I got back into MoP Classic around Christmas one and a half months ago, and while I was initially surprised by how much fun I was having, it looks like my enthusiasm may already be on the decline again.
I got to exalted with the Golden Lotus, saw the relics of the Thunder King get stolen (no surprise there) and got to defend the Vale against a big Mogu incursion with the aid of the Celestials. I'm glad I got to see all of that, but I've found little reason to keep going afterwards. There was a small incentive at least as I picked up a few Skyshards during my time doing dailies in the Vale, and I was always curious what was up with that big hostile cloud serpent that's generally un-attackable (turns out you need 10 Skyshards to dispel the shield, and then it drops a mount on defeat), but the drop rate of the shards is so low, who knows how many months I'd have to keep grinding to get ten.
There are only three or four Tillers with whom I'm not quite best friends yet (can't be long now though), and I'm close to maxing out all my cooking skills as well. Then the only thing left to do on the farm would be to keep planting crops for other Pandaria reputations, which is not as interesting. Plus I learned that apparently things like the plow, sprinkler system etc. all came in with a later patch, and having to till every spot on the farm manually every day is getting a bit tiresome.
I've also been doing the Anglers dailies for a few weeks now, and happened to fish up the Sea Turtle mount on one of these days. I don't have that in retail, so that's another +1 for having this character merged into my retail stable one day I guess.
My enthusiasm for the other factions has been more limited though. I've done a bit of work on the August Celestials, but being sent to a different corner of the continent every day gets old quickly. I also did the Klaxxi dailies for a few days but just didn't enjoy them, even though I think they're a faction with an interesting story. Just never liked the Dread Wastes I guess.
I started the legendary cloak quest chain with Wrathion, another piece of content that's no longer accessible in retail, but I've got to admit I don't find that nearly as interesting as I found exploring the old Vale. It's just so grindy, even if the devs made it a bit easier in Classic by also allowing you to progress certain steps through dungeons, without needing to raid. The first stage felt like it took forever, and then it was immediately on to "earn 1600 valor", ignoring the thousands of valor I'd already ground out previously, which just made me sigh.
I did actually get into the dungeon endgame for a bit and did every dungeon on Celestial difficulty. It took me three runs to realise I was supposed to talk to a Celestial at the start of the run to get a buff, and I only did that after I saw someone complain on reddit about stupid slackers who nerf their whole group by not picking up their buff (oops). It didn't take too long to get the hang of what the different buffs do though, and ultimately the gameplay isn't really that different from heroics.
After my initial experiences with dungeons in MoP Classic were pretty mellow, zoning into any Celestial is full rush-rush mode by this point though. The tank will pretty much always pick up all the trash at once and drag it to the next boss to AoE down. If they die while doing that, they'll blame the healer. If it's after the second boss in Shado-Pan Monastery, it's almost guaranteed to result in a wipe regardless, but that doesn't stop people from doing it. I can just about keep up with the madness most days, but I've got to admit I don't find it very fun.
Curiosity and gear were enough of an incentive at first. The special currency that drops in Celestial dungeons lets you buy pretty high level gear pretty quickly. While I didn't need any of it, it was still nice to grow more powerful, and while doing dailies it was very noticeable when my kill time on a named elite went from several minutes down to a single full skill rotation. At this point I've got 502 gear in most slots though, and while there are more things to buy, such as a goodie bag that drops rare pets and mounts, I just don't care enough about any of that.
At one point I saw a familiar name online - my 2020 guild's Scarab Lord, a fellow hunter. We chatted a bit and he's basically kept playing and raiding all this time, now a member of a guild that has also been around since Classic's launch and that I was friendly with back in the day. He said that if I was feeling lonely, I shouldn't hesitate to give the GM a poke for a guild invite.
I thought very long and hard about this. Part of me was amazed that there was an opportunity here to come back to the game after several years of absence and potentially fit right back into an old and at least somewhat familiar structure. I thought of the potential fun and companionship, and wondered whether I would maybe even want to try attending a casual raid or two. However, ultimately I decided against it. I already have enough going on in SWTOR and other modes of WoW without attempting to put down roots in MoP Classic again. I think I'll be happy to just drop it again in a few weeks to be honest.
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