D&D 4e vs WoW

I guess I rarely post here, at least lately, about non-personal things, but I have had Dungeons & Dragons on my mind for the past week or two, and I feel like I should post something, somewhere, that expresses my thoughts.

Specifically, I've been thinking about the fairly new and still unfinished 4th Edition of the popular tabletop game. A LOT of veteran players seem to hate the new edition, and they have various reasons for this. I personally find most of their reasons to be trivial. I mostly find that they're simply resisting change, a common trait of all humans. (Oddly enough, D&D does NOT express this! Humanity, though easily adaptable to any situation, is actually a race that dislikes change, and often resists it. I wonder what D&D players, and WotC especially, would think about that fact.)
Now, I could try and go on to express why I think everybody is complaining for nothing, arguing against each specific reason, but I'm lazy. And I'm also absent-minded, and tend to ramble in my rants. I am likely to forget details here and there.
So for now, the sum of all complaints about 4e is the following: "Boohoo, I can't have godly power anymore!"
If you want godly power, go play WoW. Blizzard's philosophy is "you can never have too much power."
If you want a challenging roleplaying game, stick to D&D. WotC DOES believe in too much power.

The only complaint *I* have about 4e, is that I don't see any real benefit in wielding an off-hand weapon. The only time I can see this being beneficial is if you have a power that allows you to make attacks with both weapons, and I think that mostly limits this benefit to rogues and rangers. Maybe just rangers. Otherwise, it seems a bit useless, since you can only use a basic attack each round with one weapon or the other. What happens to races like the Thri-keen, which is a race of mantis-like humanoids sporting four arms? They can wield four one-handed weapons, two two-handed weapons, or two double weapons. Do they get extra attacks?
This isn't so much a "Oh no, now I can't get more powerful by wielding two weapons" as a "Why should I customize my character to be wielding two weapons?"
Fortunately, the Tempest Fighter build was offered in Martial Power, so now Fighters can choose to dual-wield, but I am still confused about this. There are some small benefits, from feats and a few class features, but they are small. Whatever happened to extra attacks? Why *can't* we attack with both?
I can get why they removed attacking multiple times in one round because of having a high attack bonus. That makes sense. But not attacking with both weapons while dual-wielding? What ARE you doing with your second weapon in those six seconds, while you're attacking?
Here's an example to emphasize my point: Take one of your kitchen knives. Maybe a butter knife for safety. Make extra careful not to cut yourself, anybody near you, or any objects nearby. I know a friend who happens to own a machete. Maybe you can just grab that and go outside for a few moments to exercise this. Slash this blade through the air. Just once. Now think about how long it took you to perform that simple maneuver. That was a basic melee attack of D&D. It took you, what, 2 seconds tops? Sounds about right. There's your standard action. Now you could take your move action, which is usually about 30 feet per round, for a human. Making a quick 30 foot movement in a single round would possibly take 2-3 seconds. Especially in a battle, since you're probably not just walking, but dashing quickly about. I think it's about twice the width of my bedroom, and that takes 1, maybe 1.5 seconds to cross. So that basic melee attack, plus moving 30 feet, took me 4 seconds or so. So there's your move action. I have 2 more seconds to my "round." I suppose that would largely be reserved for minor actions, but think on this: I have a second blade in my other hand. You think maybe I should attack with it?

I will admit that the concept of a six-second round is a bit of an abstraction. Real combat doesn't take place with six-second turns, obviously, but the D&D rules are attempting to put these battles into pencil and paper form. Six seconds is about the amount of time it takes for one "moment" of battle in D&D.
Those of you who have read about Drizzt Do'Urden: how many times in the books did he slash his opponent with both weapons? I suppose you could express some of those moves as Martial Powers, but it happened far too often to not have also counted as a double melee basic attack. Drizzt is obviously a Two-Blade Ranger, (among other things, but primarily this) in D&D 4E...but he only can attack with one scimitar every six seconds, besides his melee attack powers? Drizzt could hit you six times in six seconds as a standard move, simply because of how dexterous and fast he is. That wouldn't be an at-will power for Drizzt, that would be part of his melee basic attack! It stands to reason that somebody of average dexterity, like me, could at least get in two hits in six seconds. Artemis Entreri was on par with Drizzt, and though he was also amazingly dexterous, he was also human. So it's not beyond the realm of possibilities.
This isn't something that turns me off from 4e. This is just one aspect of the new edition that grates on me, and seems to make no logical sense, not from a roleplaying perspective OR a mechanics perspective.

That rant aside, I want to touch on my biggest pet peeve that has evolved ever since I first heard it expressed: the complaint that 4e D&D is a lot like World of Warcraft.
It is nothing like WoW! Not in the slightest!
Where did ANYBODY make that connection? Point me towards a SINGLE mechanic of WoW that has a perfect clone copy in D&D, I dare you.
Yes, 4e gets rid of Vancian spell-casting. I understand why so many D&D players are attached to that system, since it has been around from the beginning of the game. I can understand that some of you even preferred Vancian spell-casting to the new 4e system of powers. But that doesn't mean we adopted a WoW system of spells and abilities!
WoW uses mana and cooldowns numbering in the mere seconds.

4e D&D uses At-Will Attack Powers, Encounter Attack Powers, and Daily Attack Powers. For every class, including fighters and rogues, not just wizards and warlocks. This allows Fighters to do more each round than, "I swing my axe. I swing my axe again. I swing my axe again, but this time I move 5 feet to the left. I swing my axe again."
Now, Fighters can use powers of Martial prowess. They don't just swing their axe, they use a trained combat maneuver with their axe, designed to unbalance the enemy and push them a few feet away by knocking them off-balance. I just described the Fighter At-Will Power Tide of Iron. I didn't even know the power, I made up the description first then looked for one that matched it.

WoW does none of this. Nothing even like it. In fact, most abilities in WoW don't include knockback effects. WoW also deals with a list of something called threat, to decide who AI monsters attack. None of this "marking" stuff that D&D fighters get to use. (Honestly, I think this method is better than threat, but WoW needs threat to code their AI effectively).
All of your abilities in WoW are pretty much At-Will powers, and you can use far more than one ability in a six-second round. Some have longer cooldowns than the six seconds that is a D&D round, yes. Some of them might be able to have the label of an encounter power, but that's a rarity, like a Shaman's Elemental totems, (and those Elementals suck anyways, nobody uses them seriously). But D&D 4e is not a cleverly-disguised WoW, like all the conspiracy-theorists want you to believe. Powers in D&D are not fueled by Mana, Energy, Rage, or Runes. There is no fueling system present in D&D mechanics. It's just how often you can use that power. Once per round, once per encounter, or once per day. In fact, this is the precise reason Vancian spell-casting was originally used in D&D! Whoever originally started up D&D, Gygax and the other guy involved, didn't want to use the unoriginal concept of mana. Instead we got Vancian spell-casting. The new 4e system of using Powers is simply an alternate method of not relying on Mana for spell-casters, or Rage for Warrior types, or Energy for Rogue types. At the same time, the new system admits, "You know what? It's STUPID that wizards forget their spells!"

WoW also has nothing similar to even the simplified 4e skill system. WoW has skills, yes, but they're either professions or weapon skills. If you recall, Profession is a 3e skill, which does not seem to be present in 4e anymore. I haven't read enough about the new edition to figure out where it went, because I can assure you item creation is still existent. I just have to find it.
To clarify: Weapon skill in WoW affects how well and how hard you can hit with the weapons you're wielding. So that makes it quite similar to a combination of attack bonus, weapon proficiency, weapon focus, weapon specialization, and other such things.

In WoW, your armor, and your various other defenses, are also worked differently. Armor can be expressed in the thousands, reducing damage by a percentage, rather than being a "how hard it is to hit me" mechanic. Dodge works more like D&D AC than Armor does, and even then, that's a percentage chance to avoid melee attacks. Magic resistance is a separate stat that is a percentage chance to completely resist the effects of a spell. I think. I was never too sure on magic resistance in WoW, and I think it's actually mostly level-based. Surviving spells in WoW is more about interrupting spells, or simply absorbing them by having thousands of HP.
D&D actually simplifies AC so that it works for both spells AND melee attacks. There are also Fortitude, Reflex, and Will defenses, usually reserved for power effects rather than damage. All of these defenses represent a number that your die roll (plus any bonuses you get from a number of places) must beat, in order to land your attack (whatever the result of that attack would be). You don't reduce the damage of an attack by the number of your AC. Armor doesn't work that way in D&D. It only provides avoidance, as opposed to damage reduction.

D&D has to provide fancy rules for moving in combat, too. You get move actions, and standard actions, and minor actions, and it all works together in a manner that makes logical sense. In WoW, most of the time you don't ever think about that. If you're using a spell with a casting time, such as Lightning Bolt, then you can't move or the spell is interrupted, and you have to cast again. A lot of abilities are also instantaneous, or you have one ability that makes others into an instantaneous ability. Movement in WoW is more chaotic and more random, while D&D puts movement more into tactics and strategy. A lot of combat in WoW is more about timing when you hit your abilitiy's hotkey, than about any strategy or tactics. In fact, a lot of the time, I use my abiltiies in conjunction with rapid mouse movement, so that I use an ability in mid-air, facing backwards. You can't do that in D&D! Well, maybe you could with an appropriate Acrobatics check. But the point is, WoW doesn't have any skill check involved with this, and it's entirely related to the actual player's ability to dexterously manipulate a computer mouse.

I can't think, right now, what else I could possibly cover to try and argue that D&D 4e is nothing like WoW. I'm spent. My rant is over.

If you play D&D, or at least dabble into it, feel free to comment. Feel free to argue or agree. Either way, my opinion is expressed: Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition is absolutely nothing like World of Warcraft.

Seeing people honestly believing that it IS like WoW...really ticks me off.

I shall finish by saying the following: if anybody around in San Antonio, those few of you who happen to read my blog posts, would like to play D&D, either 3.5 OR the new 4e, I am totally game. I already have something set up for Sundays, but I am open to ideas.

I can say that I find myself attracted to 4th Edition, and the more I read about it, the more I want to play a 4e campaign as a Genasi Swordmage. It's rules seem so much more balanced, even if all the customization options are yet to be released. Who knows, maybe I will even dabble into DMing.