Heh. As someone who just gave up WoW and turned to City of Heroes instead, I was just thinking to myself, “Why has nobody suggested CoH yet?” 
So, uh, seconded!
Well hot damn! That’s my server! I’ll have to look one of y’all up in game, sounds like.
I’m primarially a solo player for WoW. I’m not sure what I’ll do when my main character hits 70 - maybe work on my professions, then grind for gold to help my alt characters. Or maybe I’ll learn to love raids.
I’ve played for 6 hours at a stretch, and for 1/2 an hour. I don’t find it “taking over” my life, and I have no problem packing it up for a day or week if I need to or if something else interesting is going on. I can play solo or in a group as the mood strikes me. Sometimes I just explore instead of fighting. I’ve learned to be a little more picky about what quests I take on, because you don’t have to do everything and in fact there are so many you can’t do everything.
I got talked into a PvP server as a beginner (because I didn’t know better) and agree it’s probably not a wonderful choice for starting out for most people. Particuarly from level 30-40 it can be hellish. On the other hand, some people really get into the PvP aspect.
I think one of WoW’s assets is that it is flexible - you can PvP or not, you can get onto a role-playing server or not, you can concentrate on solo play or group play… They have “world events”, some monthly “holidays” and some special events.
It’s not perfect - you can get slow response when a lot of people are on a server, there are occassional glitches, and so forth, but you can say the same thing about this message board, can’t you? I try not to take that sort of thing too seriously, I mean, it’s a game. There are juvenile idiots, but there is also an “ignore” feature as well.
My current main character is Astromaster, and my global handle is @Nordic. Friend me and say hi (though I probably won’t be on much until after Monday). I don’t think I have inviting privileges yet, but chances are there will be someone from the super group online who does.
Thirding the recommendation for City of Heroes (or Villains, if you want to be a bad boy/girl). I’ve been playing CoH since release 3 years ago, and WoW for just a couple of months. I have not experienced the higher-level WoW content (highest character is 31), so I can’t speak to that, but I find myself frustrated with the slow speed of the game. I’m used to CoH, where I can super-speed or fly (or teleport or superjump) from one end of the city to the other in a matter of minutes. The UI in general, while highly customizable, still feels like I am driving a truck instead of the sportscar that is CoH.