Wrpg: Fresh meat, playable the year it comes out
Jrpg: Canned meat, takes at least a year before they are localized, IF they're localized.

JRPGs = Story/Character driven.

WRGPs = I have no idea. I just know they're boring for me.

JRPG -> Lots of mandatory grinding to do.
Usually very awesome music.

WRPG -> No grinding required. Usually forgettable music but occasionally you get really good ones from Jeremy Soule.

For those who dislike WRPGs, give Dragon Age a try. Might change your mind =P

I love both JRPGs and WRPGs equally. Just like how I'm on both Team Edward and Team Jacob.

Yeah, he made some really great soundtracks, Morrowind and Dungeon Siege 1 being best in my opinion. As for others - I don't think there's any game out there that benefited more from great soundtrack as much as Fallout 1/2 - Mark Morgan defined that gloomy apocalyptic world with his eerie and disturbing sooundtrack and made it integral part of Fallout expirience, and only those fools from Bethesda could do such thing as taking Inon Zur to compose that bland, generic soundtrack for Fallout 3 over him.

In JRPGs usually a lot of work is put into the characters, the world, the enemies, the Story, etc. JRPGs are often very memorable. I still know some story elements from games that I played in the 90's. The characters really develop during the games and the experiences they made. To make this change more believable you often start as very young character. The levelling system is like an analogy of growing up. You start as lvl 1 and even weak enemies can hurt you... at your final level you can even beat the strongest enemies. JRPGs has always been the one genre that took story and characters really serious.

Well, I can't say anything good about WRPGs. They simply lack in the story and character department and they simply failed at connecting me with the world and its characters. After some hours of playing there is nothing that make me want to come back to the games and see what will happen next.

I somehow find it amazing how RPG are seen today. On the one hand pretty every game is called a RPG sometimes (even Action/Adventures like Zelda)... on the other end people are pretty strict on limiting RPGs to D&D style.

Yeah, I agree, and I'm kinda getting tired of replying to each post that bashes WRPGs for lack of stories and characters. Folks who do that obviously only played (or heard for) Elder Scrolls, and never went near gems like Planescape: Torment, Fallout 1/2, Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines, Gothic, Baldur's Gate, KoTOR, Arcanum, Jade Empire, Witcher, Mask of Betrayer... to name a few with good stories/characters. And then, above all that, there's a whole world of open-world games like Might&Magic, Wizardry and of course Elder Scrolls - just way too diverse genre (haven't even mentioned dungeon crawlers) for just stating "WRPGs have bad stories/charatcers", but I guess most of those people haven't even played more than 1 or 2 WRPGs in their life.

The people who have zero respect for WRPG's and talk about lifeless stories have never played a Witcher or Bioware game. Biowares existence is dedicated to making amazing story driven RPG's that put the players in the drivers seat.

I was surprised about that too. I guess many only played JRPGs, as this site is centered on console-gaming and that were mostly japanese offerings in the past. Others seems to have enough oif them.

And yeah, who says WRPGs lack in story played not much WRPGs.

(Hint, hint: Play Baldur's Gate!)

WRPG = not linear.
JRPG - Corridor RPG lol

*Waits for quote storm!*