I don’t remember feeling this far behind when the Burning Crusade was released. Now, just a little over a month past the latest expansion’s release, the trade channel is filled with folks seeking members for Heroic marathons. The 10-mans are being conquered, and wasn’t it like 3-days after release that the game was beaten by some achievers? I didn’t feel pressure to win-win-win, push-push-push rather, the last release. I simply did my thing, got to 70, on several characters, and then found a great group and we went and knocked on some serious doors, busting down most of them. But not until we’d gone through the content, yes, sometimes a couple of times, 
, but we got to where we needed to be, nearly, in time before the next expansion.
Yeah, it sucked having to get Exalted with a faction to get the key to open the heroic version of their sponsored dungeons. It was work. Like walking uphill, in the snow, with bare feet, both ways, to go to school. We hated it, but we did it, and we reaped the rewards. And do that grind to exalted five times total for each of the factions. Then Blizzard dropped the Heroic Key requirement to simply Honored to let the “casuals” have easy access. Now they’ve just done away with it altogether up in Northrend.
Literally a month after release, and the bleeding edge players are left with nothing to do but farm content.
Whatever happened to hard work before you got to enjoy your golden years? “Welcome to the old folks home, here’s the remote, watch whatever.”
This expansion’s content was HUGE. But they gave it all away up front. Now what? Is the next expansion commiseratingly closer now? There will (could) be a large content increase when they offer the Undermine to adventurers. (Anyone notice the Tabard of the Explorer? Northrend is clearly on top. There is a chunk of land down south. That should be the island of Kezan which houses the goblin’s home of Undermine.) There is another large content increase possible, theoretically planet sized, with The Emerald Dream.
I don’t know. It just seems like everything has been turned over to the players at once. Why?
