WoW is the most polished, dynamic and balanced MMO of it's style out there right now, that's coming from a guy who's played a lot of MMOs (I actually haven't played WoW going on a year now, but I did play it to death and my opinion of its virtues hasn't changed).
It's clearly not for everyone, mind you - it is a plot-driven RPG, not an open-ended virtual world in the style of pre-rape SWG, UO or Eve, but it beats the fuck out of the click a monster-watch your character fight, 5 skills per class if you're lucky - and they pretty much all feel the same or are locked into blatant one dimensional roles (ever rolled a class that turns out to be 100% support, must play toadie to the "important characters" pieces of bot trash? Yeah I fucking hate that) - shiny plastic doll, wannabe photorealistic, bug filled and not nearly ready to be released flavor of the month being pimped as the "WoW-killer" on any given month. Try to be objective here; maybe WoW is popular because, *gasp* it doesn't make you feel like you're working while you play it, or *double gasp* is actually intuitive enough to draw people in in the first few hours of gameplay but deep enough to keep them intrigued for extended periods of time.
Another one of my peeves, if you can't tell, is when people hate on something that's popular on account of it being popular just for the reason that it is popular, without really knowing dick about it. Anti-culture isn't counter-culture or subculture, it's just shitty-assed unjustified negativity :P