that's it? just every boss is lets say level 50 and nothing more makes me wonder how hard Deathwing was in Catacylsm

also that does not seem the kind of worse dumbing down compared to Fable 3 where magic is overpowered by having no mana

There's hard mode which is fairly hard I suppose. But in TBC there were many difficulty modes since every time you killed a boss the next one was harder. This is not the case in Cata, the first boss in firelands is just as hard as the sixth boss in firelands for example. Sure, you can change difficulty level to hard mode (or even easy mode now), but you're stuck with those three difficulty levels because it does not change though the raid.

I've never played fable though so I can't compare to that.

I quit once during TBC (about the time Serpentshrine was the top raid) and came back for Black Temple, Sunwell, and all that. After downing Sunwell and I saw how fucked the 3.0 patch drop was I just quit logging in and decided not to buy Wrath, it was clear Blizzard didn't care and I was happy PVPing and RVRing in Warhammer Online.

I did a stint in DDO which I still like but rarely play (though thankfully it only costs me something when I want it to).

My daughter still likes WOW, but I no longer have a sub for her to play and I'm not playing 180 bucks a year just so she can ride around on ZG tiger or Headless Horseman Horse.

I would disagree with you there

When Blizzard makes something, it lives for a very, very long time, I'm more than sure that WoW will still be around in 10 years

Well to avoid that issue can I ask another question: Can I still play WOW without installing the Catacylsm expansion or even the Mist of Pandria like can I still play wow just up to WOTLK

(also trust me Fable 3 is the most dumbed down RPG ever)

Umm, that's not dumbed down, they simply chose a different limiter. Nothing has beat guns in the sheer damage output in the last two Fable games, anyway. It's silly to complain about magic. It takes so long to charge a spell that will hurt some end game monsters you'll have to quaff a pot just to get out of red health. Yes, there's places where magic rocks, but since money and mana potions were essentially unlimited in the other games, it makes no sense to complain about Fable III actually putting a different control (time) on magic, it was better balanced that way, anyway.
No, not even close, trust me...
Yes, sort of, the expacs being installed affects what areas you can visit and what your level cap is, but changes to the game made by each expac remain. There is no vanilla WOW left on any legit servers. Cataclysm even redid all the starting areas from what I understand so those aren't even the same.

Damn I completly forgot about the Guns which is worse


well what would you consider the most dumbed down RPG?

also is there a legit server for Vanilla WOTLK?

Don't really understand your question.

WotLK is WotLK, Cataclysm did nothing to Northrend (nothing noticeable).

I will answer it as best as I can: can I play wow in a server that only plays vanilla wow, through TBC and through WOTLK, without all the changes made by Catacylsm such as I will not see any Worgans and Goblins in Outland or Northrend and Bosses are not at the same difficulty setting and Azeroth is not destroyed and Arthas and Illidan are still alive?

Short answer: no.

Long answer:

TBC remains the same, content-wise, regardless of WotLK and Cataclysm. Same thing goes for WotLK. However, dungeons and raids of both expansions are easier than before.

And, the old 'vanilla' world is gone, nearly all quests and zones have been modified. Cataclysm massively changes the old world (Azeroth, with the exception of Northrend). This cannot be reversed.

You don't need Cataclysm to play on Kalimdor and Azeroth... hell you can even visit some of Cataclysm's zones without buying it.

Reply to your short answer: GODDAMMIT!!!

Reply to your long answer: Well I better get used to it, you know I always wondered what the hell were raids untill now and so far all the dumbed downness of WOW is not as bad compared to other RPGs but another question is the game still challenging if I play it alone with no friends?

Well you can play on a private server that doesn't have any of the Cataclysm content, but that's literally the only way to experience the way the world used to be. Private servers are a total bore, though, unless you have RL friends to play with.

What do you mean by private servers are "A total bore?" as in they are boring how so?

I'm torn as to whether or not I'll get Pandaria. It just seems so juvenile from everything I've seen so far. I mean I was reading the boss abilities for one of the new dungeons, and one of the bosses is a giant rabbit with abilities such as 'carrot breath'. Maybe it's a placeholder, I really hope so, but there are a lot of design choices which make me cringe a little.

Can understand that, I still play intermittently but that was the start of the decline of the old game and the rise of the new model. I raided fairly hardcore up to that point too, except a break around the same time as you did - but the game changed so much. You chose a good time to quit I think.

Most of my guild pretty much quit around the end of TBC/start of WotLK. For me, I think I burnt out on Sunwell, as tightly tuned as it was the time we spent headbutting the brick wall of pain that was pre-nerf M'uru was just flat out unpleasant.

When I returned, I found a completely different game. Most of the friends which had quit, hadn't come back or had rerolled. Some of the former top raiding guilds were still there, but right alongside them in progression (albeit earned later) were the types of guilds which when I left hadn't even killed Vashj/Kael before the massive pre-wotlk nerfs.

The side effect of this, the escalation in progress for the masses, the failing upwards model which had been introduced, was extreme levels of unjustified arrogance. I guess there are other elements to it, such as cross realm grouping increasing the aspect of anonymity, but the community had turned completely septic (not to say it was ever stellar, but still.)

I play occasionally now on a low pop RP server. I don't RP myself but I find the average player to be more mature, and with a different goalset which fits my current playstyle just fine.