Limited play time means having to approach WoW with two things in mind:
1. Planning goes a long way
I'll going into planning later - but suffice to say that if you work out what you want to do ahead of time you'll use your time better... which leads into point...
2. Expectations matter
WoW like many things in life rewards you for the time you put in. But (at least I'm hoping) it will still reward you even if you don't have as much time to play... as long as you curb your expectations to the time you have available. You won't be able to conquer the end game, you won't be able to have all latest and greatest gear - but you should be able to relax, enjoy yourself, make some (all-be-it slow) progress and see all the vast things that exist in WoW. In many respects I'm looking forward to the change.
If you were to classify me as a gamer I fit right into Bartle's Exploration category. In WoW this still holds true - I like to see and do all there is to do. On my main realm I have one character of each class (at differing levels... I still haven't run deadmines with a shaman) - I have at different points in time raided, roleplayed, PvPed, played in the arena, have all the professions. The one gaping hole I have here is that I have never really been able to play on the Horde side of the fence (but I put that down to pragmatism of having limited timed so it makes more sense to level my alts in an environment where I already have resources available).
When you apply the Explorer philosohpy to raiding however it gets a little murky because there has to be some dedication and focus to be able to get the gear to be able to do so (and even more so when you're a (warrior) tank... which is what my main is). So when I finally got WotLK at Christmas I put aside most of my explorer tendancies and focused on my warrior almost exclusively so I could finally get into raiding (and it's always easier to find a group as a tank - which as I learnt as an undergeared hunter dps back in Vanilla WoW and hence rolled the only tank available at the time).
So when I hit 80 I had expectations and a goal in mind... and after six or so months of hard work gearing up - I finally got into a guild that was doing some raiding and got to experience all those nice goodies of raiding that I hadn't been able to previously. But that was after a good while of frustration searching for a guild (I play in the minority of the minority in terms of time - and I wasn't able to start raiding the minute I got home from work).
But now? Raiding - I could do because I had the time to put into gearing up, finding a guild and being able to commit to raiding more or less regularly. Now I don't have the time to even really start and finish a 5 man dungeon (although I did 'help out' my guild with a 10 man ToC for about 30 minutes - help out meaning I filled the last slot and did some bad dps... I've never actually geared properly for a dps role and I'm way being - despite that we did down Northrend Beasts a first for me!). However being so focused - most of the extra things you can do in WoW fell by the way side. So while I enjoy raiding and the gearing process (though I'm unsure that I would gear up a tank again...) I am looking forward to being able to explore the rest of WoW - solo some of the old world content, get an epic flier - and subsequently fill up my stable, finally become a chef, become Dora, and lastly (or maybe firstly) do some leveling of those alts.
We'll see if I can manage my expectations.
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