I know that the whole “Blizz is ruining WoW” cliché has been repeated so many times it has literally become a meme at this point, but being a player that has played since Vanilla (which I know, is also a cliché thing to say) and looking at WoW’s evolution over the past few years, I have literally no doubt left in my mind that at some point, the people who initially created WoW either left, or got moved over to work on other projects, and the people who took over were simply less talented at the craft of making and preserving an MMO. For every “good” decision they made to propel the game forward, they made twice as many “bad” ones, and over the years these bad decisions have stacked up to the point where they have almost completely ruined everything that made it great.
Yes, WoW has mechanically become better and a lot more enjoyable. A lot of the crap from vanilla such as the overly horrendous grinds and clunkiness are gone. It is a lot more fun to play now from a mechanical perspective. Your rotations and abilities are more fun and engaging compared to the old days. It is the design-philosophy of the game as a whole which has become rotten to the core. Blizzard behaves like they have no idea how to properly run an MMO. Like Athene and Sodapoppin Have said, WoW has such unlimited potential, and somehow Blizzard does not know how to capitalize on it.
I can only imagine the rage the original developers of wow must feel, seeing the game they so masterfully crafted stripped down to the bare bones and made as casual as possible to appeal to the masses.
Just look at Warlords of Draenor, and observe what this game has become.
-You rot away in your fortress of solitude called a garrison. They have managed to turn WoW into an anti-social experience where nobody talks to each other. The queuing system has made any form of social interaction completely unnecessary; people hardly bother to chat because the game does not incentivize them to.
-The open world has zero challenge. Even without heirlooms you two-shot most mobs, and they are spaced so far apart now that even trying to die is a challenge unless you jump of a cliff. Leveling has never been more boring, monotonous and unengaging.
-Nothing outside of raiding matters in terms of progression. The only thing you can obtain in the outdoor world at max level are vanity items, gold and achievements.
-Dungeons became obsolete within months of the expansions release, they had to bring back Mythic dungeons and Valor points to keep them relevant, and even then, this only lasted for a short time.
-Gear feels worthless; the upgrade system makes people groan because they rolled bad secondary stats on certain items, and badly designed trinkets can do half of your DPS in raids. The new legendary rings has caused people to view the once prestigious orange color with disdain and disgust.
-PvP is a joke; Ashran is probably the worst thing Blizzard has ever designed for the PvP community. Even Vanilla Alterac Valley was a masterwork in comparison.
-Apexis crystals have become a running gag; they represent everything that is boring, irrelevant and stupid.
-Ability Pruning has become overly excessive: players literally have 10-12 ability's on there hot bars come legion, well blizzard will say most of these ability's where useless or not needed, but they they added flavour to the class you where playing.
-Gold is literally nothing but something you have in your bags alongside currency like honour points, its there to buy vanity items like mounts and transmog gear, it is no longer a vital currency in the game to repair your gear, buy potions and reagents, buy things like arrows for hunters or poisions for rogues, gold at this point is just completely irrelivent and it should never be this way.
It just seems like blizzard has stripped down the game to almost its bare bones and removed almost everything that made the game good in the first place, it has casualised the game to the point even the most common denominator can confortably solo all of the content to max level without dying once, without learning to play his or her class, and when they reach max level they realise there is nothing to do so they leave.
I get so sad when I see what this game has become. Vanilla and TBC may have had gaping flaws, but for me they will always represent the golden age of WoW, and I honestly don’t understand how Blizzard managed to fuck up something so wonderful.
I fully agree with this video and what this guy says, he says it like i would if i made a video about the subject of vanilla servers