The view from level 6

So what's my overall impression of the game so far?

It's way too linear. There's no point in killing a new "mob" (in the parlance of our times) or going new places unless you already have the proper quest, or else you'll just have to repeat everything you did. That discourages exploration, when a huge, supposedly interesting open world was one of the big draws to me. In GTA or Zelda or Fallout, I can do useful stuff when I explore beyond the script, and I'm often even rewarded for it.

The mechanics are super old-school, and in clunky way, not a fun way. The pace is slow, almost tedious. The graphics are kind of ugly—and no, hyper-saturated colors popping all over don't make up for it, they just seem attention-manipulative the same way that huge fake smiles in commercials are. The world doesn't feel remotely real. And it's totally unchallenging—a kindergartener could excel at what I've played so far (and would like the art style better).

But the biggest problem is that progress doesn't feel like progress toward anything—it's almost totally unmotivated. I can't see anything cool or crave-worthy on the horizon. I don't know the backstory of have any sense of world. There is no antagonist or conflict. What am I working toward? Well, maybe some pointlessly better loot, but the loot I already have gets the job done just fine—in fact, I only upgraded my starting weapon as an afterthought because I could afford to. Perhaps to unlock the ability to wear all that "mail" armor I keep finding, but not until level 40—whatever. To see new places, but the places I've seen already aren't that great. Or theoretically because the game experience is just intrinsically fun, like in a racing sim or competitive fighter or even a puzzle game, except that it just isn't. I haven't yet experienced a single moment of intense pleasure from any in-game source.

I've heard the initial leveling is the price of admission for the real game later. So, uh, just give me the real game now, pretty please. What I want from a game is maximum happiness per unit time. What Blizzard is giving me so far is just maximum time. I'm sticking with it because I've heard it gets better, but a book or movie that didn't hook me after 3-4 hours would totally get dropped. I hope WoW changes soon.