Shame they don't make these games offline as well anymore. I hate the MMO aspect but the game itself looks fantastic.
However WoW is not that great of a game...sure the first game aka "vanilla" was great imho but every expansion it became crappier and crappier. Now you have Cataclysm which is the biggest piece of crap created last year. Now all you do is farm badges for EVERYTHING from patterns down to loot. I am surprised you can even farm ingredients anymore without token usage.
Cata is in everyway possible better than Wrath was, Wrath was garbage. Nothing compares to vanilla, but again its because it was all new, and wasnt geared towards the casual player. Something like 5% of the WoW community back then actually saw Naxx. That was when Blizz started making it less for the hardcore gamer and more for the casual player. Bad for those who love the game, great for Blizz's wallet. As far as your farming badges theory goes, its pretty much always been that way. In vanilla and BC you farmed rep, sure there were some drops too which I wish Blizz would have kept around, but its all the same. At least now Heroics are a little easier then they were in BC but atleast they are harder again, unlike that Wrath BS.
Now this Rift game, idk im undecided I guess.... From those videos its so much like Wow, not sure if thats good or bad. I dont know if I like the 4 classes with 8 subclasses, I think thats too much hybrid crap going on. The graphics look great though, and that AOE looting system might sell me on this lol. Does anyone know exactly if there is a raiding aspect of the game. Im guessing so considering there are dungeons. Is there world PVP, like Wow's PVP servers? Rift looks alot more promising than Aion was, thats one beta I wish i never played. I just dont know if this is a Wow killer, the Wow community is so rooted, to actually pull it from "King" hmmm thats a difficult task. Also with Rift is there a monthly play charge like with Wow?
I have gotten lucky so far that almost all off mmorpg games have sucked, because Im not going to stop playing Wow, the story line alone is amazing, Also being a huge Star Wars buff that mmorpg game I'll be playing as well, Idk if I hav ethe time or pocket book to play 3 lol.