I know this is offtopic...

[Alcyon_Densetsu]

Honestly, most players in WoW today are returning players —the game must have had something like 22M players over the years I believe, so the 7M or so that still play it or will play the next expansion did play WoW at some point during the 8 years of existence of the game. You just don't see newcomers in WoW, or very very few, the game is too old for that —I suppose most newcomers to MMO play newer games such as TOR, GW2, Tera, and of course XIV currently (I've seen many players who never touched an MMO before in this game). Of the players that return to WoW, most don't really like to have to grind their way up to the newest, current expansion (for instance Lv90 at the beginning of the next expansion) in order to get to play the new content. That's the downside of vertical progression games, it's just often boring to do the outdated content. Depending on when they left, they may have to go through a whole expansion or two (most actually left during BC or WotLK), and may not really appreciate that since WoW's low-level areas are pretty much void of interest once the expansion is outdated. Remember there's no scaling whatsoever in this game, so your up-to-date friends can't really come and play with you either.

It's a bit like in FF XIV, where most people praise the fact that you don't have to roll a new character to get another class to level 50: you just change your weapon and skip all the content, then proceed on to just "grinding" your way up to 50 through fates. Well, in WoW, it's the same, you just "grind" your way through a zillion quests (nerfed, giving you way more XP than they did originally, but it's still a long road that isn't really enjoyable as it were when it was current content), until you reach the beginning of the new content.

So I think it's pretty smart; it's a way to tell old players: "come back, you skip the old content, you get to enjoy the new content right off the bat". I know it's a valid incentive for me to come back, because even if I have a couple of characters at level 90, I get to try a new class without having to go through all the older content that I know way too much to enjoy re-doing again. It's a "small gift" that may play in favour of my return.

About "learning": it's not really a problem, since all guides are made for max-level characters usually; your rotations will change during your leveling, and eventually it's just as easy to start with a level max character (I know I don't read guides until I have reached max level, it's just useless). The leveling is more of a journey, and again, that journey is only really enjoyable when you're on current in WoW, which will be 90->100 in the next expansion.