I had my qualms about WoTLK yet decided to take a few whacks at what Northrend and *cough, Blizzard, had to offer.
Here's what I like:
-Death Knights. While I haven't really gotten into serious DK playing, I like their feel. I like that they are somewhat similar to my beloved Ret Pally except they have all the tools that Ret Pallys should have, and should have had, since, oh...lets say the infamous patch 1.9....*sigh.
-Northrend. Yeah, it's not Zangermarsh or Terrokar but it's nice. It looks good. The graphics upgrade is nice...not great, but nice. The enemies look somewhat fearsome, though overallI still think that Blizzard could really do some better design. It's for the masses, so you have to expect a lot of 'rehashing'.
-Cool Talents. Titans Grip Rox. Divine Storm Rox (until it got nerfed to physical only damage...but it's still cool).
Here's what I hate:
-Rehashing. The game is still the same grind. It's the same kill stuff get stuff. It's the same, spend an hour getting ready for raids and traveling to raids. (I have admittedly become really used to private server 'fast travel' systems. Oh...it is AMAZING how much better it makes the game!) It's the same awfully fake looking trees/grass.
-Pallys. Yeah, Ret is pretty awesome now but now, it's doing the facerolling we complained about that was done against us for years while Prot has taken a slight hit to DPS for raids and Holy has pretty much lost all viability for raids. Oh, and we still dont' have a viable pull spell. JUDGEMENT DOESN'T AND SHOULDN'T COUNT!
-Battlegrounds. They're awful. And you have to grind them which just increases the awfulness of them. The rewards and AFKers are awful. It's a sad replacement for what should be awesome world PVP.
-Blizzard's idea of balancing. It has been noted that Blizzard's dev team lead by Kalgan, notoriously hated by the Palading community, is balancing the game towards Arena 5v5 gameplay. The result. Insulting cries of 'NERF' this and that.
-Cool Talents for all the classes. Yeah...*cough...some of you guys got the short end of the stick (Holy Pallys...*cough).
Overall, the game is nice, the replay value is based on what you can tolerate, but the rehashing for $15/month is just WAAAAAY too much to spend on a game...especially one that is on it's way out graphically wise and one that is essentially becoming more and more like Diablo 2. The game overall, is simply not fun anymore. The amount of work and time required for end game content is still ridiculous but that's what MMO's are right? Wrong. MMO's are supposed to be fun. WoW lost it's fun factor for me a while back and WoTLK didn't succeed in regaining it as far as subscription WoW goes.