What drove you away from WoW?

[hatefiend]

Listen up everyone. I will completely explain the reasons why World of Warcraft has gone downhill over the past few years.


* Welfare Epics:

When you played World of Warcraft and realized how hard it was to get decent "Rare" quality items, the idea of obtaining an "Epic" item really did feel EPIC. I remember researching of rare drop chances, items made by crafting, and all of them took unbelievable amounts of time, dedication, and money to obtain. It was so hard that some individuals who didn't have those requirements felt unsatisfactory; not being able to feel 'epic'. When Blizzard saw the stagnation of their subscriptions, they realized that they could open the floodgates and make epic items FAR easier to obtain, which in turn would give them a much higher playerbase. This change, though gradual throughout Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, severely impacted how we view items today.

* "Bump the level cap" Mindset:

Every single expansion featured the 'oh so wonderful' experience of leveling up 5-10 more levels, experiencing new content, new lands, all with new spells and abilities. We say good bye to our level 60 epics and trade them in for greens, blah blah. A second time around in WOTLK, this got very old. Well, why did it work in Burning Crusade and not WOTLK, Cata, or MOP? In Burning Crusade on mid-high population servers, player vs. player combat in the world was one of the most exciting breaks from the questing experience. In Catacylsm, I literally flew over every single patch of land, going quest point to quest point without a care for the environment. Burning Crusade made me care for Illidan and WOTLK made me care for The Lich King, but everything else? After seeing the Lich King's demise, it's very obvious that Deathwing is just another plushie that we have to beat on to get loot. It was not interesting, and made the leveling experience unbearable. Blizzard DOES NOT need to keep bumping up the level cap. I don't want people with 100,000 life, I don't want to see a Level 100 Paladin in my party, and I don't want to see +460 Agility on my boots. Tone the numbers down -- you can add new content without skewing everything else.

* Game Difficulty:

I touched upon this in my first point, but my god, the game's difficulty is about as hard as the average "Putt-Putt" game. Bind on Account Gear, Guild Perks, Hearthstone Cooldowns, Mounting Cast Time, Mount Speed, Mount affordability, Mount Level requirements, Quest reward gear scaling, professions required materials, class trainer / profession trainer accessibility (Uldaman Enchanting Trainer), 5 man dungeon / heroic difficulty reduction, elites damage and health reduction, quest objective tracker and arrow, new quests and new quest rewards in old dungeons, attribute re-scaling (taking off spirit on strength gear), elimination of severe poison and diseases (ex: 100% reduced regeneration 50 damage ever 5 seconds in Stratholme), talent removals, new skills (pyroblast, aimed shot, etc), new skill scalings, new skill reworkings (aimed shot becomes instant cast, casting spells while moving, sprint when mages struck), general cooldowns drastically reduced (evasion, rapid fire, etc), elimination of reagents (stones for mage portals, blind powder, arrows, bullets, throwing weapons), simplification of buffs / debuffs, notification when talents / skill are ready (ex: overpower), I could literally go on for pages and pages. Google World of Warcraft Iron Man; if THAT is what I need to make leveling / pre-endgame difficult, then that's just completely moronic. Let's just say I leveled a Priest from 1-85 and never ONCE had to drink, run away, or play strategically. That's absurd.

* Dungeon Finder, Raid Finder, etc:

As if putting in cross-server battlegrounds and queing up from battlemasters (and later, wherever you want) didn't hurt World PvP enough, Blizzard decided to get rid of the interaction with the world completely. Why interact with people on your server when you could simply queue for the system to slap you right in a dungeon with people you've never spoken a word to? In fact, continue never speaking a word to these people. Not only are they not from your server, but they're only here because they need something (gold, tokens, items, reputation, etc). The trash and bosses are easy enough (post mid WOTLK) that you do not need to effectively communicate with them. Need I continue?

* Nothing in-game feels like an achievement anymore:

Remember back in Burning Crusade when you got your Netherdrake after hundreds of hours of work? What about those tabards that were nearly impossible to obtain? What about getting your > 1% drop Zulian Tiger from Zul Gurub? What about getting full Dungeon Set 1 and upgrading it to Dungeon Set 2 after spending ~400 hours running Scholomance, UBRS, and LBRS? What about waiting in Winterspring for that rare tiger to appear and tame it before someone kills it? How about being one of the first groups on the server to get the Red Proto Drake, before the dungeons were toned down so that everyone and their mother could get one. It makes my blood boil just thinking about what Blizzard did. There is nothing like this anymore, and if there is, it is a watered down joke compared to the accomplishments we'd get in the old days. In WOTLK, that kind of sensation had been reduced to items like the following: "The Insane" title, Ironbound & 25 counterpart proto drake ... and that's about it. All the other Proto Drakes sprouted up like common housecats. "Look at my Green Proto Drake"! "Cool Mark, I have a Purple one too!" ... "Oh cool...", "Yeah Mark! I just got a Time Lost Proto Drake the other day, I have a Bronze Drake, Red Drake, Blue Drake, and I'm almost about to get my Red Proto Drake!". Even getting a Mechano Hog or Mammoth was watered down and eventually easily obtainable. Items like getting an upgraded ring for the ICC reputation were a joke. By the end of WOTLK, the majority of half decent players had some form of an upgraded ring. Are you kidding me? In Catacylsm, it became FAR worse. In Pandaria, it's irreparable.

Blizzard single-handedly destroyed their own game. They've been in a negative decline since the end of Wrath of the Lich King and have never truly came back from that deficit. Just like Diablo 3, World of Warcraft will die by their own doing. Reminds me a lot of the recent Xbox One actually. At least Microsoft came to their senses while Blizzard still has not.

[Deleted]

My realm's population took a nose-dive, and that ultimately drove me away.

[ItachiZaku]

No faction pride. The number of times I was one of only 4-5 people defending Sylvanas, Cairne/Baine, Lor'themar, Thrall/Garrosh in city raids.

[Deleted]

The main reason i left Wow is best described as the overall direction of the game.

I left towards the end of Cataclysm and didnt like anything that MoP was advertising so i quit and i havent come back since.

I could post up a list of all the specific things i dont like about Wow these days but there really isnt much point. I still love Wow and see it as a fantastic game for its time, sadly that time is well passed now. I reckon ill only come back if the game direction changes or if it goes F2P. Until then ill just contiinue playing other more modern and better games that are around today.

---------- Post added 2013-06-25 at 02:09 PM ----------

No faction pride. The number of times I was one of only 4-5 people defending Sylvanas, Cairne/Baine, Lor'themar, Thrall/Garrosh in city raids.

Factions mean nothing in Wow these days... they should just merge them for the sake of the game overall. The only place that factions r kept seperate r in Battlegrounds.

GW2 got it right by basing their game around realm v realm... this works exceptionally well and i wouldnt be surprised if Blizzard copies this model in the future.

[Nivena]

Factions mean nothing in Wow these days... they should just merge them for the sake of the game overall. The only place that factions r kept seperate r in Battlegrounds.

Hell NO

10char

[The Iron Fist]

I don`t like the way it is heading.
I want my epics to be epic and hard to obtain,
LFD and flying mounts killed the social aspect of the game and the sense of immersion and open world.

^ this in a nutshell

[Deleted]

Hell NO

10char

So tell me where in the current world of Wow that the factions r actually playing against each other?

[Tuesday]

Pandas. Still find them disgusting. Will consider returning if the next expansion is Burning Crusade related.

LOL Love it, Legion

[bionics]

I was heavy into Arena from Seasons 1-4. Right around the time Season 5 hit I felt the PvP playstyle had been altered drastically... and not for the better. TBC was when I played this game the most. Be a rare occurrence for me to play more than 4 hours a week at this point, whereas I could easily do 4 hours a day back in TBC.

[luccadeo]

I might close my account soon. I really don't have the time to play anymore. I will say that I'm sick of the Alliance constantly getting screwed and that would be enough to make me quite otherwise.

[Tara senko]

Easy. Lfr

[Rusken]

I'm currently playing, but my extended breaks have all been for the same reasons. Guild breaks up, friends stop playing or I just get bored with the same things over and over.

[EvilLunchBox]

Dead server, just came back after 2 years and it's even deader.

[Askyl]

Three things.

1. Game got to easy, heroics and early raids were super easy. Hardcore mode on the last raid and some bosses before that was good, rest was soooo easy. (WLK and later).

"Lol no, u kilz Lich King on teh hardmode first day llololl???????. Gam no ezy!".. Yes it was. Lvling was easy as shit, dungeons was easy as shit, heroics was easy as shit and 90% of the raid content was easy as shit. 1% of the game content being hard doesn't make the game hard.

I loved TBC because the game was hard, but with each patch the earlier content was made easier. In the end people pugged T6 content and Sunwell was the "guild" raid. If you wanted to (not just had time to like in vanilla) you could see everything but Sunwell without a problem. Casuals was happy, hardcore players was happy (Except for Nihilum who acted as raid testers :'D).

2. Friends quit. No friends, why play?

3. Even if a game is awesome, you eventually go tired. I loved CS 1.6, can't stand it. I loved WoW, can't stand it. I loved Assassin's Creed, burned my self out with 60h in one weekend (fri-sun). How awesome games are, you'll get bored after some time.

I WISH I still loved WoW. I WISH I still had time for raids 4 times a week. I just don't anymore. It was the best gaming experience I've ever had, but I grew away from it.

[Bridgetjones]

I left for several reasons. Mostly because the metagame became the ONLY game. Flavor and uniqueness was "balanced" out of every class and replaced with clunky secondary resources that gave the illusion of flavor without being particularly meaningful (orbs, eclipse, holy power, embers, demonic fury, etc). The problem for me is that wow raiding has turned into "math wars" instead of characters trying to kill a boss.

I blame Blizzard for allowing too much access to internal numbers. The theorycrafting > elitism > boss tuning meta distillation has reached the point of being utterly skeletal. Blizzard, instead of designing a game with a place for unique buffs or hybrids (old spriests) just threw up their hands and gave everything the axe.

Also the asian stuff wouldn't have been bad if handled well. Instead they took every asian cliche in history and made an expansion out of it.

[Nekovivie]

LFR and dailies. Easy content which isn't aimed at heroic raiders, but ends up being a requirement to remain fully competitive. Bleh.

[ScottsdaleHokie]

The game is boring and looks like complete shit compared to other MMOs that are out now.

[Resentful]

The game is boring and looks like complete shit compared to other MMOs that are out now.

Well yeah I mean shits 8 years old what do you expect lol however it still remains king why is that? Because It's still good despite It's outdated as fuck

[checking facts]

the bus drives me away from WoW everyday, but when college classes end, another bus always brings me back

[Katchii]

Also the asian stuff wouldn't have been bad if handled well. Instead they took every asian cliche in history and made an expansion out of it.

You do realize that they market this game to China right? So, given that the entire expansion is based in chinese culture, most if not all, of the cliches and stuff are authentic and needed to be handled in such a way to make China happy. Therefore, they were handled the "asian stuff" as well as they could have been.