probably not if you have dial-up....
im not a massive fan of WoW simply because there is no visable end to it and a goal to work towards, but the openness of that does appeal to a lot of other people...

RPG games i would get instead of WoW
Baulders Gate 1 &2
Diablo 2
Mass Effect 1&2
Knights of the old republic 1&2
Neverwinter nights 1&2

Thank you. I'll look them up on my really fast dial-up.

Basically play games/franchises started by BioWare, with some other studios mixed in.

I used to play WoW For the horde!, but I stopped playing for a long time. I'm thinking about starting to play again though. If you want a really good game that's really open, but still has a clear plot, I'd recommend either The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind or The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, the former being smaller older, but with more user created content and a more in-depth game, and the latter being larger and the most recent, with more choices for how you want to play and higher quality user created content.

If you've played Fallout 3, they're made by the same company

WoW actually does have a clear plot, you just have to read the mountains of quest text to get to it. In fact I started reading the quest text and it made the game in general just more fun, having a reason to do everything other than because its the next quest really worked for me. I actually quit playing right before Ulduar was released. Up to that point I was a raider and had done pretty much everything that could be done (including Sarth 3D and 6 minute Maly). Raiding just became more of a chore that I had to do each week rather than fun so I let the account run out and haven't had a single thought about returning.

I very much agree with this post

Oh gawd no! he's been infected by the spirits of zamorak!