions would sometimes deley, and WAR's in fact would stop you from doing actions later).

This kinda makes me want to renew my subscription... Damn you!

So I downloaded the free trial, and after 10 hours of patching, I was looking forward to trying the game out (especially their job system that is used as "classes").

However, after maybe 7 minutes of running around, I decided not to waste anymore time on it.

WOW. Absolute worst ui I've ever experienced.

Using the numpad? Auto typing in chat whenever you press anything on the main keyboard? No configurable keybindings?

 All terrible.

How do you guys stand playing with this control scheme and ui?