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

[Laqweeta]

Classic was a single viable talent spec per class and 1-3 buttons, tops.

I was Shadow Mastery/Ruin most of classic, you threw up a couple of dots and fell alseep on Shadowbolt.

Classic nostalgia, as someone who bought the game a week after launch, has and always will be horseshit.

Oh hey that's like current BM Hunter c:

[Marmot]

Regarding ops comment about artifacts making everyone have the same weapon - before Legion all 2h users had the same weapon, all 1h users had the same weapon, all hunters had the same weapon, all casters had the same weapon, all shield users had the same shields. With artifacts every spec in the game uses a different weapon, each of which has multiple skin choices with a bit of work. How is that worse than what we had before? There's more variety.

[kary]

Regarding ops comment about artifacts making everyone have the same weapon - before Legion all 2h users had the same weapon, all 1h users had the same weapon, all hunters had the same weapon, all casters had the same weapon, all shield users had the same shields. With artifacts every spec in the game uses a different weapon, each of which has multiple skin choices with a bit of work. How is that worse than what we had before? There's more variety.

OP was one of those guys that prob didnt think BiS gearing was a thing.

[Redecle]

There's only one point that i can really agree with the op.
That's the fact the some customization options have been reduced via the aging of the game.
Not that wow has never really been the dream of character customization in the first place, if you really compare it to some other actual RPGs.

Sure it has had it's ups and downs along the way, and now that we are in Legion some points are actually best they've ever been since launch.
Quite of lot of them are. In my opinion pvp is in the best place it has ever been, the fact that you only bring your skill to the table is the best thing they could have done.
The fact that items have a minimal effect is great, your gear doesn't do your work for you. No matter how hard or long you've grinded or got lucky with some trinket.
Obviously the classes still need balancing, but they have a layout to do that balance without breaking the rest of the game in the process.
World pvp is a handful. for those who've desired it for so long. You really can't do anything in the world without having to wpvp. At least where i come from.
If you're lacking maybe try a server that is not your faction balance favored, come to us where the balance is 8:1 for enemy even with crz and shared realms, you won't be able to avoid wpvp. The trinkets and procs, the weird specs or op classes that make you one shot, like vanilla rogues. That has nothing to do with pvp. I'm sure it's fun for a while for the person capable doing it, but it doesn't have anything to do with pvp, cause there's no pvp in it, no counters, just a corpse run. The op classes are still present in Legion, well now the system allows easier balancing and immediate nerf bats have already been hit. But complete nerfing isn't a good thing either. Balance is the only word that pvp should be related to and sadly i don't think that's ever going to happen. Balance doesn't mean that every class should counter every class, but amongst the 13 classes there's a balance, certain harmony. Sure everyone plays for themselves, you play for your entertainment, but this is an MMO. In that sense there's is no just you. You cannot win everything, everytime, cause it would make the game horrible for everyone else.

The world quest system is the best iteration of dailies, nothing even compares close. If you're looking back on this TBC was absolutely the worst era when it comes to dailies. This system still needs constant updating and work, but it's in a good place and a good start, hopefully it's kept up-to-date all expansion.

Raiding the other end game activity. I can't really say much about it, since my raiding days ended in Firelands, but from what i've heard from all level of raiders, WoD that might have failed otherwise served some of the best raiding content in the game to date. I'm sure Legion will continue that trend. Xavius mythic dying on the first day, was a little let down. But it really was the entry level raid, so that was to be expected. I speak for the different difficulties, sure it makes gear loose some value, cause everyone has epics, but personally i've never cared about the gear. It's not a representation of the player or their skill. All it says that you were there, who knows what you've done there. Unless you've got some merit that you actually were world first, or whatever the cutting edge is. That puts a little respect in to it, cause it was done with sub optimal gear, highly likely. Towards the end of WoD seeing the Archimonde mount for example was everywhere, you could buy that and it was doable by a lot of people. During vanilla seeing someone with epics, they did show some status, but it was still a status that nearly anyone could get with a little effort. It was hard, but it wasn't that hard. You needed contacts, guild and determination. Same things you need today if you want to raid. The difficulty most of the time was actually logistics of the 40 man. Something that i'd actually like back, 40 man groups or 60 man groups or 100 man raid groups. It would be cool, but on the other hand that would not work in WoW in a million years, not with this community, not with the loot systems, it just wouldn't work just looking at how much trouble mythic being 20 man is causing to some guilds. And having cesspool guilds being the only one able to raid for member count isn't something anyone wants to see.

The cross realm is a savior of the game to some and a nightmare to others. One problem is the character naming policy, if the dead realms would have just been shutdown. Who gets what name on the new realm, that already is one part of the much talked lost of customization, it all starts from the name of the character. Only real way to fix or start fixing it would have been introducing surnames. From a roleplay perspective, the current situation is a nightmare on it's own. We have all kinds of words as names that have nothing to do with a name. It's clearly something not everyone cares about. The server communities. I've never really understood this, or in a way i have, but i've played on several realms rp ones included and not on one there has been a server wide community ever. There's were the same aholes yelling and arguing in trade every day, same guys ganking opposite faction, etc. Sure you'd recognize the names more often that not, but that's all the length the community had.
The communities were always the guilds and that hasn't changed, well it has changed in a way that newer generations have entered the game, who are different, they play different. For me the communities have always been in guilds, sure i still remember one orc fury warrior from TBC who used to gank people in Halaa, every day, all day. It's not something you forget, but i didn't feel any part of community with that player, only thing is i remember the name and that he was an ahole and so does the rest of the server. LFD might have broken the need to communicate with your realm to party up for a dungeon, but hey Legion brought that back with mythic and mythic+. Well the tool is there, but you can advertise in /trade if you want. It's up to you what's more convenient.

The ease of play or skill involved. Already said on the thread, number of abilities doesn't define the skill level. You can have 70 abilities all keybound, it doesn't make you a skillful player. That got way out of hand during the end of WotLK and Cata. Pointless abilities that were highly situational, that people ended up macroing cause there was no room on the bars. That's not skill, it's bloat. It's not even choice, it's bloat. If we look at pvp, that's so much more than just doing your rotation involved. Same with raiding, if we look at vanilla, i'm pretty sure it wasn't GLORIOUS to be a mage in the 40man just to keep pushing one button to dispel all night long, or a warlock to keep that one curse up that was your only job. Or be a druid with 4 specs to choose from, but all you were allowed to play in the raid was resto. Granted there are 2 button specs in the game, but there's still some specs that are complicated as **** even in Legion to play well. For raiding lot of the difficulty shifted in to the bosses from your abilities, when you go back to raids like molten core now, no matter if you oneshot everything at 110 if you look at the encounters themselves, holy moly they are boring. No, doing lfr is not hard, but i don't see 5 million players clearing out mythic Emerald Dream currently either. So at least raid difficulties have more choice.

Last point is the gear. As i said already, don't care for it, never really have.
If there's one point that i would like to be changed it is this, remove gear entirely from the game. That meaning stats based on gear.
Put the stats on the character, you gain agility or strength +1 on the character not on your gear you put on, you gain mastery, you gain it on the character. Gear is nothing more that a visual representation of your character. You want a green shirt you go kill a boss for it or you craft it or buy it or whatever, but that's all you get, a green shirt. You want +12 agility or +15k mana you go and you train you heart out by hitting them boars in the woods until you get a button on your character sheet to increase the stat permanently. It doesn't go away or change to another stat when you change your shirt or pants. If you earned a skill point or secondary skill point it's there til the end of time. That's all i have on that subject.

The glory days and what was lost.. Part of the customization as i said.
It feels like a loss to go from 40 talents to what 21, absolutely, but the thing to remember is that most of those talents in the 40 trees were actual garbage. Pointless. The end ones were a achievement to get, but you had to go through the pointless ones. More choice, which is good, but for it to be a choice it needs to have a meaning other than just 'it let's you unlock this'. On the artifact talents i agree sort of, cause there's no choice. We will end up with them all eventually. In what order there's choice, but already most of them have a cookie cutter order, much like the old trees, too many specs have clear cookie cutters. If you get all, in the end there's no choice. To be counted as an RPG i'd say there has to be choice and in that sense wow is hanging in there, barely. And it's not just the talents, this includes the base stats, secondary stats, starting from that character name to your visual representation (outfit/transmog). Something that the transmog system actually does right. In vanilla no one was personal, if you raided everyone wore the same gear in the tier. Now your outfit doesn't define what you do, it define's who you are. Some outfits are more popular than others and seen alot, but at least if you want to stand out there's over 10 years of worth of choices to build your own set.
I don't want blatantly just more choices like we had in the past, i want more meaningful choices that are equally balanced. Sure i'd go back to 40 tree talent tree, but every single talent should, no they must be a hard choice. Like if you take this you loose that, well i can't loose that, but i need this. And if you think that from a developer perspective, it's a nightmare to balance. In a way we have that large tree now, we have the normal talents 21, we have pvp talents 21?, we have artifact talents, and we even have the glyphs. Half of that just isn't a choice, artifact will all be unlocked and 70% of the talents there are percentual damage increase to your main abilities, that's not a talent, that's something that should be baked as baseline in to your ability cause you are obviously forced to take it anyway. Glyphs to an extend are currently a true representation of choice, they change how abilities work, a lot of them change visuals only, but some of them actually change how your ability works. That's the best kind of choice, it doesn't add button bloat, but affects game play. We can have talents that add a few abilities sure, but all the rest should be modifiers that change other things by replacing. That's my idea of perfect talent tree. A great example of a good talent tree row could come from disc priest for example. Their spell, Penance that has gone through several changes with glyphs and talents and now the current form in Legion. The example of the talent row: Penance, which is a channeled spell that does holy damage, 1st choice you can now cast Penance while moving (this used to a glyph), 2nd choice is your Penance heals targeted friendly target (this is the current talent choice called The Penitent), 3rd choice also current choice called Castigation, which adds one "bolt" of damage to the spell over the duration. There's 3 choices to one ability, mobility, utility or damage. That's a choice, damage might win or wait it might not if you need extra healing or you need to move constantly, granted disc healing is damage, but the idea is there.