From my playtime and what I see from others , there is story in wow but its really pushed to the back of the picture so to say.
The story in the oldest bits of WoW wasn't particulary epic. Most of the time while leveling you were either reduced to an errand boy or a pest exterminator ("kill 12 of x because I want them dead and come back to me for a reward" type of quests). Towards the end, things got a little better, you had the Battle for Darrowshire quest chain for example, the Linken quest (which is a bit silly as it's basically a Nintendo/Zelda homage, but still fun), a number of dungeon-centric quest chains and so on.
But you're right that the story didn't play a large role in oldskool WoW. Things got a little better in Burning Crusade since Blizzard knew more about how to create interesting quests, but other than the introductionary movie, most players would reach 70 without ever learning who Illidan was, or any of his backstory - as they probably didn't all play through the War3 games.
If you did the Netherwing quests you got a bit more of a feel for him, but still overall story wasn't very prominent.
In Lich King, Blizzard was fully aware of this problem, and took it to heart and made sure you knew who you were fighting, and why. You get to see the Lich King multiple times through questing, you learn of his history, who he was before he fell from grace and so on. Story is very much at the forefront.
Even in the starter zones you get to learn more of the game's lore. We find out that Humans are descendants (or essentially mutant offspring) of a race of viking-like beings called Vrykul, and that Gnomes were originally mechanical constructs that served the Titan creators (the immensely powerful god-like entities who re-shaped the planet Azeroth into what it is now - except, the Night Elves blew it up and sunk about half of the original continent underwater, lol...)
The next tier of zones has the Alliance walk in the past footsteps of Prince Arthas. We get to see how he betrays his own men and the orders of his father, the King, by burning the ships that were to take them back home to Lordaeron, and later, taking up the cursed blade, Frostmourne, which transformed him into the first Death Knight. Later, Arthas, firmly under the command of the Lich King, would murder his own father, sack the capital and set out on a crusade leading the legions of the undead against his own people, until he finally would end up merging completely with the Lich King, the two becoming one and destroying Arthas forever.
There's also a long story about part of the Horde rebelling and killing major NPCs, a siege on a capital city, learning of an ancient and unfathomably evil Old God entity corrupting the continent and its denizens, and that one of the Titan guardians is now helping this Old God. Later it continues with Troll lore, how they succumb to evil and wickedness by destroying their own future to fight the undead plague. More Titan lore is found in other zones, and a rather long quest chain involving the Lich King's discarded heart and a ghostly little boy who may or may not be Prince Arthas' disembodied conscience, or perhaps an apparition of Yogg-Saron's (the evil god trapped underneath the continent).
Still with me?
So there's a LOT of story and lore in the latest expansion. And with Cataclysm, Blizzard is re-making the original world in the same vein with new quests that aren't just "collect 15 Blood Scalp Troll Ears so I can put them on a string and then give you 35 silver"...
Blizzard is reportedly going to bring story and lore back to the old world in a big way (if that's the right way to put it, since story and lore wasn't ever really part of it to begin with.
In Warcraft, yes, but not in WoW.)
TOR interests me because of the full VO and the complete story arc for each class . DCU interests me because it will follow dc characters and have a story line going through that you play in.
I'm interested in other MMOs as well, Warhammer and WH40k (which isn't released yet) for example, but I've invested so much in WoW already and I don't have enough time in a day to play every dang MMO out there, so I have to concentrate on one at a time.
Some day WoW will undoubtedly lose its appeal with me and I'll move on, but I'm not quite there yet.
I believe the DX11 stuff is only on a prototype stage so far and most of it is really buggy/crashy. There's an example video linked earlier in this thread showing off dynamic sunrays, but I don't think that effect requires DX11.
Maybe Blizzard will decide to support tesselation? That'd be something worth writing home about!
