II. Character Creation
1. Race/Origins - The races in WoW are far more critical than the origins in CoH. Races in WoW determine racial bonuses, start location, and appearance. CoH's origins don't effect more than roleplaying, a few costume selections, and the various slang-names that street punks yell at you. Depending on what you like, either can be good for you.
2. Classes/Archetypes - In WoW, a class determines the skills you can learn, but once if you've chosen your class, the entire range of skills is available to you. CoH is the opposite: you can choose from a whole set of abilities at the beginning, and master just those. There are, however, A LOT of abilities to choose from, and I actually like this method. It completely thrashes the entire cookie-cutter routine that all MMORPGs, WoW inclusive, have employed. Very rarely will I find another Technological Tanker with Powers: Super Strength and Invulnerability. I may come across a hundred or so, with Ice Armor and Cold Resistance, or Stone Protection and Fire Immunity, etc etc. Which game bests the other depends on your style of play.
3. Customizability - CoH takes the cake, hands down, without a doubt. No matter where I go, I have never (and more likely will never) see another character like mine own. The costume you create is with you to stay for the rest of the game, and it feels damn good to look cool without scourging for items, but I'll get into items later. There are over 15 customizable sections for each costume, not including decals or design patterns, each with several (read: SEVERAL) options to choose from as well as a full color pallette. You can also choose your body type as well as height. In WoW, you choose from a limited number of faces, hair styles, facial hair style and color, and skin color all from a 6-10 color pallette. No matter what Blizzard does, you will never feel as cool looking at your dwarven platemail (which all bears more or less the same model) as you will looking at your Power Armor. Nor will your robes ever feel as cool as your suped-up ninja costume. No matter what you do in WoW there will most likely be a person out there who more or less could be mistaken for you.

III. Gameplay
1. Quests - Quests in CoH are just plain pathetic. There's really no excuse. I've gotten no quests so far other than "Destroy amount X of enemy type Y", or "defeat miniboss Z and his guards" which translates to: "clear this warehouse!" "Clear these sewers!" "Clear this office building!". They REALLY need to work on this. Quests in WoW, on the other hand, are un-fucking-believable. I have never enjoyed questing so much as I have in WoW. The game is almost entirely quest-driven. As opposed to CoH, in which sometimes you end up running around the streets looking for random baddies (which, actually, can have its goodpoints too... I'll get to that later).
2. Experience - I hate to say it, but CoH is more or less a level grind. EXP bar is right there under Hit Points and Endurance (Think: mana). I can honestly say that I can barely remember checking my exp bar in WoW. This is not so in CoH. This may be due partially to the fact that there are no items in CoH which makes it so that the joy of playing is getting new powers and enhancement slots, both of which are done by leveling up. So again, it depends on your style of play.
3. Items - As I just said, there are no items in CoH. The only "items" you get are temporary bonuses called 'inspirations' that you can use to give a very short bonus to an attribute, such as damage or accuracy; or maybe quick heal or endurance boost. On the other hand, items in WoW can, and more than likely will, make or break your character. The struggle for items is one that will last up to and beyond endgame. Seeing as neither beta has made endgame accessible, we'll have to wait and see how this goes.
4. Exploring - This is probably the hardest area to call. Exploring in WoW is very fun, and its exciting to see new cities or find new towns, and even more fun to find secret encampments with secret NPCs and secret quests, with an entire world to explore. But searching the streets of a city for petty thieves, purse snatches, petty gangs, all the way up to a secret order of mages and neo nazis can REALLY make your day, and it's quite fun leaping (or flying, if you chose that skill branch at level 6) from building to building dramatically taking on random baddies. I'll say this: random encounters can be quite thrilling. Again, there's really no way to determine which is better or more fun for you other than playing =(.
4. Travel - Let me just put it like this: WoW:Gryphons/Hypogryphs::CoH:Trains, taking a character from station to station. Also, WoW:Mounts::CoH:Supplementary-Transportation-Superpowers, which include but are not limited to: Flying, Super-Leaping, Super-Speed, Teleportation, etc. In the expansion pack for CoH, there will also be player vehicles once the city is vastly expanded (or so we heard).
5. Tradeskills - They don't exist in CoH, and I personally wish that Blizzard could do something to make them a tad more worth it in WoW. It's not a playerrun economy as I hoped it would be. People won't purchase your smithied items until you've spent 10x more money getting the skill than you'll get selling the products. This leads me to conclude that tradeskills will probably be best done at endgame or just as a auxilary skill until you have the time and the means to develop them.

IV. Misc
1. Attention to detail - Both games have a shocking degree of attention to detail. From the bread and meat peddlers on the streets of the Human city of Stormwind to the demonic rituals performed by the Circle of Thorns on the city's rooftops while they're not being disturbed by a do-gooder. Also from the fanning of the blacksmith's forge to the vehicular and pedestrian traffic in the streets of Paragon City. Both get excellent marks.
2. Gameplay Physics - Seeing how both games are heavily magic/superhuman inclusive, I'm going to omit most of what I would say. I must say that I enjoy what Blizzard has done with jumping in WoW. It is not necessary by any means, and you could play the entire game without ever pressing spacebar (other than chatting, of course). Jumping CAN be helpful, however, if you know how to use it. My Dwarven Paladin can cleansweap all across the Elwynn mountain ranges collecting copper ore without coming in contact with any creeps/mobs, just by find the right niche in the mountains to jump. In CoH, jumping is a neccessity. It can be a major pain walking around walls and fences. Don't get me wrong, jumping around can be insanely fun, especially if you have Super-Leap. I really can't describe Super-Leap better to you than one of my colleagues, it's simply "falling upward".

And there you have it, my honest opinion. I apologize to anyone who came into this article expecting me to be able to tell you which game is better. For my part, I'm thoroughly enjoying both. Anyone wanting to link this editorial, please direct link to this page. Thank you.