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OK, it's time to come clean about this. Yes, it's true—everything you've been reading on the Internet about how 4th Edition D&D is just like World of Warcraft is 100% true. Let me show you, with reference to the actual books, how 4e = WoW.
1. Grinding
In the old days, wilderness travel in D&D usually meant rolling for a random encounter some number of times per day. Now, we've embraced the MMO model and turned wilderness areas—those vast expanses of the D&D world that are neither cities nor dungeons—into areas for grinding, that is, for quickly killing monsters in order to earn XP and treasure. Every wilderness area in D&D is now densely populated with monsters. On your own, apart from your DM and even the rest of the characters in your party, you can now venture into these wilderness areas and fight one monster at a time, quickly amassing XP and getting some phat lewt. (DMG 158 on wilderness adventures, DMG 195 on playing without a DM)
2. New PvP mode
Because every character class is designed to function equally well as part of a group or in solo play (see #1), the game also works great for player-versus-player (PvP) play. If everyone in your group can play but the DM can't make it, you can play in an arena that pits the player characters against each other in friendly competition. A significant component of our organized play events going forward will be team-based PvP events, including both battlegrounds and world-based PvP set in our established campaign worlds. (DMG 195 on playing without a DM, PH 15–16 and DMG 10 on character roles and party-building)
3. Monster aggro
Every monster in the Monster Manual now has a specified aggro radius. When a character comes within that radius, the monster attacks according to an AI built into its stat block. Beyond that radius, monsters are unaware of PCs, and even of fights going on within line of sight. (MM 6 on reading monster stat blocks, DMG 36 on monster readiness and surprise)
4. Gear is everything
Magic items have never been so important to player characters in D&D, particularly once they hit the level cap at level 30. As a result, just about every monster drops items of some sort, determined on a random table after the monster is killed. Often these are junk items that characters can sell to vendors in town, but high rolls on the table can generate magic items—usually below the character's level, but occasionally truly epic gear. Characters can get decent gear by grinding, but the best loot appears only in adventures published by Wizards of the Coast that you play with a DM. To help players deal with all the unwanted magic items they find we've also created an online Auction House where characters can buy the items they want. (DMG 125 on awarding treasure)
5. Fast leveling
Everyone knows that the leveling-up process is just training wheels for the real play experience, or "end-game." Characters should expect to hit 2nd level after their first encounter, and skilled groups combined with sufficient grinding should be able to hit 30th level in about 150 hours of play. If you only play 4 hours a week (n00b), it'll take you the better part of a year, but skilled players can do it in a couple of weeks. Then the fun really starts. At 30th level, you'll be able to play the majority of WotC's published dungeons, which you can play repeatedly until you get the drops of gear you need to optimize your character. (DMG 121 on rate of advancement, DMG 146 on epic play and 147 on end-game)
6. Massively multiplayer
The new assumed setting for D&D is a world that's populated with hundreds of thousands of heroes. Now, when your characters visit the great cities of the world, they'll see more adventurers running around than common folk, and most of the commoners are there only to give quests to the adventurers. Of course, the primary reason to visit these cities is to buy and sell in the auction house and to learn the new powers and feats you get for leveling up. Our dungeons are sprawling sites crawling with adventurers, who organize massive raids into their depths. (DMG 150 on the D&D world and commonplace adventurers, DMG 138 on "super adventure" dungeons)
7. Professions
Crafts and professions have been lifted out of the skill system and put in the limelight where they belong, as a way for characters to earn the money they need to buy the best items at the auction house. While they're grinding through monsters for XP, characters can also improve their profession ranks and find the materials they need to make items using those professions. (DMG 11 on the importance of character professions)
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OK, taking my tongue out of my cheek now, I have to close with the way I like to think about the relationship between D&D and games like World of Warcraft. When I play WoW, it's like looking in a mirror. Fantasy MMOs were clearly created and crafted by people who love D&D and tried to replicate some of the experience of playing D&D in a very different environment. Sometimes, the ways they mimic D&D are instructive to me: There are benefits to defining and naming character roles. Quests are a great way to think about story rewards, the mechanical framework for adventure story. There's nothing foreign to D&D in those things (everyone knows that an adventuring party needs a fighter, cleric, thief, and magic-user!), they're just examples of things that MMOs have borrowed from D&D and expressed in good ways. No harm in us borrowing them back.
Fortunately, D&D is still the tabletop roleplaying game we all know and love. As much as I have sometimes enjoyed storyless, combat-focused, DM-less lunchtime games, they'll never replace the real D&D experience, which is far richer than any online, computer-run game will ever be.
James Wyatt
D&D Design Manager
Wizards of the Coast
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