Haven't played in 2+ years

[:1]I haven't played Wow since Burning Crusade and I am looking to come back.

With all the changes, I'll probably start over at Lvl 1. I use to play Warlock and Priest in the past, but not sure what I'll do this time.

I also prefer to play PvP and will be looking for a realm in the CST timezone. Any suggestions on an active realm?

Also, what are some good addons to use?

Any other suggestions are welcomed.

Thanks in advance!|||I'm not sure about what CST PvP servers are good. The best advice I can give you is to find a server with a reasonably balanced population. I don't find unbalanced PvP servers fun on either side.

I wouldn't worry too much about addons to start off with. The default UI has improved quite a bit. (It still looks pretty much the same, but the guts of it are much improved, and they've added a lot of popular addon features to the default UI.) I'll make a few suggestions, but it might actually be better if you told us what mods (or type of mods) you used to use so we can give more specific advice.

An auction mod is still very useful since the default auction interface is still pretty meh. (It's better than it once was, but it really doesn't hold up to even moderate AH usage.) I still use Auctioneer Advanced, but there are others out there that are also popular.

If you end up deciding to take up Archeology, I'd strongly recommend some mods for that. My absolute favorite is Archeology Helper (you'll also need Gathermate 2 to fully take advantage of it's features.) You might want to hit a digsite or two before you try any mods just because the mods might make a bit more sense to you then. Of course, any sane person will tell you to stay away from the soul-crushing grind that is Archaeology in the first place.

The new default raid frames are quite usable (although not particularly pretty.) There are all sorts of Unit and Raid frame options, but without knowing more about what you want to do, it's hard to recommend anything. For leveling and casual play, the default frames are fine. (I use them on my healer, and I get by okay with the casual playing I'm doing.)|||Thanks. The mods I used mostly were an Auction House, a Coordinates mod, a mod "bundle" that had flight paths and dungeon quest info, and another that had an arrow at the bottom that pointed me in the right direction for quest completion.

Also, where can I go to see a the server's population?|||As I said before, I'm using Auctioneer Advanced for my AH mod. It's probably what you were using a couple years back, so it would be pretty familiar. I know that there are several others that have gained in popularity especially for the hardcore AHers, so you can look around there as well.

I'm using TomTom for coordinates, and it integrates with some other addons to put an arrow on your screen for events. (It's likely what you were using back when you played, since it was one of the more popular coord mods back then too.)

I'm not sure what the status on the quest mods are. Blizzard implemented a lot of that functionality into the default UI, making them a lot less necessary. (The Shattering also required them to rebuild their quest databases, and I'm not sure how far along the various addons are.)

I'd honestly try out the default UI for quest tracking for a while. The default UI now shows all of your quest objectives on the world map, making it very easy to find where you need to go for quests. You can also chose "show on map" from a specific quest's screen and it will open the map and show you where you need to go. It will also add a yellow arrow to your minimap pointing in the direction you need to go. (The world map also now has an option to "shrink" it so you can keep it up while you fly around, which when paired with showing where quest objectives are is really nice.) Quest flow is a lot better than it used to be, so where you need to go next is a lot more instinctive than it used to be, reducing the need for a mod to tell you where to go. (Zones are now largely set up around small quest hubs where you do a handful of quests that move you towards the next minihub that has a few quests to do.)



The best place to get overall server population is from the Blizzard server status site:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/status

Those estimates are live, so it will be best to check it at the time you will most likely be playing. I personally prefer high pop servers, but I'd avoid anything with a queue. (Since we've been in the current content cycle for a bit, any server that has a queue at peak times now will probably be fairly unbearable whenever new content comes out.)

Population balance is a tricker thing to figure out. You can try googling some of the wow census sites, but they are really not very accurate these days. The best thing to do is honestly go to the individual realm forums and do some research:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/#forum1033927

A quick and dirty first check is to count up how many recruitment threads from each faction are on the front page. After that, actually read some of the threads on the promising server's forum. There are usually lots of good hints about a server's population balance.|||Thanks for all the info.

One last question: I don't have the last two expansions. Can I still play using the BC expansion?|||Yes, but you won't have access to stuff that was introduced in the missing expansions.

Also, your level cap will be 70.