I don't like the 4E art style. To me, tieflings are red dranei.
4E deals with instand gratification. WoW deals with instant gratification, too. People who deny that need to second-guess their decision. That grinding is not what WoW players think about; they think of how great their character is. That's because at earlier levels there is no grinding, and Blizzard was smart enough to realize that nobody likes dead levels. This combines together to mean that you can go threough the first 10 levels in a day easily before any grinding needs to start, with each level providing a game-changing ability for you to try out. By the time the grinding sets in, you are hooked. Players know that the next level holds a cool new ability for them, and are subconsciously willing to waste their time to get there.
It starts as instant gratification, but then the gratification is spread farther and farther apart.
4E always felt like a game based on hotkey powers without cooldown. Instead, the game is wracked by
dissociated mechancis and the previously mentioned basis upon combat. Instead of cooldown times, there are instead limited uses per day. Why can't mundane abilities be used more than three times per day? Once per day? I dunno; you figure it out.
There were occasional anomalies in 3.5, but this is the CORE MECHANIC of 4e!
Why can't you multiclass? WoW doesn't let you either, so don't complain
I use to have feel guilty about having w problem with these things, because Tome of Battle was the prototype for 4E, and I think that ToB is a fantastic fundament for a system! Well, I had to realize that the primary difference between the two is that 4E strives against dissociated mechanics and limits per enocunter with recharge mechanics rathert than just expecting you to go all day. In fact, ToB cuts down on the 15-minute Adventuring Day! From what I've seen, 4E just encourages novas all the more...
I also think 4e took a huge step in the wrong direction for base setting, but I don't know if this is due to WoW or not. Remember how people got up at arms about how everyone plays a Warforged all of the time? Well, I never got that sense, even gaming with Warforged PCs. Warforged are either from a setting, or the end of a random Monster Manual.
What gets me, though, is that the basic 4E PHB had something like 11 races, meaning that the average gaming group could only play one of those races, just like 3E. The fact that Tieflings and Dragonborn are there just fills my head with "What?" Having such exotic races in the PHB means that average adventurers can be assumed to have at least a 1/11 chance of being a demon or a Dragon-man. That gnomes were included in an expansion means that there will be more demonic adventurers and dragon-people in most 4E games than there will ever be sly midgets.
