From a Vanilla Player: The reason why I think WoW lost its glory.

[Caelia]

As someone who also played vanilla and raided up to Naxx (missed out on 4h, Sapph and KT) I can safely say that in my opinion the game has become a lot better in every aspect.
Yes vanilla WoW was awesome and fun, but that was more to do with the fact that it was new and fresh, also I had a lot of free time at the time of vanilla so I could farm everything needed for raids etc, many of my friends didn't enjoy it as much though and either resorted to buying gold to stay competetive or simply quit playing since it required way to much time and felt more like chore or job to play.

If you ask someone who started in WotLK like so many people did, many of them will say that was the best WoW has ever been, for me WotLK was not fun at all, most likely to feeling burned out.

[Alienshroom]

Last night I came to terms with the fact that I am no longer the target demographic. I have been mostly subbed since BC and WoD was definitely a low point, but honestly Legion is not any better. All they did was ass something the game had in BC, a good end game dungeon system. The Broken Isles consist of a ghetto version of Assassins Creed with Suramar and the World Quests are just repeats. Ironically they are worse then dailys because they are just as mandatory, and twice as boring. Daily quests had atleast been new, these world quests are just repeat ones you already did getting to 110. And with the legendary coming out of item boxes its kinda of required to do your emissary quest, meaning they will be mandatory for awhile. Its a lot less work, for a very small chance at a great reward. Unlike old daily systems where it was a lot of work, but generally for no longer then a month for a great reward like a unique mount model among various other things over the years.

[Extremities]

That might be true, but they need Cross realms to survive.

How? Plenty of servers have a huge population. THe servers that struggle, maybe merge them together? Simple solution.

I agree with the OP. This Cross Realm shit has killed any sense of community within WoW. I couldn't tell you a single name of a player on my server right now(Sargeras) aside from people in my guild. Blizzard has gone backwards when it comes to community and building one. It's gone and its a shame. Back in Vanilla and TBC, I could tell you TONS of names and that was because you grew as a community with each other. You played together, got to know people. That was when it was great.

[Alvorea]

I dont see how some check box in a giant tree of mainly passive abilities makes one thing more fun than another. those talent trees were pick and forget, i hardly even cared to look at them unless a patch re balanced things.

Can you ever have arcane missiles and critical mass from fire nowdays? Or even, shatter and cast a Pyro Blast? back then you defined yourself, you didn't have to pick up labels. If you only cast fire spells, you are a fire mage, and that was enough, It had alot of passives I agree, but you had free of choices on stacking here and there or even picking up from all tree talent specs. It was fun.

[Deleted]

My god, why do people feel the need to blabber on about WoW losing it's ''glory'' all the time? If I play Mario Kart for years then of course that shit is going to get boring. The same happens when you play WoW a lot: eventually, you will start feeling different about it then when you started playing... Currently WoW is in one of it's better states objectively: we have a lot of content, classes are actually different again, quests are diverse and unique, voice acting is almost everywhere, we have a story that isn't ''hey go kill that guy from War3 you know because he went mad for reasons'', et cetera. Also a lot of the developers are different people now, so new content is bound to feel different if only because of that.

As for not being to make a frost/fire mage anymore: sad that you can't but it was ultimately useless because you were proficient at neither spec. Plus it was rarely done, people were always looking up the best build for maximum damage. I do think removing spells like ''remove curse'' and ''eyes of the beast'' (;- was a bit overkill, but mana barrier isn't something I really miss. Evocation is still in the game by the way, just only arcane mages use it because mana matters to them.
You can still choose your profession and your gear, so I'm not really sure what that is all about

I do think some classes got easier (frost DK's...), but others actually got more complex (like Ret, which was just ''hit whichever of your four spells isn't on cooldown'' a few expansions ago).

[Extremities]

Last night I came to terms with the fact that I am no longer the target demographic. I have been mostly subbed since BC and WoD was definitely a low point, but honestly Legion is not any better. All they did was ass something the game had in BC, a good end game dungeon system. The Broken Isles consist of a ghetto version of Assassins Creed with Suramar and the World Quests are just repeats. Ironically they are worse then dailys because they are just as mandatory, and twice as boring. Daily quests had atleast been new, these world quests are just repeat ones you already did getting to 110. And with the legendary coming out of item boxes its kinda of required to do your emissary quest, meaning they will be mandatory for awhile. Its a lot less work, for a very small chance at a great reward. Unlike old daily systems where it was a lot of work, but generally for no longer then a month for a great reward like a unique mount model among various other things over the years.

Spoken like someone who want's things to come easy, things given to them on a silver platter.

[Alvorea]

Last night I came to terms with the fact that I am no longer the target demographic. I have been mostly subbed since BC and WoD was definitely a low point, but honestly Legion is not any better. All they did was ass something the game had in BC, a good end game dungeon system. The Broken Isles consist of a ghetto version of Assassins Creed with Suramar and the World Quests are just repeats. Ironically they are worse then dailys because they are just as mandatory, and twice as boring. Daily quests had atleast been new, these world quests are just repeat ones you already did getting to 110. And with the legendary coming out of item boxes its kinda of required to do your emissary quest, meaning they will be mandatory for awhile. Its a lot less work, for a very small chance at a great reward. Unlike old daily systems where it was a lot of work, but generally for no longer then a month for a great reward like a unique mount model among various other things over the years.

Maybe that is it, I am not the demographic target anymore. This is more likely actually.

[Alvito]

I can't imagine how the game can possibly be dumber now, when dps rotation was hitting 1 button that throws a missile, may it be frost bolt, fire bolt or shadow bolt.

Sure you had lots of spells, most of which were utterly pointless because they dealt next to no damage in the wrong spec, or worse, took up a debuff slot on raid bosses, (back when you couldn't apply unlimited number of debuffs, which was SO MUCH FUN for sure btw).

Talents offered an illusion of choice, with some talents mandatory while others were outright pointless and impossible to use in any build. Waiting 50+ levels to get your spec's signature move made the game slow and clunky.

All WoW has lost is archaic game mechanics.

People confuse a lot of poor choice with better game design. This is about the same as a child thinking 2 pennies are worth more then a quarter.

[Pull My Finger]

Hello, in advance I would like to apologize about my english, it is not my native language and I may not be able to completely explain what I want to.

Now, returning to play Legion, and I found out something really sad about the game and the way it is heading, I have every class character past level 80, and it is something that happened across the board on all characters that I have: The game is moving towards a complete dumbed down and simplified version of what it was years ago.

Stopped reading. Same old blah and factually wrong. YAWN

[Apsychicrat]

Can you ever have arcane missiles and critical mass from fire nowdays? Or even, shatter and cast a Pyro Blast? back then you defined yourself, you didn't have to pick up labels. If you only cast fire spells, you are a fire mage, and that was enough, It had alot of passives I agree, but you had free of choices on stacking here and there or even picking up from all tree talent specs. It was fun.

they had to change that because letting people go too hog wild is to hard to balance. all classes should be with in a 5% standard deviation of each other. people should be more upset that some classes outstrip each other more than they should be upset that they cant cast fie and frost spells at the same time.

[xhisors]

Players Logic:
BC: TOO HARD BLIZZ NURF IT
Wotlk: TOO EZ BLIZZ GG
Cata: TOO HARD BLIZZ NURF IT
MoP: TO MANY DAILIES BLIZZ STAHP
WoD: NOTHING TO DO BUT AFK IN GARRISON
Legion: TO MUCH DAILY REP GRIND AND ARTIFACT GRIND STAHP BLIZZ

Everyone wonders why this game is how it is.. Only ones to blame is all the people who QQ on forums(here and official) instead of just enjoying the game for what it is, and its honestly not what people make it out to be.

[potis]

WoW is exactly the same it was years ago, not a single thing has changed playwise apart from the fact "information, and QoL.

The only thing that changed is the info, and the accessibility of things making everything "faster" for everyone.

Back in Vanilla, 0.01% knew the existence of elitist jerk forums and how to discuss tactics and new things found that the "average WoW player" shouldnt know.

Back in TBC, MMO champion appeared and did the same thing with a more WoWish, prettier theme, from 0.01% the 0.1% knew the existence of mmo-champion.

At the end of TBC they unlocked their files and data mining became a thing and MMO Champion became so overly famous, along with another site, what was it? World of Raids?

The easier to read mmo-champion won the battle of data miners and became oh so famous.

Stop acting like a special snowflake.

The game is simply much more accessible and the information is so widespread thats why everything happens faster.

If LFG is removed, if data mining is removed, you are gonna have 99% of WoW population running around in 800 ilevel, crying about taking 2 hours to find a dungeon group and 3 hours to do a simple group quest.

Everything was changed for QoL improvements..The whole delusion of talents and bullshit every single times astonishes me.

Fact is, if you had a different spec than the top mages in your server, you were running Karazhan when others were running Sunwell, you special snowflake.

[Heladys]

12 years ago most people didn't go online to look up the best talent builds, they took what looked exciting.

Hahahahaha. No.

12 years ago people took the very specific talent selection that was proven by theorycrafters to be the most productive. End of story.

If you freeformed it you didn't' perform, and you weren't recruited at all or weren't invited back after your first performance.

[Extremities]

Players Logic:
BC: TOO HARD BLIZZ NURF IT
Wotlk: TOO EZ BLIZZ GG
Cata: TOO HARD BLIZZ NURF IT
MoP: TO MANY DAILIES BLIZZ STAHP
WoD: NOTHING TO DO BUT AFK IN GARRISON
Legion: TO MUCH DAILY REP GRIND AND ARTIFACT GRIND STAHP BLIZZ

Everyone wonders why this game is how it is.. Only ones to blame is all the people who QQ on forums(here and official).

The game is the way it is because of the players, I agree. People cry about everything. Sadly.

I miss the days that epics were rare, exclusive to raiders and weren't handed out like candy, I miss the days of leveling actually taking some time, I miss the days of actually getting to know people on your server. Times have changed and in my opinion, only for the worse.

[FelPlague]

warlocks was one of the classes with the most spells in vanilla and bc

yet our rotation was one of the most simple... curse and basically shadowbolt (abit of dot in BC) we wernt allowed to put up dots in vanilla cause our dots were shit in comparison to other things that needed to be on the boss

a large spellbook does not equal difficulty/complexity... we had a ton of curses... but it was obvious what one to use, and some of them were literally never used except for like one fight

[Heladys]

I miss the days that epics were rare, exclusive to raiders and weren't handed out like candy

So never, given that world epics were the first epics in anyone's hands.

[Dug]

Coming from another Vanilla player: Who cares? Play if you like the current game or don't?

Also I'm so tired of hearing about the old talents. There has always been an optimal way to build, always. Who gives a damn if you could experiment and that's what you liked to do? You still weren't going to be invited by try hards that want everything as optimal and efficient as possible and I don't blame them. You can still experiment with talents and suboptimal builds today and guess what? You'll still not get invited to run content.

[Deleted]

We need legacy servers.

It would make everyone happy and end all these discussions.

[Apsychicrat]

The game is the way it is because of the players, I agree. People cry about everything. Sadly.

I miss the days that epics were rare, exclusive to raiders and weren't handed out like candy, I miss the days of leveling actually taking some time, I miss the days of actually getting to know people on your server. Times have changed and in my opinion, only for the worse.

I have a few gripes with this mentality as i see it arise again and again.

1:why in gods name does it matter if people other than your self have purple pixels on their gear? would you prefer all gear that is dropped by things to be blue and purple only be dropped by each end tier content group (for example M+10 dungeons and mythic raids) cuz that doesnt change anything really. the purpleness of your pixels has been supplanted by item level. get better gear and show off your epeen that way.

2.leveling taking forever is just boring. is that a problem? sure and can be worked on. but blizz has clearly deciced that isnt their direction and i agree with them. the game is end game, not the useless time i spent getting there.

3and finally people keep saying "oh i dont know anyone on my server anymore and its cuz the game is bad" that is 0% wows fault, you sir/mam have chosen to no longer engage with others on the server. thats your choice. not wows choice. you can do it again right now. log on, talk to people, make a friend. literally nothing is stopping that. in fact blizz has only been trying harder to make it possible to play with people your friends with no matter what server they are on. so please. stop saying this.

[ryast]

Hello, in advance I would like to apologize about my english, it is not my native language and I may not be able to completely explain what I want to.
My name is Gabriel, and I play WoW since late Vanilla or early The Burning Crusade, and World of Warcraft always been with me since then. I had breaks, like most of you, and skipped only one expansion, Warlords of Draenor, mainly because the aesthetic and lore was not interesting to me that time.
Now, returning to play Legion, and I found out something really sad about the game and the way it is heading, I have every class character past level 80, and it is something that happened across the board on all characters that I have: The game is moving towards a complete dumbed down and simplified version of what it was years ago.
In my point of view, what made WoW interesting, was not dailies or rep farming, or all the grind related, end game is used to be the boring part actually. WoW was more interesting because how I could, with hard work, differentiate my characters, like, my mage, from every other mage in my realm. I am not talking aesthetically only, but my build chosen, profession chosen, my gear chosen, the number of spells available to me for different purposes other than damage itself (remember amplify magic? Buffs? Mana Shield? Evocation?). Those spells made playing Mage something interesting, It was like, if you had enough time playing and learning your class, you could really be better than the other mage guy by just using your arsenal wiser. I could be half frost and half fire before specializations, I could have Ice Barrier and Fire Nova by going down both talent trees, trying different things was fun, PvP and PvE wise.
I know their intention is to make the game easier for new people, but they should not forget that when we once started playing back then, what made us enjoy the game itself was this same complexity that is going lost progressively. I feel like BG's nowadays are no different than a match of Counter-Strike, no trinkets procs, no profession stuffs and no anything that would make you feel different from the other guy, where all are the same thing and what really matters is your skill, internet connection and communication. It is good to have your skills in such a place where they are essential for the gameplay, but your time investing should be rewarded with a more personalized, customized and fun experience with your character.
I don't know if I made myself clear, but it is like, I had a deeper relation with my main character back then, and now he is just another dumbed down version of itself that runs around with different clothing thanks to transmog.
Thanks for listening, but it is not like I am on a nostalgia crysis, It is like the game lost the passion the people had on designing it and are making their jobs easier by just creating a less organic gameplay environment.

This is also very true. You do not know anyone from your realm anymore, the ones that are best at their doing etc.

Ps.: Even Artifact weapons is bad in my opinion, you end up being with the same very weapon as everyone else. Not fun at all.

Now, if you actually played the game, you would know that wow is actually a very complex game right now, relative to prior expansions. With your vanilla preface, I just knew reading this close-minded view would be comical.