Returning (again) Help with giving me a sense of I can do to improve game play experience.

I just babble a bit below so for quick to the point questions, just look for the bullet points.

I've been playing WoW on and off over the years, and big surprise I want to play again. I mean how can I not ride the free flame panther mount at least once?

Quick info of me just so you know how incompetent I am and thus all the dumb questions. To start I have yet to buy a sub, so I'm not sure how WoW is as of right now, but rather how it was late July.

I'm a hunter around 70-80 I don't remember. Since level 15 I've been trying to get a jewel panther mount (onyx), but still need to level up to 90 or so. I play WoD if that helps? I got bored grinding so much for this mount I ran off to explore and in doing so I leveled up cooking, fishing, and a tiny bit of medic crafting, smelting, as well as jewl crafting. I never really payed attention to anything at all, just screwing around in the Eastern Kingdom, and this other place I sail to for copper runs.

Any who I never saw much of a challenge with the game before, but back then I never considered I'm the only class with a bow, so of course it's easy. It's only till recently I really wanted to get my hands dirty with it.

• Given my hunter class what can I do to make the game more challenging?

• I'm curious of the Valantine's day event that's coming up, what exactly are events (never partook in them, plus I'm so on/off I miss many) are they just unique loot week, bunch of exp week, etc?

• How do I get the big pink rocket mount, I imagine it's a dungeon loot so can I solo it, if not or yes how do I prep for this dungeon or a dungeon in general?

• I skimmed through the raids 101 and how to gear up links in the side bar, I have no idea what it's talking about. So for starters how do I even begin to get a sense of what I should focus on first, I'm level 70-80, ( I think) and it's a bit overwhelming.

• The biggest reason I want to return playing is so I can learn more about the lore, so I took up archaeology right before I "quit" for good, ha. So my question is, how lore deep is this game and forgive me for such a weird worded and noob question, but is there an old lore? Apparently older players I know in person mumble about how the older WoW was better. When they talk about this I assume WoW just undergone update after update, but this WoW movie (have not seen yet) seems to deal with the old WoW, or so I'm told, which makes me think that a massive change to the lore and game play happened or something, not sure.

• Why do some people say that the older WoW is better or something, what's the difference between the old and new here?

• Why do they keep updating class kit so drastically sometimes? I used to have a sticky web trap, but now it's gone. Yes game balancing is one thing, but to be so drastic?

• How do I get into the PvP world, and things I should know of before hand?

• I mostly bide my time and explore doing quest here and there, but mostly fishing, cooking, mining, etc. I feel like I'm playing the game weirdly like I should be prepping for a raid or grinding. I just don't have a sense of direction, is there a general path to WoW or do most solo players just do what I do, or a variation of it.

Edit: Another question, How do people get such cool gear? Does the transmog catalog show all the gear I can get or it's limited to a few special cases? I want something to fit my onyx panther or magma panther in the the distant future, but hunter apparel never looked flashy.

Thanks for your time.