Mists of Pandaria ramp upFollow

For a guy who hasn't played since December of 2011. Do we have anyone in beta on these forums? I've been trying to bring myself back up to speed. Reading MMO Champ, watching Zamofficial (shameless plug) on Youtube, and just trying to soak up a feel for the tone of the expansion as I am already familiar with the basics of the new content.

9 months sans WoW has killed any knee jerk reaction to "Kung Fu Panda" or Pokemon features, or even the blatant targeting to their core market. My main concerns are simply:

1) Releasing a beta. No MMO release is ever perfect, balance is always a work in progress. Cataclysm needed 3 more months of polish before launch, at the minimum. Diablo 3 was basically a beta launch as well. I've been paying attention to the class balance thread & feed back on dungeons and I am hopeful that MoP will be more polished at launch but the feed back I see is mainly on the features, not the balance.

2) Sleep 2 Win. Diablo 3 normal mode killed the game for me, there was no way to lose. While I ******* about Naxx being trash, I think I have been pretty vocal against end game elitism and stating that Blizzard needs to create a game that provides a level of challenge for all players, not just newb or hardcore with a binary easy/hard set up. But rather something in between that challenges the casual with skill, or mid level guilds. I am really hoping that LFR is Sleep2Win and normal becomes that middle ground but I haven't heard much in terms of raid difficulty. Just that there is a lot of bosses, with some filler and not much in the way of innovation but that it is not bad overall.

I am hoping that someone has hands on experience and can address the above for me.

******** over, on the plus side MoP looks purty. The Pandaren & Monk class look solid, though I read Monk is OP, but really its just DK balancing all over again so not much to worry about. I have read good things about Pet Battles. Lore also looks solid in that from the Wrathion quest line and other such stuff it seems like not only will this expansion bring the Horde vs Alliance to a head, it will also resolve it to prepare for a greater threat (Sargeras & the burning legion).

I'm in beta, but I have been trying to avoid overplaying it and burning myself out quickly like I did with the Cataclysm beta. I find it very fun though, and enjoy the storylines, especially Chen Stormstout's quests in Valley of the Four Winds. Farming is fun and not a huge time sink at all. I stopped doing pet battles once I got my team to level 11 because I have a bad case of "gotta catch them all" and wanted to wait till release (when it actually counts) to do that. I actually found the pet battles to be a bit more challenging than I thought they would be. There are a few wild pets with some nasty abilities that can wreck your pets if you aren't careful. I haven't done any instances/raids/scenarios because I don't like grouping with people I don't know and there's a lot of idiotic people on the PVE server. The graphics are gorgeous everywhere and the Monk is pretty OP right now, but very fun. I've only played as a Windwalker, so can't speak to the healing/tanking aspect of it. I am definitely excited for this expansion and can't wait to really play it in full (doing raids, collecting nerd points, etc).