So, WoW-GAF, I've recently been thinking about coming back to this game and need some advice as whether or not I actually should (For future reference, I'm in EU).
Like pretty much everyone at this point, I've had a WoW account in the past (or two, more specifically).
First one was back in vanilla days. I played a Night Elf Druid to level 40 and got bored of it because to be honest I just picked the druid class on a whim because shapeshifting seemed cool at the time. There wasn't much more thought to it than that (I was 14 at the time, so cut me some slack).
I returned to the game in '07. BC seemed quite interesting and I think WotLK had at least been announced so I was quite hyped again. I Played a Human Paladin up to level 64, before getting bored of the slow level progression in Nagrand. If I recall correctly, it was when some explorer dwarf or gnome or something similar asked me to kill a ton of wild animals. As a Protection Paladin with no group, this would've taken forever and overall was a slap in the face as to the tedious nature of WoW's questing system of the time.
Recently, I've dwindled my backlog down to all but 50-hour+ long RPGs and so I figured if I'm going to be playing games of that length I may as well be doing something where I can communicate with other people and generally have more fun as well, which led to the idea of coming back to WoW (that and I adore playing hand-to-hand classes in any and all RPGs and MoP looks to scratch that itch pretty well, Kung-Fu Panda stuff aside).
The issue I have myself thinking about, however, is that I have never once raided. A lot of people say that WoW only begins at max level and on my other characters of old I never once reached max level and got in a raid. I've heard the community in this game can be pretty harsh if you don't do your job properly (and sometimes even if you do), and so I ended up wondering if my general inexperience will hinder me. I'm a good learner and I can take criticism, but if there's no one willing to teach me then there's no point to it. I also can't magic great gear onto my character or make gold appear from thin air.
Another note on my inexperience with this game is that I never bothered to do PvP of any kind back in the day. At all. Ever. I'm still of that kind of mindset, since I really enjoy working with other people rather than against them, but don't know how necessary PvP really is in this game or even how it functions properly.
Furthermore, I tried recovering my old accounts (both of them) a while back, thinking about getting in on this whole Scroll of Resurrection thing going on at the moment and also saving money. It turns out they've both been hacked and banned ages ago, which means that I'll have to splash out the full £50 or so for the game and all of the expansions and essentially start anew.
If I do come back, I'm thinking of playing a Draenei Paladin since I find the whole space-goat thing a really unique twist to the traditional fantasy setting and I enjoy being able to tank and support people at the same time.
So, WoW-Gaf, I ask you the question - Is it worth it for me to come back given my lack of PvP and raid experience?
Finally, if anyone has any useful links to guides, wikis etc. that could help me get up to speed with how much this game has changed since BC days and what would be expected of me at max level, along with what I should be aiming for in regards to talent builds, stats etc. it would be greatly appreciated, as would a good EU server recommendation (Preferably PvE).
I looked into other MMOs and only Guild Wars 2 seems relatively appealing of the bunch and it still seems to have a bit of the focus on PvP that its predecessor had, albeit with a more fleshed out PvE experience now, but that doesn't even have a release date yet and frankly I need something to do now. If anyone has any other MMO recommendations though, feel free to shoot them off if you don't think WoW is for me.
Thanks in advance to anyone that actually took the time to read this overly long post and help me out.