I've been playing Everquest 2 for a while now (probably about 9 months) with my brother. I love the game, and I find it highly enjoyable. However, that's not what I'm going to talk about. I'm going to talk about disillusionment and painful bleeding eyes.

I played World of Warcraft for the first time last weekend, and I have to say that the game is a vast disappointment. There are a few reasons, but the one that sticks out in my mind as the definitive "first" is that it's not Everquest 2. It's more like EQ2's younger and stupider brother. EQ2 is a straight "A" student who�s at the top of his class, while WoW is his younger brother who's getting a "C" mark in shop class.

EQ2 boasts a robust selection of races and classes, and a degree of customization for your character that has only recently been surpassed by Oblivion�s 3 hour long face-making session. There is a starting area with quick, easy quests, and little tooltips that make sure that you know how to walk, talk, and die. Its graphics are clean, detailed, and realistic.

WoW boasts a very mediocre selection of races and classes. If, like me, you�re starting to play with your friends, then you�ll have even less choice. There are two exclusive �sides� to choose from, the Alliance and the Horde. If your friends are playing Alliance--guess what? You�re playing Alliance, and that means that your choices for your character�s race are cut in half. The customization of your characters is limited to about 5 faces and 6 hairdos. So no matter what, you�re going to run into at least 10,000 people who look exactly like you in your starting area (where all members of your race begin).

I found the starting area to be extremely confusing, even with the moderate MMO background given to me by playing EQ2. It was difficult to find anything worth finding, until you�d already found it. That sentence made sense. The quests available at this point are predictably very boring and repetitive, but you�d think that they could vary it from �go into this cave, kill this guy� every once in a while. I think I went into a cave and killed some guy about 6 times between levels 1 and 12. Now, finally, for the coup-de-grace: the graphics. This one gets its own paragraph.

The graphics look like they were designed to catch the eye of an 8 year old autistic child. Bright, flagrant primary colors are splashed around like eyeblood from my bleeding sockets, once I witnessed the full force of WoW�s oversaturated world. It is a hellhole of overly intense hues that make me wish for nothing more than a black and white option.

I can only assume that Blizzard is trying to infer that WoW is interesting, through their oversimplified character creation and morbidly vivid color schemes. It is far too early to make a final judgment on WoW, of course, but here it is anyway.

If you want an enthralling and interesting MMO experience, play EQ2. It�s harder to pick up than WoW, no doubt. But then, it�s difficult to go from reading Dr. Seuss to reading Tolstoy.

If you want bright colors and pretty noises, play WoW.