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I picked up "vanilla" WoW about 2 1/2 years back to hopefully catch up on the lore and story after WC3 : TFT. The quests then were alright for the most part but never quite got me hooked.
Over time, after countless 5-man dungeons and 10-15 man dungeons (Blackrock Spire at that time was considered a 10-15 man raid dungeon), I met new friends and decided that raiding was the thing for me. It made perfect sense at the time as my goal was to see content and experience lore. No solo / small-group quest or 5-man dungeon made me feel as excited as the then-40 man raids. I soon got hooked into things and eventually got invited to a raiding guild, where I earned my spot as a core raider.
I've never since looked back and enjoyed banging my head against walls in the raiding scene. Molten Core and Blackwing Lair were mostly "tank and spank" instances that soon came to be farmed across many servers by many guilds / alliances. Over time, they even became "pug-able". They were epic for their time but the true jewel of raiding was Naxxramas and the very end of AQ40. They truly held the most brilliant encounters I've ever had the pleasure of participating in.
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The Burning Crusade has been somewhat of a letdown in terms of raiding. Downscaling the raid size to 25 instead of 40 was a good move by Blizzard to appease the more "casual" crowd but it left this raider feeling a bit let down.
A lot of encounters these days are mostly as follows :
Anti-melee ability? Check.
Adds phase? Check.
Enrage timer? Check.
AoE ability? Check.
I can't help but feel a cookie-cutter trend across the many bosses that I've faced thus far in TBC and they're mostly lacking the "epic" feel that Naxxramas' encounters had. Only one outstanding encounter comes to mind thus far and that is Kael'thas Sunstrider. I absolutely love the complex nature of the encounter. 5 phases to test your entire raid (though phase 1 is quite a snooze fest but it picks up shortly after). An incredibly mobile fight which forces your raid to pay attention at all times, this is quite possibly the best-designed encounter in the game which allows virtually any type of raid composition to succeed and STILL be difficult.
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So what would I like to see in the next expansion?
1) More 10-15 man dungeons to help out the more casual bunch of players.
2) Better designed raid encounters that are complex, require players to be mobile and pay full attention at all times.
3) Less nerfing to certain abilities of boss encounters just because people are dumb and can't MOVE OUT OF THAT BIG BLAZING RING OF FIRE. It's nothing about being an elitist. I just dislike whiners who can't execute a plain, simple task. =\
4) More cool quests! ^_^
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