World of Warcraft blows away its main competition

I'm going to first give some pros and cons of the game before awarding scores.

World of Warcraft really is amazing.
The PvP is spectacular. You won't find better anywhere else.

There are TONS of quests in this game, which are a major way of earning EXP, money, item and reputation rewards and exploring new areas. The quests are actually really cool, too. In addition to the traditional "kill X monsters", "bring me Y item", and "deliver item to Z", there's stuff like assassination, escorts, stealth missions, raids, etc. The quests are nicely diversified as well, requiring you to do things like planting seeds in a burnt-down, desolate forest, massacring a camp of centaur in order to gain a higher reputation with the opposing centaur camp across the map, closing portals summoned by a demon band, etc. Most of them are really fun to complete. Try to complete higher-level quests solo for an added challenge - who says WoW isn't rewarding?

People always rag on WoW for its levelling rate, saying you can reach the max level in one week and stuff - that's NOT true, so don't listen to them. I've been playing for over a month, and I play for 4-5 hours every day, and I'm level 34. It IS pretty fast-paced, but why is that a bad thing? Instead of wasting hours upon hours of your life for a tiny reward, while the fun is literally being stretched to as far as it can go, you're handed a giant can of fun and are told "When you're finished, come back for more."

The equipment is a lot easier to get than in most MMORPGs, and actually makes a noticeable difference. In addition, a lot of the good stuff comes from instances, which are special dungeons that only your party have access to, so no competing with other people for a monster spawn. You want something, you can go right out and take it.

The stats tell you exactly what they do, so you can focus on your class's primary attributes and know what you're boosting.

You also get new abilities in WoW every 2 levels.

Another thing WoW offers is the ability to solo. You can solo through the entire game if you want to, or you can just do a shout in general chat asking if anyone wants to party up, and invite them. Almost any party combination can work, unlike in certain other games that require you to sit in a town for hours until the job you need is available.

The downside to WoW, right now, is the server situation. I'm on Tichondrius, a high population PVP server, and the downtime is huge. I get disconnected on average 2-4 times a day, and during peak hours there's a waiting line to log on to the server, which usually takes between 15 and 45 minutes. It's a pain in the ass, but Blizzard says it's only temporary until they can figure out another solution. This is nothing new though, every MMORPG has bugs and disconnects and server instability for the first couple months of release.
Also, I've heard from people on lower population servers that they don't have lag or waiting lines at all, so if you go to one of those you don't even have to worry about it.

Scores
Graphics: 10/10
The graphics are really beautiful. The colors are amazing - the lush purples of Ashenvale, the dry oranges of the Barrens, the misty grays of Silverpine - They reflect the mood and atmosphere of the areas brilliantly. You can tone them down or up depending on your system's performance, but either way it's clear that the environments are indeed amazing. The character models are well done, and the equipment skins are nice in that they aren't repetitive or re-used over and over. A flaming sword really looks like a flaming sword.

Sound: 10/10
The voice acting is superb, and there's lots of it. The music is wonderfully done also, it really fits in with the environments.
Also there's a sound effect for almost everything, which is great.

Gameplay: 10/10
There's no question here, WoW's gameplay is above and beyond. You'll get abilities out the wazoo, and you'll use most, if not all of them. Each class has 3 different talent trees it can learn traits and abilities from, which makes the gameplay even more customizable. You can mix and match from the different trees and get a balanced make, or specialize in one to enhance certain abilities to the max. This adds a large amount of replay value, since for each class you can have many different builds to choose from.

In addition, the PvP is really what makes this game shine. You pick to be either an Alliance member (human, dwarf, night elf or gnome) or a Horde member (undead, orc, troll, or tauren) and you can duke it out with the opposing faction in any contested area, or in friendly or enemy territories if you or your opponent's PvP flag is enabled, respectively. There's just something about running through contested territory, seeing a party of night elves, stealthing up to them, picking which of your abilities you want to start owning them with, and taking them all down that just can't compare to any other MMORPG I've played.

Overall: 9/10
If it weren't for the current amount of downtime and server lag, I'd give it a 10/10 without thinking twice. It does get very frustrating at times, but in my opinion it's totally worth it. It's such a great game that I'm willing to deal with the downs as well as the ups.

Ignoring that, World of Warcraft is a spectacular game. From the very beginning to the very end, there's always something to do (none of which take an obscene amount of time or money, unlike certain other games) and all of it is fun. I can't think of a single negative aspect of the game itself - it really is all good.