IMO OG WoW and even the tiny bit of WoW Classic I played...STILL featured the best social pick-up-COOP-questing. Hell even the pre classic private servers I played still had a sense of community. Granted the later years were less social, covid really did a number on roaming chatters; I think everyone became more world weary.
After reading so much hatred towards retail WoW I finally tried it [as a Vanilla fan] and er, yeah it was ok but socially it was a ghost town outside of that weird Airport hub in the sky [Shadowlands]. My heart broke a bit when I did chromie time in Azeroth, not only were the zones like Westfall fucked up, I saw absolutely no one during my time questing in westfall. Just.....sad times.
Overall retail WoW was good on the tail end of Shadowlands, but the end game being just Mythic dungeon and Raids for a chance at maybe one bit of good gear is shit. I prefer more chill exploring, questing and a bit of collecting. Transmog farming was boring, and old quests were pointless as they weren't level scaled. So I ended up quitting just before dragonflight. Still have good memories of Vanilla's original 1-60 journey, but it's not that game anymore.
I saw so much love for Guildwars 2 over the years, but my WoW brain bounced off it so hard about three times. Until last Christmas, on a whim I bought the complete package and I found my new MMO home.
Exploration, XP for everything, level scaling and world events which makes every zone somewhat relevant. Easy and no gear-treadmill (your shit will always be good, forever). The story is linear and makes sense, unlike WoWs scattered expansion packs and timelines, jesus.
Plus, my human male is voiced by Nolan North, so in my head he's a teleported Nathan Drake from Uncharted now in a weird fantasy land lol. I'm not really bothered by side characters in these games, but i've grown attached to the cast too, the chemistry is pretty decent bless it's heart.
GW2 does some good account bound stuff too like your mounts, currency and masteries (kinda like skills for X things) all apply to toons so no repeat grinds/unlocks per alt which is absolute BLISS!
I also made a random friend-for-life after asking in map chat for a hero point train in the Heart of Thorns map. Any game I make a genuine friend gets massive marks, it's so hard to find good people in any game these days. GW2 is very nice in that regard, i'd recommend joining a guild, to which there are some nice ones in the NA region.
You can try GW2 for free, just give it a while for it to tick. It does some things differently and especially if you're coming from a WoW, gear mindset...you're gonna have to check it at the door. Loot is mostly materials and random shit like boosts. Your gold assets are tied up in those materials vs fat gold stacks from mobs.
I like logging on and map clearing when i'm in discord with my lads and we're waiting to play something proper. You clear maps by opening up the fog of war, collecting waypoints [teleports all over said map], hitting points of interests, doing favor hearts [very basic 'quests'] and hitting up vistas [quick, panoramic cutscenes of an area of interest]. It's so chill to whack a podcast on and do these, and you benefit greatly from completing them, more so if you do the whole map too.
I could be here all day waxing lyrical about GW2, it is the best MMO for me these days. I've still not completed the story since December, i'm currently on the start of LWS4. Still got End of Dragons and then the new expansion too, good feels!
And the best bit? Even if I don't return for months or years, all my gear will still be as good as I left it. No 'power creep' I believe the word is?
Grabbed this for my wife whos a big Poke head and enjoyed FO:NV. What a steal for 9 quid. So far she's loving temtem (she's a ROM-hack kinda gal, and found other Poke-likes on steam a bit shit in X or Y regard).