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I spent a little more time with WoW this morning as a combo of getting up earlier than I wanted to and getting going later than I wanted to. As previously mentioned, they've done a pretty decent job of "just one more thing," and this is just playing as a solo character. Early levels come reasonably fast, and there's a reasonable number of "powers" available early on; you don't start out on rabbits (although frankly, not much higher than that). There seems to be a "using a skill improves it" thing going on, and there's also some kind of secondary profession scheme -- my fireball blasting battle-mage is studying up on a sideline of crafting crappy bandages out of frayed linens.
Quests so far are of the "kill X guys of some type" (or get "X things which requires killing >X guys of some type") or the "ferry this to point B" type. No conversation trees. It feels kind of like Diablo in a really big world of folks. Combat is kind of CoH-like; you have a toolbar of powers that you can customize, and various powers have various energy costs and times to invoke and recharge. Getting hit appears to slow down the "invocation" time as opposed to interrupting it completely. You can't move while casting spells, which is kind of a bummer -- the ability to jump or fly at the same time as you unleash a fireball is part of what makes CoH feel so dynamic.
Small, interesting details: I saw a stabler who could stable your pets, which makes me think you can buy a horse. For some reason this seems really appealing. You can click on chairs which causes you to sit in them. The world seems very big, looking at the world map and comparing it to the small bit I've explored so far. You get XP for discovering "new" areas, which is cute. I've come across lots of little contextual quests, like these two farms near each other with a set of interlocking quests, where it looks like you can either help bring warring families closer together or further apart.
Some things that I don't know that I like: time is constant with outside world time, which means that if you can only play for a few hours in the evening, you'll only ever see what the world looks like in the evening. The character avatar creation seems small, compared to CoH's rich set. CoH's scheme of putting missions behind doors (and thus, behind load screens) means that you aren't always in a field of similarly leveled folks all looking for the same kind of beast as you.
Finally, I think the most interesting feature is that when you're picking a server, you can pick between one that allows player-killing, one that doesn't, and... one that is for role-players only. I think that's great; I'd like to role play, and I'd feel less self-conscious about it on a server that's designated for it. 10:42:30 AM () 
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