Continuing the OT:
WoW - Can be interesting, excellent built-in content/story, mindless, tedium. You play it because it is a diversion in which you can socialize. Very, very low barriers to entry. Anyone can play it, which is good and bad. Can easily be played casually. Content essentially company driven with the odd PvP or RP content. Can be a lot of fun if you immerse yourself in the right way.
EVE - Best screen saver ever built. Beautiful backdrop, excellent back story. Story implementation in-game... bare bones. Brutal barriers to entry, needs a significant time investment for skills/comprehension. Content is much more player driven, some content (PvP storyline type stuff) is entirely player driven. Very hard to play casually. Can sometimes feel very worky, but at the same time the 90% boredom 10% action adage from real life is there and makes the 10% amazing.
I like both, and I play neither at the moment. Might go back to EVE (round 3) after a long stay in WoW (round 2). I still listen to EVE radio though.
In both cases finding cool people to hang out with is a key problem. That's what keeps you going through the tedious bits. Game or player bashing one way or the other gets you nowhere, there are dickwads on the intarwebs (if you hadn't noticed). And they are everywhere. Yes they congregate where there are low barriers to entry, but there are cool people there too. Also, in the context of WoW... with several million+ players, there will be more human garbage accumulated by the simple virtue of there being so damn many people there... For any statement of ratios of cool vs. uncool please provide hard data.