Personally, WoW has past its prime. It is going down a fairly slow downhill as PvP is horribly unbalanced, arenas just aren't working for the majority of players, raids are overly time consuming despite efforts to reduce the size/number of bosses, etc. Will it die? Probably not.

The big problem is WoW despite all its hype is still a fairly heavy grindfest game. When I am not raiding, I am farming consumables for Kael. When I'm not farming consumables, I am doing 5s or 2s with my arena teams. It is a vicious cycle that never ends and Blizzard is doing nothing to fix existing problems with the mechanics. Granted it is a fairly old game by now in terms of MMORPG standards thus does not warrant a huge revamp at least until WoLK but still the problems that persist are driving away alot of players.

While I do hope Blizz is learning from their mistakes in WoW for the next gen MMO, I am honestly not pinning much hope on their next project to be any different. Jeff Kaplan (Tigole) has pretty much repeated the mistakes he did in EQ when he joined the WoW team awhile ago and there is no indication that this will change. Instead, what I will do is subscribe to Warhammer Online which in earnest looks like a 'fun' game and not a grinding one. Emphasis on the quotes on 'fun', all MMOs have their share of grinds but the good ones do it without penalising players. WoW had a fair bit of fun grind but TBC took it to the extremes and killed my interest in the game.

I highly doubt ZA can be considered 'casual' considering it is fairly hard even for a SSC/TK guild to clear it in a few goes unless you have BT'esque SR gear for Shaz. It's harder than Kara, probably about as difficult as SSC in terms of 10 mans.

While its debatable, I do think the TBC changes are for the worse. The regular push for new dungeons which arguably are no different from previous ones, balancing issues (who are we kidding? BG9 is littered with war/druid teams even the blues and pros admit its a tad bit broken), the snail pace of patches, it is not the same game as most enjoyed previously in the old WoW.

Do I still enjoy it? Hell yeah! I have a druid in a BT guild (just healing when needed on offnights), SSC/TK guild for my main hunter, 1900s arenas on my hunter... the list goes on. But do I think it's on a decline? Probably yes. It isn't exactly Blizzard's fault but its just the cycle that MMO games go through if you have played older MMOs like EQ, DAoC and UO. WoW just feels bloated at the moment with lots of tacked on components which make the feel of the game less smooth per se.

WoW will still continue to thrive just like what UO and EQ1 are doing but certainly Blizzard is looking forward to their next gen MMO considering many of the old school WoWers have moved on to other games like CoH and the upcoming AoC, WAR and TR. Most MMOs last around 5 years anyway in their heyday and with WoW going past 3 years, it is really hard to say WoW is still at its peak not just in terms of subscriber base.

So where does WoW place itself currently in terms of the MMO evolution timeline? I'd say it is around the state when DAoC got the Trial of Atlantis expac. A tad bit bloated, past its prime, a tad bit heavy on tacked on features with slower pace of evolution. Will people still play it? Definately! Will I get WoLK? Of course. But the question I think many old school players like me who have been in the closed/open WoW beta will ask is... will the game be worth paying when AoC/WAR releases? The answer to that, I will have to wait and see. From my WAR beta experiences before the revamp, albeit it pretty short, was a good one pvp wise. I'm going to give it a shot with an open mind thus if it is good, that will be my main MMO for the next few years.

I think if you did ZA, you'll know that its not as casual as Blizzard said it is. Considering Blizz said ZG was the next UBRS which it didn't turn out to be.

Actually, other MMOs do have faster patch rates. But I wasn't comparing them with WoW. If you look at the past patches of WoW vs the ones coming out now, it is fairly slower (and buggier). Like I said, it is not due to the game being bad but the fact that Blizz is slowly diverting attention away from TBC, be it to the next gen MMO or WoLK.

As for balancing, well even 5s aren't exactly balanced if you look at it. The standard 2345 team still wins, you can't really slot in other classes without losing a counter and the list goes on. It is balanced to a certain point but at the end, it is not as balanced as one would hope for due to the fact that WoW was originally designed as a PvE game and not a PvP one. Don't forget, PvP was added far later and was never in the original game. Just like the 2345 teams for 5s, 3s are dominated by R/M/P teams so I highly doubt one can say it is balanced.

As for hunters, you really have to look at the way class mechanics work. Hamchook was strong because of one reason (I'll let you guys guess it ) and for the same reason too did Crimsonlocks aka Megatf succeed in 2s. No one's going to cry about 2s not being balanced especially since Blizz admitted that it can never be balanced but the bottomline is still that WoW isn't balanced on the PvP front. Blizz may give excuses that 2s aren't balanced, classes are not designed to go 1v1 but in the end, those are all excuses for PR. WoW wasn't designed for pvp, they slapped on the pvp component and end up having the whole arena balancing nightmare.

If you look at how WAR is being designed with its Archtype system together with Dogs of Wars and other pvp mechanics, THAT is a game designed from the ground up for pvp balancing. WoW just sadly is still a PvE game at heart and is nowhere even close to what DAoC was for player vs player action.

Now don't get me wrong, I think you misintepreted me a tad bit. I'm saying that:

-WoW is definately on a decline, not in terms of popularity/subscriber which you claim it is not (and definately it is not), but in terms of the lifecycle of an MMO. It's just aging and that is normal.
-Evolution of the game is definately slower, not because of the game is going bad but Blizz has shifted attention to newer stuff, WoLK included.
-PvP is hardly balanced. You may not agree with this but a quick scane of the stats and you can see certain classes being grossly under represented compared to others. Arenas work but it is still not what I would call balanced.
-People coming back to WoW? It depends. I've been on 3 servers so far, 2 of them I still play now. Most of the old school WoW heads that levelled with me pre-TBC are gone but in their place, new ones joined. Many I know left for CoH and other games including DAoC. Some did eventually come back but others didn't. Your experience may vary.
-Is WoW dying? Hardly. Will it still be the most popular game 5 years from now? I'm willing to put my 10g on that.

So to the original poster, no the game is not dying in any way. If you enjoy it like me and many others still do, by all means play it. But for me, I have pretty much lost the fanboi'ism that I had a year ago and if a good game comes by, I am more than happy to ditch WoW for another.