As the title says. When Masters of the Broken World launched it was called a glitchy glorified reskin of the original game that didn't really advance much and set more back, and that people were better off getting the older game instead. Now that some time has passed and a DLC and bunch of patches have come out, I'd like to ask the active players who're still around if it's worth getting over Genesis?

As far as I know, it is stable enough to play and it does have advantage of easy savegame system.

If you are hardcore fan of strategical games, then Genesis with the New Horizons mod would be much more advanced in the amount of content. (Genesis is much easier to mod)
http://www.gog.com/forum/eador_series/new_horizons_mod_release

Aside from the bugs, another complaint I seem to recall was Broken World played significantly slower than Genesis. Not sure if that was also addressed.

As a beginner, never having played any Eador game before, should I start with vanilla...or with New Horizons?
I would be planning to start with the campaign
Thanks

Start with vanilla genesis, launch hotseat game and learn basic battle mechanic and build orders without pressure from AI.
Then another 2-3 games to learn differences between NH and Genesis, and only then start campaign.
NH doesn't change campaign in terms of story, but improves rewards on shards to more useful ones.

I've been looking at this series for a while. Is the higher price for the new one worth the better graphics? I love games such as Master of Magic, Masters of Orion, Age of Wonders, civilization 4, and hearts of iron 3

I have played 3 of the games u mentioned although I prefer MoO2 and like them.
I have also tried briefly Masters and found it not so good compared to Genesis. However I would like to just mention briefly that my computer is pretty junky so this could be part of the reason. But mostly I just do NOT think Better Graphics = Better Game and if your the same I think you may prefer Genesis as well.

I did end up purchasing the game. It seems to be similar to another game I really like, Alpha Centauri