I find the opposite to be true. A stagnant game is dull. I like the world to evolve as I do things and even evolve on its own. I like it to always provide me with endless progression just like life. To me that's one of the points of an mmo not just to be start and end rpg with outher people in the back ground
Amusingly enough, WoW remains one of the most succesful and played MMOs. Even if WoW fell to, say, 2 million player mark, which I highly doubt, it's still a number most MMOs on the market nowadays can only dream of, and only a handful ever reached. WoW changed, but if it became such a cesspool as you imply, the game would have been torn to shreds years ago, given that the MMO market nears saturation. Considering that, as you imply, WoW is nowadays a catastrophic failiure, combined with a subscription model on top of a buy cost (unlike a buy to play model with additional cosmetic purchases, akin to GW2 or TESO), it would be a prime target to be picked apart by competition.
None of the competition went as far as to offer a viable alternative that would be close to Vanilla WoW, despite, as you imply, it being capable to steamroll WoW and become instant massive success.
Please, do explain why.
Might I inquire the source for the information?
Again, please, provide source for the information. If it is just an anecdote, I can counter with being able to run current WoW and GW2 at the top settings at the very same time with little trouble or problems from either game, while being able to switch back and forth with only a very short downtime.
Few people play a game to wait. Mind you, this isn't about instant gratification. If it was, I wouldn't spend three hours a day farming Argus and two hours on top of that doing PvP. This is about not having to stay put alongside several other people at a spot where a flower might spawn, so you can make a flask in order to be useful in a raid.
You start with nothing in current WoW as well. Mind you, I do not talk about alts, but a fresh new game. Even when it comes to alts, you do have the option to simply not use heirlooms and level at your own pace. Besides that, levelling at Vanilla's rate, when it is about reaching lvl110 is not viable - imagine if instead of taking 2 months to level a max character, you had to go for it for FOUR months (110/60 is nearly two, just to point out).
And finally, you could still mail your alt gold and crafted gear, or given to it via a friend, so you didn't have to always start with nothing even in Vanilla, when it wasn't your first character.
That is subjective. That being said, if you preffer it that way, good for you (and I mean that), you will get that back.
Please, provide a source where this is done without heirlooms. If you point out that heirlooms are the problem, you can always not use them. Considering that being high power at lower level is apparently the problem, not using them is the answer.
On top of that, longer dungeon duration can be problematic, as it isn't just people with heaps of time that play MMOs. I remember The Nexus taking over an hour to finish, and I actually did quite like the instance. I also do remember BRD for three hours, which definitelly wasn't worth repeating. And Maraudon runs that fell apart midway, because two of the trade-chat-made party simply didn't have two hours to spend finding their way around in a non-max-level zone, or help others find their way once someone fell down to the crocolisk boss, died and had to run the entire instance again.
My apologies, but it sounds like you wish the way other people are having fun went away and they had fun your way. Retail WoW isn't dying, just because it has fewer players than WotLK had at its peak. If it was, then I would like to inquire where all the people I see on Argus are coming from, and how come I can form a 40 man group in a minute to do an invasion point.
WoW was a miracle when it came out, because it was the casual MMO. If you expect Classic to be an instant miracle all over again, you are in for a disappointement.
I'm not sure we are talking about the same thing.
And I feel like the modern WoW provides no progression at all. Sure the scenery changes, and you're forced into the new scenery, but to me it does not feel like progression, just endless, pointless change. It's the complete opposite of real life, where your actions progress you forward—if you want to get anywhere in life you cannot just sit at home and wait for the world to bring you a new patch.I like it to always provide me with endless progression just like life.
But that was the case for every raid after bwl. You had to kill Ragnaros for the t2, but beyond that and trying to farm legendaries, there was no reason to go back.
When you moved into AQ, you were done with MC and mostly BWL. Blizz did try to give reasons to go back (Rags dropping t2, needing elementium for epic weapons in aq and legendaries across the board).
The AP grind is supplemental unless you're a.mythic raider. I play WoW because I enjoy it. I PvP, raid, mythic dungeon and wq because the game is entertaining.
So I don't feel this burn out on the grind like I've seen many, including yourself explain.
Then again, I didn't have issue with the grind in Vanilla because I do, legitimately, enjoy that sort if playstyle.
I just don't see how the grind are any different, save for what you're grinding.
Personal Preference and Opinions ≠ Facts, Truth, or Logic
I mean i played on p servers, i refuse to believe there is much A list talent in control of the project. If they had just given all the info to the p server community I'm 100% sure they would be better emulations given the same design goals (like 1.12 on everything, not how p servers did it)
Certainly they don't have the budget/mandate to actually make the game anything more than barely passable
Well, the OP was right though. It's a waste and most servers in the EU at least are more or less dead.
There are a few left that still get players but as was said from the start: It's a small gang of players. The only thing they managed to do here was split up the population and have two games with half as many players.
someone rezzed this 2 year old dusty beast.
I predict it'll pick up during each phase, some ppl wanna pvp, bgs aren't in yet, some ppl wanna pve, most of the raid content isn't in yet. my guess is that by p4 there will be a surge of players who can easily gear up alts and run all bgs if they so please. as someone who mostly just raids this phase is really boring I could have easily waited for p4 and hopped in then and progressed with zg then to mc, then to bwl.
this phase is just bland, we need zg so we have a raid that can be run multiple times a week, and therefore have reasons to log in multiple times a week. I can't be bothered to do an alt until i smell phase 4 on the horizon. I don't mind casually boosting ppl through dungeons and farming tubers but it gets a bit stale after a while.
The schadenfreude is rather lovely, especially after being told for years how it was just nostalgia, how people didn't really like it and it was just a loud handful of people, how people only played private servers because it was free and they'd never play for a sub.
Maybe people just actually like a beautiful MMORPG full of community, character progression and RPG elements. Who'd have thought it??