Pokemon > WoW

Yeah. You heard me. I consider Pokemon to be more fun than World of Warcraft.

Maybe I'm biased, because I grew up on the original Pokemon games, and I watched Nintendo add more and more versions (let's face it, they went too far, but that's a rant for another day).
But I am convinced that a Pokemon MMORPG, if it were designed right, would actually prove more popular and more fun than World of Warcraft.

For one thing, it would have a larger player base to pick from. Children today still are obsessed with Pokemon, and because of how old the franchise is, even older generations of people would love the game, which would only increase over time. Those of us who grew up with the old GameBoy, playing Pokemon Red and Blue in the back of the classroom....we hold fond memories of the game.

Could you imagine? You'd pick one of a handful of starting Pokemon...maybe it would be the classic three, but I think it would be wiser to expand the list of what Pokemon you start with. The same way you pick race/class in any other MMO. You'd pick to start in the starting town of one of the four Pokemon regions (from the various Pokemon games: Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh) and you start travelling around. There'd be Pokemon leagues with the gyms and the badges, players able to battle each other all they want. All 493 Pokemon could be in the game (obviously of various rarities), catchable in the various regions, and you'd have your Pokedex.
There could be a Pokemon Stadium, the way WoW has the arena. There'd be that....what is it they added, Pokemon appeal? I personally think it's a ridiculous thing to add, but maybe some people would be more into that than battling, in an MMO.
Pokemon already has a set up for players setting up little home bases and private homes, so players could get their little private homes to decorate and whatnot.
There'd be Bicycles for travelling, and you could use your Pokemon to Fly between cities and surf around, and use moves like Cut and Strength to explore and get places.
And the game already has some pretty deep battle strategy going on, what with how many types are in the game, all the different moves and weaknesses and strengths, and the items you can use in battle, status effects, and now Pokemon can carry a single item into battle, like berries or a small piece of equipment, and there's multi-pokemon battles rather than just 1v1, and Pokemon have built-in passive powers that activate "in a pinch"...it's a surprisingly deep game for how simple the concept is.

I'm just ranting at this point, but you get the idea, it has a lot of possibilities for being an amazing an MMO if Nintendo were to put forth the effort to make it happen. And if they do it right, keep it well-maintained, and update it frequently with new features, maybe new regions, releasing a new Pokemon for people to collect now and then (let's face it, they'll do that on their own...no way is Nintendo ever actually going to stop adding new versions), making balance changes..it could beat WoW. It would be more popular or at least compete with it. Not even Warhammer has been able to compete with WoW (even though everybody claimed it would before it was released).
The best part about the game, as far as PvP balance goes, is that you get to have six Pokemon on your team, and EVERY Pokemon has weaknesses and resistances. So there wouldn't be such a thing as an OP Pokemon. Every Pokemon has it's major, well-known weaknesses to exploit. Unlike in WoW where, if you're a class that gets destroyed by a certain other class, you're screwed. You can't just switch to another class and defeat them. To make things more crazy, it's not easy to predict what moves a Pokemon can actually use. For example, Jolteon typically learns the Pin Missle moves, which is actually a bug type move...and is super effective against Psychic types. So if you have a Psychic pokemon against Jolteon and didn't know that, you'd be in for a painful surprise!
And even then, Pokemon can still surpass those weaknesses with the right setup. So what if that fire pokemon is super effective against you...your sleep powder is keeping him in check, and the trainer has no Awakening!

I think it would be a fun MMO...and would be more popular than WoW. Hell, I'd play it.