I'm seriously considering getting back into WoW... help?

[BlightRaptor]

And I agree with the Raptor.  As beautifully Chinese their setting is, I find that their 'lazy' and 'drunken' style of 'society' kills much of any urgency and any sense of the epic.  And for God's sake, we're BLOODY 90!  We're demigods, can we please do something worthy of that???

Haha. Yeah another issue I had even back in TBC was that once I got to Outland they expected me to peasant/peon work and in WOTLk they expected me to perform genocide on the wild life... again. I've only ever been interested in end-game and BGs and the leveling process has started to feel like an unnecessary hazing process rather than a story. I feel like WoW in it's current state is in this state of limbo between it's old design philosophies and the ones that will eventually take over when it finally stops being updated. Sadly some of the newer ones like phasing are not that well polished and frequently bump me into moments of inconvenience when playing with friends.

I think we kinda went off track because I feel like I'm bashing it at this point, but I guess I had to speak on the behalf of those who tried to like MoP. I think it's worth checking out if you have some money to throw around. It is essentially more of the same with an Asian theme and another mallet smash against the talent trees. Again I enjoyed the talent changes from an end-game perspective, but it made leveling a new character feel less rewarding.

If money is an issue... look into the Free to Play market. There's great stuff out there that all offer something a little different.

[Moraline]

..
I think we kinda went off track because I feel like I'm bashing it at this point, but I guess I had to speak on the behalf of those who tried to like MoP. I think it's worth checking out if you have some money to throw around...

Yeah, I agree with that. Of course I try out every game and if I've liked that game in the past (like WoW) then I tend to come back and try out expansions and stuff.

Certainly a lot of people do enjoy the MoP expansion so there's a good chance the OP will like it as well.

[JillianCorvus]

I always love WoW discussions xD. I have mixed feelings on it myself, but it's still the only online game aside from Minecraft to actually hold my attention for more than a few months. As far as free games go, Mabinogi came closest to entertaining me, and I'll probably still pick it up occasionally. There were a few others I've seen people mention that I've tried. Tera was sort of interesting, but it seemed like the character generator was really rushed and a bit slapped-together (and it could have been SO GORGEOUS, but apparently majoring in video game design just ruins everything for me because I noticed a lot of the little corner-cutting games try to get away with. Not that WoW isn't guilty of this as well lol). I also remember Aion being farily interesting, but it didn't manage to hold my attention either.

Thanks for all of the input though! I'm sure I'll be coming back to this thread to try out some more of the suggestions in here (especially because derp I keep forgetting Star Trek is free. I have to at least give it a shot).

[Atarn]

I got a Scroll of Resurrection from a friend last week and bounced back...And I'd say: Don't go back? Admittedly, I have not tried out Pandaria and can only rely on friends telling me how it is(not good) but WoW these days feel like playing a horribly dated NES game. The interface is clunky, their new talent-system is probably the most awful I've ever seen in an MMO and the graphics feels...Horrible.

[TheGlyphstone]

Can't argue with the interface and talents, but if your friends are telling you Pandaria's graphics are horrible, they're dead wrong. It's still not, say, Crysis or Far Cry 2 level, but Pandaria has some of the best art we've seen yet in WoW.

[Chris Brady]

Glyph is right, Pandaria is gorgeous, it sounds like they can't get past the Pandas (I know I'm having a hell of a hard time not wishing they weren't there), but the aesthetic and scenery is gorgeous.

But at the end of the day, it's still WoW, and it was dated the moment it came out.

[Arohk]

I've been teetering on writing something for a while since I was a major hater from the time of it's announcement.

I played until around last month. I quit because frankly, it was boring. I hated the Pandarens and barely got past them. In fact, I probably didn't entirely. But I still played the game with my Guild and enjoyed my time there. Everyone is correct in saying that Pandaria was beautiful; but there was too much emphasis on alcohol. Not that I care about the morals behind it, I just felt they shoved too much of it down my throat. For example, there is a dungeon based on it, one of the towns has almost nothing but a Cooking Trainer and the rest are all alcohol vendors. I am probably the only person who got sick of that, but it was there. And there was too much of it. I like when games include it, but I hate when things are hammered in so hard it bleeds me, you know?

I have played WoW for 8 years now and it was a bit of a sad thing to quit, but it got so tedious and boring that I couldn't take it any more. I played all aspects of this expansion. I did my Dailies every single day until I hit Exalted with everything. My Guild quickly and efficiently ran through all content that was currently available and I got mostly all the gear I could get. I was of the top 3 most geared Druids on my server. But at the end of the day, like everyone is saying... It is still WoW; and this particular expansion got boring far more quickly than the others. It didn't have the momentum to keep me interested. I thought there were some fun additions like the Black Market, and some of the boss fights harkened back to the old days and made me really happy.

However, this all got very old very quickly. Unless the Emerald Dream expansion comes out, I won't be returning. I very much hate a lot of what it's become, even though some aspects have been far and away improved since the old days and even last expansion. I do like Pandaria a lot more than I liked Cataclysm, but it doesn't have the drive to play. Maybe it's just me and things have become old, but I have heard many players say the same.

That's all my two cents, anyways. If you want to buy on visuals and base gameplay, then I would recommend it. However, if you get bored of tedious things; including a tedious endgame, then I would vote against Pandaria.