I want to play again, but I have a few hangups

If I were to purchase the expansion pack, does it come with the first 30 days free?

Sadly, no. But it's free to play (minus the irony of buying the xpac) But with the monthly sub like the old days you get full access to everything. f2p accounts have restrictions on things like broker, in game mail, fast travel and some other odds and ends.

There's two ways to approach it - you can buy a membership so you have no restrictions at all and access to fast travel while leveling up (map screen - top left button - brings up another map that lets you instantly travel to a lot of places). You can play all the way up to Terrors of Thalumbra (lvl100) without buying any expansions.

Alternatively - if you buy Chaos Descending (current expansion) you get all previous expansions AND a /claim item that gives you a free lvl110 - that lets you get right into current content. Before using that /claim item though you would probably want to create a few free lvl85 heroic characters to try out (they are locked to lvl85, and have a bunch of restrictions, but they do let you try out various classes until you find one you like).

I have up to Kunark I believe as far as expansion go. Would i miss out on much at lower levels?

If you haven't played for a good while I personally would not recommend jumping up to 110. It will be utterly confusing and you'll spend more time on the wiki, on the forums and asking questions in chat than you will playing the game for a long time. You would also still need to do the signature lines to get access to different zones and dungeons, harder to get groups if you haven't figured out resolve and potency.
I'd recommend getting a toon up there, then using it for an alt once you know the ropes.
You can level up to 100 pretty quickly with the Agnostic dungeons and other quest lines.
This is just my personal opinion from experience, and I know a bunch of others agree on that one.

I agree with you completely. I don't believe in level jumping. It feels like cheating myself out of an experience and others out of time answering questions. I always start at level 1. To be honest, I don't really believe in XP boosts either.

I have up to Kunark Ascending I believe as far as expansions go. Would i miss out on much at lower levels without the newest packs?

Nope, you shouldn't. There's not really anything significant added to any of the "old world" areas.

don't mind's ttobey he must's have had some bad cheese to eat's ttobey is the chief animator, he makes things move .


O yea and I forgot you need to subscribe in order to play on a time locked expansion server.
But if you have been gone for a long time this might be the way to go.

The free characters are now level 100 and you can level them up to 101 if you got the last expansion.
But they can't trade or group or anything like that , but they can be upgraded to normal toons if you like that
class.

No, there is nothing in the newest xpacs of value to new players. In fact, game up to Kunark is a lot richer in content, lore, that "magical feeling" and attention to detail than after, so you're definitely on right track of not wanting to cheat yourself out of enjoying the best the game has to offer. Don't get me wrong, couple xpacs after Kunark are still fairly good, but the decline in quality is inevitably correlated to shrinking dev team size over time. Don't do XP pots, don't do agnostic dungeons; those things are for alts.

Only downside is that you won't find much grouping on your journey up, unless you find a casual guild with somewhat of a focus on alts (there are many such mom & pop guilds). Even without such guild, unless socializing with group members is a core enjoyment requirement for you, it won't have much impact on your ability to explore the world. Mudflation made sure that all early game group content is now easy for pretty much any class with a mercenary (which is a $5? feature you probably will want to buy if u want to see heroic content this way).

People have been saying it's dead since about 2006 - and as you can see it isn't. It's still pretty good.

Game's not dead, though Ascensions bruised some people's enjoyment of the game since it put a $$$ barrier or a Time Barrier (your choice) on ever hoping to enter group content. But that can be worked through and mitigated with a friendly, active guild...usually.