I first started playing wow over a year ago, but reserved total judgement on the game because I never reached the level cap.
Well now I have, and I'll judge the game and Burning Crusade.
Strengths:
Large Community
Large World with a certain atmosphere, keeps it feeling alive
Graphics aren't top of the line, but they are fine to look at and age well
Profession system for crafting and trading
Problems:
Archaic gameplay
Grind of various sorts
PVP weakened by focus on PVE
Game imbalance, which is managed in a yo-yo nerfthenoverpowerthennerfagain chaotic fashion
Updates and support is worse than free to play games, including bugs never fixed or very slowly fixed
Gameplay relies a lot on cheese skills(fear, stealth, stuns, etc)
Artificial Time Extensions
Boring redundant quests
If I could sum up the game, I'd say it's like riding a donkey being lead on by a carrot-on-a-stick through the grand canyon. From 1-20, the game is actually fun and well paced. From 20-40 the pacing and fun slows down, but the goodies you get at level 40 lure you in. From 40-60 you have a little fun with the new goodies and then face the most grueling and tedious segments of the game. The game really drops off as you go along. The dungeons gradually get worse as you start off with the awesome Deadmines on alliance side or the nifty Scarlet Monastery in Trisfal, until you're writing execution ideas for the devs as you're stuck in Maraudon for hours and then planning for a slow gregarious raid a few levels later. I can't imagine how sickening it must have been to get to 60 before BC made 58-60 a flash.
So what of BC? Well BC speeds up the pacing of the game, back to before level 50. It's quicker and you move along faster. They also made the dungeons shorter and more sensible, along with placing them in groups in the same area. This also helped the pacing of the game. Of course the problem with increased pacing is you get to the end faster and once you get there, you're left with just the basic game and no carrot on a stick. This doesn't work, as the basic game is actually rather boring. I quit questing as soon as I could. In other games, I've done extra quests because they were fun or the battles were fun, but not in WoW. You put up with the core of the game to get the next level, next skill, next plateau. So how did Blizzard counteract this? Rep grinding. Ugh. I've already done various rep grinds, but the new patch added even more rep grinds for cosmetic dolly toys. This is a sign of devs who have no idea what to do anymore. They can't think up something fun, so they think up of another artificial time extender.
And how about those artificial time extenders? The main one in the game is grind and boring quests. Go here, kill these things till you have enough kills or X's. If it's a droprate quest, they make the droprates poor, just to extend the amount of time you have to spend to do so. The better alternative is to remove the droprate or the amount of time invested and just increase the experience you get for completing the quest. But that would make people spend less time and maybe not need to pay another monthly fee, so they don't do that. Another time extender is how spread out everything becomes and the need for faster transportation. Many newer games have adopted instant travel to towns, but WoW is stuck on walking till you have a mount, then making things spread out more so you need another mount and another mount and etc. And the cost for mounts adds more time investments for money grinding. Instant travel would remove all this pain the ass tasks and speed up the game, but that is contrary to Blizzard's philosophy. The game doesn't ever test your skill as much as it tests your patience.
PVP is something I enjoy, and I PVPed in WoW more than the average person. My thoughts are that the 40-50 spot is the best, along with 50-60, as it just starts to semi-balance out and twinks dissapear and you have all the battlegrounds open. But after awhile, especially now at 70, every Battleground is a replay of the last BG. The game gets very stale in pvp and very machine-like. There is a lack of natural variety and spice. Some Battlegrounds, such as Alterac Valley, are less PVP than they are a giant random pug dungeon raid. World PVP can be fun, but is instantly tainted by level imabalance, ganking and population imbalance. Halaa is one of the better aspects of Burning Crusade PVP wise. It's a back and forth battle that even works out for the undermanned if they are persistent. The big addition, arenas, have diminished down to a select handful of classes that are useful. If you aren't the right spec and class, you're out of the game. Oh hey, that sounds like the problem with endgame raiding! Formulaic to the death. of. fun.
Now I'll run down some of the basic elements of any game.
Graphics: As mentioned, not top of the line, but pretty enjoyable for such a huge game and they never feel ugly to me. Spots like Feralas are quite beautiful still. The current patch has added some bugs with monster animations and flicker, but I hope that will be fixed as I didn't have such issues before.
Sound: Ambient, non-intrusive sound backdrops with some voice samples and phrases that have become well known.
Gameplay: Slow by today's standards, but worst of all, all the classes end up playing far too much alike. Everything is dot, direct damage or heal. My first two characters were a hunter and a warlock, and they felt astonishingly alike. I've tried every class, and they felt too similiar and their roles all too defined. Soloing is a sedative like experience, with 1,2,3,4 and 5, then move to next monster sort of playing. In the end, the game relies way too much on what I'd consider cheese. Be it unstoppable pets, stealth, fear, stuns or whatever nigh-impossible to counter crap they can think of. You'll keep thinking "god that was cheap" or "god I'm cheap".
In the end, after such a long wait, BC lasted me a month or two until I became deathly bored at level 70. That's not much for the great big patch to PC's biggest game. The game before BC is a slow downgrade in enjoyment. Final verdict: 6/10 Average game buoyed by community and brand recognition.
