Saw this post by GC, and finally, there it is, the core reason why the game sucks. The reason why I will never play it again and why the game will never be great again.
If I was the game designer, I would move heaven and earth, close down the servers and spend whatever time, money, and resources needed to redo the math to fix this fundamental flaw in the game. This reason alone is what kills all the fun of leveling, of progressing, of the essential joy found in the game.
CG - reply to a rogue concern:
"Play speed - the real issue here is the game design that requires us to reset player power to a large extent every expansion. I'll go ahead and call it a design flaw, because I think it is, but it's also a really difficult one to address and have WoW still feel like WoW. Our reward system is structured around continually offering more powerful gear, yet our combat mechanics begin to break down when say your crit chance approaches 100% and your haste becomes so high that you can fill every GCD. It's fine if say crit chance is 70% at the final tier of content, but that means we have to start every expansion with small crit chances (or have lame upgrades). It absolutely sucks though to see your combat ratings plummet when you gain a level (which is supposed to be a fun, exciting thing that you want to do). We'd love to come up with a solution where you feel more powerful at 86 than you did at 85, but math works against us. The only silver lining is that when you get to level 90 and accrue some good gear, you'll start to feel like your old self again. We'll keep trying to come up with something better."
source:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...0376?page=2#23
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This makes me so sad. They knew this problem, let it fester and kill their game. I want to play again, and am in constant lurking mode looking for something to replace the joy, whether it is back in Wow or another game. Sadly this problem is found in many similar venues, and they too struggle to deal with the math so their players don't get sucked into this black hole.
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