This weekend our little guild of friends took our first steps into Karazhan. We did fairly well, considering that for many of us it was our first time seeing the encounters, and that for the most part we were equipped in blues, with some PvP and reputation epics mixed in. At the end of the night we managed to clear up to and including the Opera event (Romeo and Juliet). It’s an interesting instance, and shows a lot of growth on Blizzards part when compared to early raiding instances like Molten Core, although summoning Rag is still one of the coolest events in WoW imo. It also lacks that epic feeling raiding had back in the day; somehow getting stomped by two Molten Giants and seeing 40 corpses leaves an impression on you, but that’s all history now.
Yet while Kara was a good time, and running some heroics is certainly still fun, I think WoW will have a much shorter end-game life span for me this time around compared to last. I already have no interest in running the daily quests, which are an evil one step worst than grinding, and most of the reputation rewards are already below the welfare epics you can easily get. Once I’ve seen a 5 man instance, I find I have little draw to return to it unless helping a guild mate. Crafting is unchanged in TBC, still 99% worthless and far too great a grind. And lastly, I don’t believe our guild will ever ramp up enough to consider 25 man content, so that leaves the more serious raid instances out.
So the real issue comes down to this, when I log on and either not enough people are online to run something, or people are simply busy, instead of grinding until something comes up, I instead log off, which of course lowers the chances of actually getting into a group to do something. Somewhat of a vicious cycle really, but WoW no long has that ‘must play’ feeling to it that it did for me back pre-TBC. Back then if I was not raiding, I was happily grinding one pointless faction or another, or simply making the thorium circle in Burning Steppes. Just being online and talking to being was enough back then, and that simply is not the case now.
Granted I could be wrong, perhaps something in WoW will draw me in again as it did before. I certainly enjoy the group I play with, and even repeating content is a good time with them, but at the same time I’m guessing any MMO would be a good time if you are playing with friends. As for the Lich King expansion, knowing Blizzard it’s far too early to start even thinking about that, plus unless another delay happens, Warhammer Online will be out by then. Near future we have the open beta for Age of Conan, something I’m planning on at least trying out; so maybe the early burnout on WoW won’t be quite as bad.
Oh and stupid DoTA and Gem TD remain entertaining, but then they always are. And both EVE pilots crossed the 12 million skill mark some time ago, so the return to that will mean quite an increase if character power and ability.
Hardcore Casual 
Over 12 million SPs for your pilots? Nice, around 10 million is where I finally started feeling like I could keep up. I’m approached 26 million now and finally feel like a veteran.
I’m finding that old adage “you can’t go home again” to be just as true with WoW as it is in RL. After a year plus away from the game, I found leveling from 60-70 to be a lot of fun and was happy to see Blizzard put in some new twists to questing along with the old standards.
I thought that perhaps nerfing the number of players for raiding would somehow make the process more enjoyable, but somehow Blizzard managed to keep raiding incredibly dull, IMHO. It took me a good 6 months to get burnt out on the ZG/MC/BWL/AQ raids of yesteryear. Sure it was frustrating, clunky, and 75% of the time boring as all hell. But it was NEW.
After a little more than a month of Kara, Mag, and Gruul, I’ve hung up my BC raiding belt. I had high expectations. Kara is a lot of fun, admittedly and the 10-man raiding thing is a lot more diverse and fun than the old 40-mans where everyone had their predefined cookie cutter role.
But I think once you’ve played as a raider and experienced all the pitfalls, highs, lows, wipes, successes, and gear grinding–there’s really nothing extraordinarily “new” that raiding has to offer. For all it’s flaws, I still do enjoy WoW’s PvP (until something better comes along) and one of the good things Blizz did is made it a viable alternative to those of us who don’t want to go back to raiding.
I know what you mean about farming or doing the mining circles – I used to happily go round and round waiting for the next yellow circle on the minimap, You could also watch the markets and try and guess what was going to be in most demand by the raider – what mats we would need for the latest must have potion or res gear. There was a sense of a living economy of sorts – not as much as EvE but still. Now dailies just feel like living on welfare handouts now sense of my time in game contributing at all – if I could register as a Warlock raider with blizz and receive in the post 28 soul shards, 2 x pure death, 20 Blackened basilisk it would be much the same.
it is true that wow is slowly dieing. i have played since the very beginning i have 3 70’s all of which are in season 3 merely due to the fact that raiding is pointless nowadays since everyone shoots for the season sets aside from the hardcore instance crowds. i have grown extremely bored with wow and i feel that i need something new. i am gladly awaiting the release of warhammer which i feel will be truly an incredible game. i know many are skeptical but from what i have seen and read about from merely the beta it will be 100x better than what wow will become with the release of n expansion…. o joy more grinding and then more arena gear thats all a new expansion will be for wow, and of course who can forget the greens that will dominate the geared out 70 characters just leading me to feel i wasted my time and hate the game further. wow simply doesnt cut it anymore and the only crowd that still enjoys it are hardcore instance players and lil kids who scream with joy as they gank something…..thats about it.