So there I was at Starbucks, waiting for my ice tea when the barista asks me if I was going to start playing WoW again in light of the new expansion coming out. I had only heard of the expansion from some SEO research I was doing on google trends, so I said well...maybe. He was telling me about it. It sounds really cool. So I looked at the trailer...and I'm definitely considering it.

I stopped playing WoW shortly after Burning Crusade was released. No one wanted to to the interesting mid level instances that I liked like scholo and strat. I liked them so much because they were dark, sinister, and had a very complex and gruesome story line associated with it. The Burning Crusade on the other hand was the exact opposite of this. It stunted game play, and made all the previous material easy (which is ridiculous), and was over all infuriating to me. And when Lich King came out, I didn't even bother buying it. Why should I?

So why do I like how Cataclysm looks? Because it rips up the world to shreds! AWESOME. That is exactly the type of evil thing that I like in a game. Honestly, I think that the developers are done with WoW and are ready to tear it up. Kinda like the Buddhists who sweep up the sand after they make those awesome mosaics. The only problem with that is that its kinda like...Guild Wars. One of the Guild Wars expansions starts a similar way, where the world is torn up after the tutorial (maybe a little later). So in that respect its not very new and ground breaking. But when has anything about WoW been new and ground breaking? The engine is really ridiculously old compared to all the new games. As for Worgen and Goblin races go...its about damn time. Seriously is. Same with heroic DM and SFK. If for no other reason, I want to play heroic Deadmines. It sounds awesome. I'm a little surprised that this is the first time they introduced archeology, it seems like it would have been a good thing to put in at the beginning...

So that's my two cents. I think I'll buy it...probably before the release so that I can actually get my head around the game before it is ripped apart by cataclysms. NEAT.

I loved original WoW. I hated Burning Crusade. I love Wrath of the Lich King. I think you'd really like Wrath, based solely on what you described liking about original WoW.

Cataclysm is awesome. I think that it just seems appropriate to show players that this really is a "world" that can suffer from catastrophic cataclysmic changes. I don't know anyone who goes back to the old-world continents aside from major cities, and this is the perfect way for the developers to revisit old content. Superb.

As a side note, wont you have to buy Wrath anyway beforehand? I think you need all prior expansions.

Yea I probably will need to buy it all. I hope I can find the WoW and Burning Crusade discs at my house so I only need to buy the Lich King. Is it fair to say maybe Burning Crusade should have been released as part of Lich King instead of being released on it's own?

Eh not really. Outland and Northrend feel completely different to me. My issue with BC was mainly the lack of a common, final enemy. Illidan is a major character and was touted as the final boss (which is appropriate seeing as how he rules Outland). But once people raid the Black Temple and he runs off, Blizzard decided to add a new ultimate boss to BC in the Sunwell.

With Wrath, on the other hand, you go into it knowing Arthas is the final baddie that you're going to have to face. Just about every level from 71 to 80 has you encounter him in some way, and they really drill it into your head that he is the one you will ultimately fight. I guess it just seemed more organized and linear.

Cataclysm is supposed to be the same way. We explore a torn world and search for Deathwing, who is doing all the tearing. I'm excited to see Ragnaros back (as well as Onyxia, but that will be much much sooner) as well as the prospect of exploring an underwater area. And the Path of the Titans seems very promising.

Imo WoW has been going downhill ever since TBC was released. Outland was just awful. You were almost forced to follow the zones in the same order every time you level'd up a new character there, which quickly became boring as hell. I didn't get to try much of the endgame content as I spend most of the time PvPing (battlegrounds, not the shitty arena stuff), but I tried Karazhan a couple of times and it was very, very boring compared to the good ole level 60 raids. It was also during this expansion that everyone were running around covered with epics (you could call it the new Rare).
Then WotLK came and I was filled with new hope. The new continent that lied ahead of me looked much nicer compared to the barren Outland. Hell, you even had at least two different zones to choose from during most of the way to level 80. I admit that I rather enjoyed questing in Northrend; with my first character. When I tried leveling my second I just couldn't do it. It was too repetetive. Well, I got one to level 80 and this time I didn't bother with PvP, mostly due to the introduction of a certain overpowered class that shall remain unnamed. I happened to be in a fairly small guild. We did 10-man raids on our own and had an alliance with another guild which we did 25-man raids with. Clever thing to do, making you do the same damned instance twice a week. And it was so ridiculously easy; in theory. Problem was that the average player was so goddamned stupid he couldn't do the simplest task, yet they had like three epics for every item slot. I quit after a month in level 80.
Recently I was considering reactivating my account just to enjoy good old Azeroth and quit playing once I had one or two chars at level 60. But then I was told about a couple of recent changes. I was still playing when we got mounts at level 30 and leveling went so damned fast up to level 60 that I didn't get to do half of what I'd planned. Now however, you get mount at level 20 for like 5g or something, and the epic (note EPIC! It's supposed to be something really special) at level 40. No, I'd rather spend my money on reactivating my third EVE account.
And now there's the Cataclysm. A Cataclysm that will ruin some of the areas in the game that I enjoyed the most. And how come Blizz can't come up with any decent races for Alliance? I can't say I've ever, EVER seen anything that looks anything like the current Draenei's in WC3 (blame China for the lack of Pandaran D: ), and now there's... Worgen... wtf. Goblins are awesome though
No, I will not come back even after the next expansion. Currently the only thing that can bring me back is if Blizz adds a couple of Classic (pre-TBC) servers.

Okay, it's in the middle of the night. I should've been to bed two hours ago and will probably think this is a lot of bullshit tomorrow =P

Oh, and it's the original Guild Wars you're thinking of.

I gave up at 50, know why? Blizzard releases one expansion pack per game, anymore is blasphemy, and thus should be ignored (I stoped when I heard of WotK).

Hmm I actually have 2 80 characters (Horde-side) and I'm working on a 72 character(Alliance-side) now. I felt the same way in Outland, but for some reason Northrend hasn't bothered me when working on other characters. I think it's usually because I get to 80 before even touching Storm Peaks or Icecrown, so each time seems different.

50? You didn't even make it to the first expansion...

I had the exact opposite reaction. If I knew that there wouldn't be expansions, I'd see no reason to invest so much time in my characters. Supposing they came out with Burning Crusade and then created WoW2 (with no ability to port characters from WoW1), I'd think both games would be a huge waste of time. This is why I stopped playing Guild Wars so long ago and have completely lost hope on Warhammer.

In all fairness, I only ever got to lvl 63...and said well forget this and left. So in technicality, I never played TBC either. Just the very beginning BS parts.

Right. I guess I should have said "50? You didn't even make it to the best part of original WoW..."

Is it true that Arthas isn't even a boss fight yet in WotLK?

He will be in the next major patch. Blizzard wants to try not to make the mistake they did in Burning Crusade. Over a year before WotLK was going to be released, they let players fight Illidan. After that fight, there was nothing left to do (until the patch a long while later that gave us the aforementioned "new ultimate boss" to kill).

In Wrath, they've slowly been building it up so presumably we get to fight Arthas only months before Cataclysm. I actually don't mind it so much. Rather than just pouring out all the raids in the beginning, we have to wait and work for it. Hell, there are still guilds who haven't beaten the second to last raid instance that was released (Ulduar).

Everyone should come back, it's like basically WoW2 now, but you get to keep your characters. Maybe I'll even come back!

If your account is not currently active do they deactivate your armory listings? That makes me sad.

if you like MMORPGs then stop wasting your time with World of Warcraft, check out this youtube video of a new MMORPG comming out soon called Aion. You want sinister badass and scary content... This is where you'll find it. IMO WoW is too cartoony, not enough realism and very hardly any skill needed to play. Nothing in World of Warcraft is mysterious or hidden because the minute new content is released, they boast about it to the players rather then letting them find out on their own. Aion features a new style of play called PvPvE. Say and epic battle is going down.. 10 vs 10 players, some dragon might show up or some other huge beast and basically fuck up both sides. Anyways check out this link here and watch some of the other videos posted. Don't waste your money in going back to WoW. Aion is going to take WoW for a ride!

I have been playing world of warcraft on and off since it's BETA so my opinion does great justice to Aion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5r7mYtkI5c&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Efacebook%2Ecom%2Fhome%2Ephp&feature=player_embedded

Aion looks very interesting. But I'm not quite sold. I'll wait until it is completely released.

I've seen Aion, and I'll most likely play around with it for a month and see what happens. I actually like how "cartoony" WoW is, which is why WAR was such a huge waste of my time. Maybe I've just gotten so used to how open and airy WoW is, but every other MMO I've played just seemed so dark and dull.

I do see Aion as an exception, and like I said I'll give it a shot when it comes out.

Also....
Yes and no. All characters that haven't been played for at least a month stop showing up, despite the condition of your account. I have characters I haven't touched in years that wont show up.

DAMN. I wanted to ego trip off my twink. (despite her being useless now that twinking is frowned upon)

Some of the features for new expansion is a nice change of feel for World of Warcraft. But why hell is blizzard getting rid of stats, oh wait for the stupid people who can't work out wtf doing.

Another good thing about expansion is only need to level up 5 levels, but knowing blizzard be like 3 mil + per level.

Goblins.. oh god. One of my guild members during raid started saying goblins after she finished talking or in middle of us talking yells GOBLINS! so we had her muted.

One thing that good is tanks don't need be Defense capped no more since blizzard is giving them anti-crit PvE so I wonder if paladins gonna be op n tank 2her swords lol.

I myself have leveled up Eight level 80's Thank god all of them were done with Outlands hate it so much. Northrend on other hand like Devlin doesn't bother me at all.

I'm a pretty ok raider with my guild. We're done 10/25 Naxx ~ Ulduar ~ up to ToC Twins (Downed). I'm a boom-chicken now gave up tanking.

In Icecrown is where Arthas is in a 4 level building, 12 bosses. One boss fight air battle racing style lol.

@ Kenshin21 ~ I heard Aion was too much of a grindfest from one of my friends since wasn't many quests at all. I'm not really into grinding. Also heard the voices of the characters being hit or hitting something sounds stupid.

Actually the game is still in beta, if your friend knew anything about the game the newest patch before the public release of the game is adding in 1500 quests along with more content. Grinding also has it's benefits. I find that the less motivated people and less interested die off during the grind for max level, leaving the end game content for the skilled and ready. And as for the voices, the clips are all from the game being played by the Asian community because it has been out there for around a year now and is dubbed in a foreign language.

I play a Prot/Holy Paladin as my main, so I'm loving the lack of defense. On the other hand, I hate the lack of spell power now. What the shit.