One thing Blizzard has mentioned in their 2013 Q2 earnings call was that they wanted to make the process of rejoining the game smoother.
With that in mind, I feel that most of any potential for confusion or frustration that a player may feel when returning to the game is caused by how overwhelming returning may be. This is further exasperated by the fact that there is not as much direction in the game as there could be.
When 5.3 was going to come out, Bashiok (one of Blizzard's Community Managers) wrote an amazing post about Catching Up to 5.3, but because the percentage of the community that actually visits the forums is a minority, I feel that this beautiful piece of writing was missed by a large portion of the community.
What I would've preferred (and what I would like to see implemented for the future) is a series of "Recap Quests" for characters that haven't logged in since before a patch was launched, to give them some more direction, in-game, to allow them to continue their adventures without getting lost off the starting line.
With all that in mind, I'd like to preface my quest designs with the following:
Preface
When patch 5.1 came out, whenever a character traveled to the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, they were presented with the quest Meet the Scout. This quest introduced them to the story line of 5.1, Landfall.
Meet the Scout brought players to Krasarang Wilds to herald the arrival of their respective faction's military. This then lead into the daily quests of the zone to deliver the story development of Garrosh's quest for power, Anduin's quest to stop him, and each factions quest to inflict as much damage to each other as possible.
In patch 5.2, The Thunder King, Meet the Scout stopped being auto-granted to players and Thunder Calls was granted instead. Thunder Calls brought players to either Scout Captain Elsia or Vereesa Winderunner in Townlong Steppes to secure a base on the Isle of Thunder to stop the Zandalari Trolls and Thunder King, Lei Shen, from retaking Pandaria.
In 5.3, Escalation, Thunder Calls stopped being offered and War is Coming was offered instead. This quest chain is probably the best one of the three to introduce the story of the patch, utilizing directive quest chains and the amazing story telling potential that both phasing and scenarios offer.
Upon receiving the quest you visited Lorewalker Cho in the Vale of the Eternal Blossoms who told you the story of King Varian Wrynn's adventures in Dun Morogh, and Garrosh's dig teams in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, afterwhich, you are sent to Durotar to assist the Darkspear Trolls and Alliance against Garrosh's Kor'kron forces.
In conclusion, the problem with this style of delivery is that the Isle of Thunder content (and to a lesser extent the Krasarang Wilds content) was still relevant when 5.3 came out. So while the Battlefield: Barrens quests did help alts and newer players acquire gear to catch up their characters, it didn't continue to offer players the Isle of Thunder content (content that is no longer "current," meaning, the most recent content of a patch).
I have friends currently who don't know what to do to get to the Isle of Thunder's dailies, because they took a break during 5.1 and didn't return until 5.3 (when Thunder Calls was no longer being auto-accepted into player's logs).
Project
The reason I mentioned the Catching Up to 5.3 article earlier, is because if the information provided here was provided to players as quests in-game, there would be much less confusion on what to do to catch up after an absence, and it would hit a wider audience than only those who frequent the forums.
My proposed change to how these quests are delivered is to utilize the Hero Boards that were used during Cataclysm in Orgrimmar and Stormwind.
If a character is logging in for the first time since a patch has released, and hasn't done Meet the Scout, Thunder Calls, or War is Coming, they'll receive a series of quests, as designed below, to continue their adventures.
http://brolothart.blogspot.com/p/quests.html
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