I’ve got like 10k hours in the game and I play for the combat and, for the past few years, the “joy of movement” (their words) with mounts. And the story has ups and downs but there are definitely some ups. The telling thereof has certainly gotten pretty good. (Early stuff… isn’t.) Story content peaked between the 2nd and 3rd xpac.
But having tried to get my gf into the game relatively recently, I was frustrated that the sense of progression and story doesn’t really line up with the difficulty curve – first expansion is still the most brutal place in the world, prior to mounts, and we’re on what, the 6th now? So as a new player to play the most fun mechanical parts you’ve got to go to from the vanilla story, skip the first xpac, hit the second (most mounts) and fourth (flying mount)… making for a really disjointed experience. Which is sad because once you have all the bits (or if you played it all along) it’s fantastic. Or alternatively to play the story in order (and the way it was paced along the way) you basically play a ten year old game as it evolves in front of you, where some parts don’t hold up super well.
Far and away my favorite MMO combat. And some of my favorite movement; definitely for the genre. But I get the frustration.
I follow “Whataboutbunny” on socials. She’s a sheepdog doodle that communicates with buttons for words, and they (she and her humans) talk about dreams.
She dreams about “stranger animal”.