Today I received a Cataclysm Beta Invite email and am in the process of patching the client. It's kind of funny as I canceled my account for what I was thinking would be the last time. The game itself is not bad, it just requires way too much of a time investment due to the structure of raids. In EQ, it was possible to raid all content in PUGs when you had the time, in fact the entire game depended on it. I am in no way advocating EQ as I believe it is a very bad game overall, but it did have a few qualities that made it work.
The reason that I gave Blizzard for leaving the game was that players are required to be members of a guild in order to experience any of the end game content, a requirement that has existed since WoW was first released. The problem with this is that everyone in the guild must schedule very specific times to perform raids. Since everyone's schedules are different, this leads to issues that cause conflicts between players and also prevents some players from being able to attend any raids at all.
So, I told Blizzard to contact me when they come up with a game that does not have a guild concept or requirement and revolves entirely around PUGs. BTW, all of the really popular on-line console games revolve around this concept. They may allow you to group with friends and create some kind of quasi guild, but in the end all on-line experiences are PUGs. I have no idea if Cataclysm is a step in this direction, but I shall soon find out. The current level cap in the beta is 82 and many of the Classic zones have already been replaced with their new cataclysmal layouts. I'll try an post some screen shots once I get into the game.