Loosely, WoW is based off the original Warcraft games that came out in the late 90's for the PC and the Mac. They were considered "Real Time Strategy" games, where each side basically had to build up their resources, create an army and smash the other side to pieces. It took until 2004, 10 years later, for Blizzard to create an online game in that universe.
You can pick a character that is either "Alliance" or "Horde", remnants of the old "Humans" vs "Orcs" concept, although there are more races than just those two. I've tried Horde, but I didn't care much for the style.
Speaking of style, WoW's is rather unique out of the games I play. It is very reminiscent of cartoons. The colors are bright and vibrant, the character models are very much in an animation style, rather than a realistic style, armor and weapons are really overly dramatic (shoulderguards that dwarf your head come to mind - although if I remember right, that was the style back in the 80s!). In and of itself, this style is not wrong. It's just different.
Another thing about WoW is that it's easy.
From what I've experienced so far, quests are pretty straightforward, rewards for them give you a lot of experience points to level your character, there are only a few skills to master, and so on. I play WoW when I need to relax, when I don't want to really think, or when I feel like I just want to escape into ToonTown :)
I primarily play two characters, both Fighter types. One is a Human, and he again uses a sword and shield. The other is a dwarf, and he uses two-handed weapons, so he does more damage than the first, but with less defenses. I also only play my dwarf with my friends, so there's a group of us that are all about the same level. That way we can watch each other's backs. My Human, I do a lot of 'solo' play, and generally explore and do every quest I can (it's the completionist in me). I do all the exploration accomplishments I can, all the festivals I can...all on my Human. My dwarf, I don't do as much.
The game has a lot of festivals. If there's a holiday of some kind, there's a festival in the game. As I write this, the Darkmoon Faire is going on - it happens about the first week of every month, and appears to coincide with the new moon (I think). There's easter, valentine's day, children's week, halloween, christmas, chinese new year...it's a long list.
The guild I'm in here, I joined through my friends. Unfortunately, I don't know anyone else in the guild. I know some of their names, but not their personalities - they don't talk much. Which I guess is fine, most of the time. Gets kind of lonely, sometimes, tho!
There are some things I don't care for about the game. There's too much real technology (guns, cannons, rocketships) for a fantasy game for me. There's too much focus on 'raiding' - that's where you get together 40 of your closest friends and try and take down a big, bad boss. LOTRO and DDO both have raids, but the focus of the game isn't on them, or on getting your character prepared to do them. WoW's main focus appears to be that. I tried a raid once. It took two hours to get everyone together, then nobody would listen to the leader, and ran off doing their own thing...it was not a pleasant experience. I don't think I'll be doing much of that.
Then there's the upcoming expansion. It's adding a monk class to the game, and it's adding....
Pandas.
Giant Pandas.
Giant Pandas from Pandaria.
Need I say more?
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