40 man raids were awful! Yes lets let Jimmy the Tulip the level 60 rogue auto attack and eat a sandwich while everyone else busts their ass to get to the end and when the loot rolls happen he rolls better and gets ultra rare T2 trash drop while everyone else that busted their nuts comes out with a hide or nothing at all. Oh better yet lets go with the user created DKP system and let Jimmy the Tulip rub his balls and auto attack everything while the tank dies for him and the other 38 members and have him grab nice loot just because hes there and auto attacking. You cant tell if he is auto attacking or just doing absoutly nothing or maybe hes just spamming backstab while he watches The George Lopez show. At any rate he can be an anchor on the raid and he gets nice crap and people who are actually good and trying can walk away with nothing. That was whats wrong with 40 man raids and the current MMO loot system. WAR actually cured this somewhat with the PQ loot system which they neglected to add into end game dungeons. Although WAR fails because of their random as balls RvR loot system that lets someone just as useless randomly win loot in that too.
 

Well damage/healing meters are the ultimate judge of who pulls their weight. The new ulduar instance is actually challenging for every role including tanks. On top of the 10 and 25man versions each boss can be defeated under hard mode circumstances which result in better loot. So instead of finding 40 average players, you need 25 pretty good players to down some of the hard mode bosses.

Does the recruit a friend feature apply to only new accounts or would it also work on returning players like myself potentially?

The idea behind the post? Dumb people play warcraft so its hard for OP to find good players to carry him/her through content. Solution: Have your real life friends, or meet locals who will play with you, their IQ might not be over 130 either but it can be easier to teach people when were not tied to a keyboard. Real life people also tend to be slightly less obnoxious since they are no longer anonymous avatars on the screen, consequences for moronic behavior can be found offline.

Do the trade spammer babies bother you? Blizzard like many other game developers have implimented a genius feature into their game that allows you to almost customize your community. It is the ignore feature. Through this genius tool you may hide the annoying chat from your screen completely. There is a limit to the amount of people you can ignore but there are addons which correct this.

This really is the fix all post for anyone who doesnt like the warcraft community. Oh, and dont read your server forums. Ever.

What is the truth behind all of these posts? The truth is we all really love World of Warcraft. That is why so many people here and in every other video game come together to talk about it. The amount of energy and enthusiasm people take to trashing a game reveals how much they love it, or wish their game was as popular. You wish your game was as popular so that your skill in the game actually meant something to a mass of people (besides the 100 people or less playing on your crappy game).

"hundreds of thousands of hours of gameplay"

23 year = 201 613.694 hours

I kind of hate me for doing this but i will be the smartass anyway.  no one is going to be talking about this in 2031. were going to be playing Waterworld Online, only this time... its for realsies!

i did enjoy warhammer beta though not having the blackguard was a downer. really glad i bought the pre order box from target so i did not have to pay for the whole thing.

going "back" to EQ1 simply because I never really got that far into it, I played EQ2 and I don't see much reason to go back.

If you have not played EQ2 much let me just say this, It really is not a sequel to Everquest imo, just some shared lore. If EQ1 was really your favorite I think you would probably enjoy the nostalgia over EQ2's newer graphics and faster combat style (unless thats your cake).

edited for topic relevance

Anarchy Online allways had great Halloween events, with the uncle pumpkin head  mobs they spawned and several fun NPCs placed to allow players to change their appearance to monsters. Funcom seemed to make it a point in the beginning to have fun on every halloween.

Why are so many people eager for a "wow killer" anyway? World of Warcraft by itself is a fine game, especially pre expansion. WoW's obnoxious player base is what makes it an irritating game. So with that if a game is a "wow killer" that means the people you hated in wow, will move to your wow killer. is that really what you want?

I was never able to penetrate that sphere of AO but just from observation I would tell you that the RP community there is very visible and outspoken. Look at this link

http://forums.anarchy-online.com/showthread.php?t=502868

That should help you find the people your looking for and decide how serious you are, froob is the best way to go for your RP needs if thats what you want I dont think any of these people will judge you based on your shadowlands access or high level for that matter.