You know, I think that's the one thing makes WoW actually do it for so many people:

Polish.

So few MMOs ever get polished, and as a result, things like what you describe happen. They would happen intermittently to me when I played City of Heroes/Villains, and it was so bad during the walking component of Auto Assault that the game was nearly unplayable.

So along comes WoW, and low and behold, most people can actually play it without having to deal with annoying bugs that get in the way oof what they're doing. Guild Wars was sort of similar, though also monumentally no fun to play. 

It's a shame, though, because DOAC apparently has a ton of content to offer if you're into the MMORPG bit. Great big 'ol monsters, castle sieges, apparently one of the best team voice-communication systems yet implemented, pretty good visuals... everything except assurances that you will actually be able to get to that content, I guess.

What MMORPGs have you had really good experiences with, Gene?

 that game is old as your mom dude.

Yah doomed, I have no idea about any of that. I am going to go out on a limb here and say that that is all stuff that one can do if they get more than ten minutes into the fucking game.

Well, that is just not going to happen. Think about this for a second, if half life (1) had been that buggy, would the owners of Valve be stinking rich or an embarrassment to their parents? Has Sid Meyer ever released a game so poorly implemented that it was impossible to perform basic functions like zoning commercial property?

Seriously, I am running into programming issues that are permissible for a game that has not even moved into the beta test status just yet. They are not permissible for a game that the devs think people should lay out cash for. They are far less permissible for a game that has been generating cash for several years.

@Kevin:

I have never tried city of heroes/villians. Thanks for the warning. I now know to stay far away from it.

As far as what MMOs I have played, I used to own the sticky on an overclocking computer forum for Star Wars Galaxies. So yah, I know how games are supposed to work.

Other MMO games that I have experience with:

Silkroad online: Free to play. The only problem that I have had with this was that it has a pay-to-play option and the paid players can crowd the servers to the point where free players simply cannot get in game.

WOW: I made it all the way through the free two weeks but it just failed to be fun enough to pay for.

Guildwars: About the same as WOW except that the price to stay in the game is enough to make me come back over and over. I only have one nit on the programming. Don't actually join a guild unless you are going to be the guy who spends all of his time in the game and can play better than everyone else.

If you treat this as a game to be played solo apart from the occasional time that you get hooked up with someone else, you are good to go but permanent hookup is a formula for repeated suicide.

Mind you, there are no small number of other players who are willing to run you through stuff so that you can get to the top of the game. Then you can play in the big league. I would assume that there must have been at least one person who had all the fun of working up to that point but once that happened, nobody else is allowed to work up a character. Fuck you very much programmers.

Minor players who join a guild will be presented with the same difficulty level as the highest level player in the guild. So your level 5 character will go into an instance solo and die many times over because of the fact that outside of that, you have grouped with a level 20 player.

Anarchy Online: I never really got into this one. I found a city after a couple of hours but I never found a group to run with. I forget the exact details but I know that I set an LFG flag and spent a couple of days runing around in game to get no response at all.

I can't blame that one on the programmers. I can say that this game has a community that values advanced players. Let's call this Guild Wars in a sci-fi setting.

Eve Online: This one fucking works. It is very complicated and nobody can run you up to a high level. You simply must play the game. It has content that is useful to noobs. It has content that works for all players. There is only one server that everyone logs into and that has a whole galaxy modeled.

The tutorial takes at least a hour to go through and you must deal with it or you will never be anything at all. I could probably go on for hours about this game but I will stop here.

My real point to this whole thread is that DaoC is crap that ought to have not been allowed out in the wild.

Ah well, I would not be able to tell you much about AO. I had it installed on my machine. I had it loaded into memory. I used my keyboard and mouse while the program was on the top of my OS.

I also never actually met another human being in the game.

What I can tell you about AO is that it is possible to get past the tuts without finding serious flaws in the programming. Can't say that about DAOC.

So if General Motors decided to make a new car and the wiring was so sloppy that you could not use the windshield wipers at the same time as the turn signal, this would be a problem. I suppose that you could work around it by only driving in straight lines when it rains but that does not seem to be much of a solution. If you want to make turns during a storm, buy a different car.

How to play Eve Online:

1) Set-up your ore mining macro or bot.

2) Go play Xbox360 for a few weeks while you get the cash to buy good stuff.  

I know, I hear that it gets really cool and epic once you actually get a half-decent ship, but the means of progression is just such a dealbreaker. I mean, laser mining asteroids? They couldn't think of a slightly more entertaining way for players to earn $$$? 

(...I suppose I should add that it's been... what? 3-4 years since I last tried playing Eve? So maybe they addressed that issue?)

Best response to someone who says, "...Ah, it's not that bad. Besides, there's 'X' workaround..." ever. Oh man, that's hilarious.