I think I was off WoW for about 2 years. I sold my old accounts (two of them 0_O) back in the burning crusade days.

At the time I didn’t have the time to play WoW and didn’t really see that changing anytime soon. I didn’t miss WoW at all until a few months later and from then on I would have “urges” to play it. Like I’d miss playing my Feral Cat Druid or I’d miss healing on my paladin.

These urges weren’t really enough on their own to push to back into WoW. Then a friend told me about some upcoming additions in the new expansion such as old zones changing, new race/class combos,two new races and heroic deadmines. That’s that finally pushed me over the edge and I ran out and brought a World of Warcraft Battlechest and Wrath of the Lich King expansion.

So now I have a level 45 Druid (Feral Cat spec) called Ashbrooke.

For me WoW is so much more enjoyable now as leveling in azeroth is a lot faster due to exp increases and using the dungeon finder tool. The new dungeon finder tool lets you queue to do a random or selected dungeon with players from your battlegroup. So there’s no more standing around in Stormwind on the LFG channel spamming for a healer or tank. If you choose a random dungeon you are rewarded with a bag that will contain a nice class/spec appropriate blue on completion of the random dungeon.

All the “classic” dungeons seem like a push over now. You can steam through dungeons like Uldaman in 30-40 depending on how good your group is and from my experience most of the are great. Pugs are so much better now most people seem to know how to play their roles and with stuff like the dungeon finder group buff and heirlooms you just breeze through dungeons that were harder before.

Another cool change is that mounts are available now from level 20 for a normal land mount and 40 for a epic land mount with reduced costs. The normal flying mount now can be brought at lvl 60, its faster now at 125% of movement speed and it only costs about 650g for training and the mount! So leveling in outland is going to be fairly easy now.

I can’t wait to hit 80 or 85 if the expansion comes out before I’m at 80!
Also I’m dying to hit 55 so I can roll a Death Knight and have that as my tanking alt who will level up just in dungeons.

You can check out my character Ashbrooke below.

I never seem to plan to play MMO’s, it’s usally someone else who talks about it and then makes me want to go buy/play it.

This was the same for Warhammer Online. I hadn’t intended to play another MMO after World of Warcraft, but a family friend was full of excitement about Warhammer Online and I guess that rubbed off on me. Plus the fact I would have someone to play with was another buying point.

My highest character is only rank 8 at the moment so I’ll just give you a brief run-down off things I like in Warhammer so far as opposed to a full review.

• Public Quests: are area based quests that you trigger by crossing over into an area where a Public Quest is taking place. They are comprised of three stages and reset after the final stage is complete. You are rewarded at the end based on your participation and a random dice roll.
• Tome of Knowledge: This tracks everything you do in the game, from achievements to what monsters you have encountered etc. You can refer back to it at any time and you can also get quests from the tome itself.
• Less Grind: When you are sent out to find 4 bear hides, you will get 1 hide for each bear kill rather than getting 1 for every 20 bear kills.
• Professions: They seem on par with WoW in leveling difficulty, but they don’t impact on the game as much. I’m just leveling my cultivating and alchemy professions just so I can make dye for my armour.
• PvP Collision Detection: In most other mmorpgs you can just run through everyone in PvP situations. In War you can’t which is great! Tanks can block choke points now and protect the squishes!

I’m currently playing on Anlec as a Witch Elf (Ashbrooke) and a Chaos Chosen (Triptych)