Its as simple as this Blizzard is becoming a new EA... on the bad things. Their best teams\staff left quite some time ago (some went and made Flagship Studios, the rest went for ArenaNet). Imo Blizzard lost their originality, and game superiority... their just falling into decadence (game making originality I mean... not financial
), and WoW proves just that, as well as vapouring Starcraft Ghost.
As for the monthly fees to play WoW, I can only say its a fairly large amount of rubbish.
I play Guildwars... I payed for the game once, and dont have to bother about it ever again. I can play today, and play again after 1 year without playing. The player base is as big as WoWs, the servers work just as fine, and we get our updates regularly.
Only things I had to pay for were the stand alone expansions, and I only payed for them if I wanted obviously (if I didnt buy them, I just wouldnt have access to some content), which used to come out every 6 months, the final one is being released this summer, and then its 3 years untill GW2.
Even funnier is that even with the paying for "server upkeep", Blizzard still manages to have problems with players accounts, from what I hear from players.
Heck the choice is easy