What drove you away from WoW?

[Reavyn]

A combination of things really. I made myself a list of pros and cons and made my descision to quit from there.

Pros;

• Graphics. Despite being somewhat outdated, I really like the graphics in WoW. Add to that the fact that there haven't been any sudden Suspension of Disbelief-breaking graphical changes and instead gradually improving quality, makes this a big plus in my book.
• Warlock class quest. I found this to be so awesome it deserved a point in the pro-catagory. Even if it's just in the hope of future class quests like this.
• Transmog brings a lot of vanity customizability. I really like this.
• The game doesn't punish players severely if they don't have 40 hours a week to play. Which I don't. Not by a looooong shot It might take a bit longer to get to where you want, but you can get there regardless of the amount of time available to you.
• Brawlers guild. A great and fun addition to the game.

Cons;

• Subscription-based game. Kinda grew out of this when you have excellent games such as GW2 and TSW which are Buy to Play with a great in-game store that doesn't provide P2W items. I can spend my money on the game when I want to and keep it in my pocket if I need to.
• Pandaland and Cataclysm. Qua lore and setting, I found both to be extremely uninteresting. Cataclysm because Deathwing was a complete joke throughout the expansion. The old world revamp was needed but it was turned into a far too linear leveling experience. Pandaria because I find the whole westernized Asiatic setting to be appalling.
• PvP and PvE balancing has never worked, doesn't work and will never work. Period. They need to be seperated, full stop.
• Dailies everywhere. And while dailies on their own are not a problem as long as they are not mandatory, at the start of the expansion you were pretty much forced to grind 'm for the valor gear. Luckily, Blizz seems to recognize this problem when I look at the Timeless Isle stuff and the fact that they are no longer mandatory to progress your toons.
• Pandas. Yes, this is my personal opinion, but I find Pandas completely out of place as a playable race. They should've remained a small and mysterious race that pops up now and again instead of dominating an entire expansion with their faux-chinese accents, alcohol addictions, architectural rip-offs and a poor excuse to twist and shoehorn the zodiac system into the game.
• Little love for 5-man content.
• LFR. While I find the idea of everyone being able to see the PvE content admirable, it's tuned to be way way WAY too easy. And before you start bashing, I'm not talking about rewards here. I don't care if other people get easy purples. It's purely the fact that half the raid can go AFK in a voidzone and you can still complete LFR easily.
• Talent system. It has little variety even though they wanted to create just that with the new system. There are still cookie-cutter builds for every class and talents are often a very obvious choice to make (with a few exceptions). I'm not expecting TSW-style systems where you can litterally unlock 150+ talents/skills and build your own personalized build (which is awesome btw), but the current talent system in WoW has no depth whatsoever.
• Lifeless combat system compared to the newer MMORPGs out there. Combat is mostly based around boss/mob mechanics rather than the actual class abilities. It should be a more even 50/50 split between the two.
• The in-game community. Beyond the guild there barely is any server community anymore. Unless you count random racist remarks (which I report), yelling, screaming and various 'ANAL' variations as a lively community. Everything is group finder, nothing is communicated anymore.

So, yeah... The con-catagory pretty much had this one in the bag for me.

Note that this all just my personal opinion. No need to bash this post if you disagree.

[Deleted]

Real life.

Comes a point when you need to focus on your education, career, friends, family and relationships. You can't do that whilst playing a time sink that is World of Warcraft. I quit wow when I was at University, if I hadn't there's no way in hell I would've got my 1st.

[Deleted]

Real life friends quit, couldn't raid more than LFR due to my connection, new talent tree , also I killed Arthas already who was/is my favourite "villain"

[Elitany]

I let my sub die while I was away on training for about a week, now I've come back - my laptop pretty much has died, and am waiting on some cash to buy an Alienware laptop.

Lol.

[Deleted]

All the things OP sais.. + bringing new content and useless "new" stuff, instead of investing time in actual new stuff, spectator mode? idk, something "new and exciting" not just "something new". Blizzard simply have lost their soul it seems, everything is "bigger and better and more shiny" yet lacks the heart that was WoW.
Mainly starting from cata.. when people slowly started "meh'ing" on wow, friends leaving the game, realm becoming empty etc.. is what drove me away.

[Lilija]

The fact that it's not a MMORPG anymore.

The definition of MMORPG disagrees with you.

[Mister K]

Cataclysm and huge overhaul of classes.

[Deleted]

Game is boring. Once you got your level 90, got the farmable pvp gear and farmed rep with the factions you wanted, there is nothing to do. Sure you can do lfr, which you get over with in about 4 hours.

Also, I enjoy 1v1 pvp and it seems the class selection for that particular purpose is extremely limited currently. So limited that you can only have a BM hunter for range and WW monk for melee. Everything else has at least 4 classes that will always walk all over it in 1v1. This, in turn, makes choosing a class to play as an alt also extremely limited, further taking away from the stuff you could do.

[Shiba500]

Going a year with ICC drove me away from WoW...but then I decided to come back 3 months ago, and am enjoying the game far more than I did in WotLK.

[Niyari]

too many things. the game has strayed too far from what made it popular in the first place

[Lilija]

The cash shop made me unsub

Looking at your sig I'm really glad you unsubed. The less 12-years-old's hate in game the better.

Infracted

[Deleted]

Two reasons:

1. Phasings
WoW is no longer a big world shared by everyone. Now two players can stand at the very same location and yet the don’t see the same things and sometimes not even eachother! This is the most stupid thing Blizzard did in my opinion since the whole concept of MMORPG is to SHARE an online world!

2. Old content destroyed
My main reason for playing WoW was because I loved the content and loved doing them over and over again. But now I miss things like the old Scarlet Monestary, Deadmines, Shadowfang keep, Ragefire chasm, Scholomance and even the old Zul'Gurub raid.

Adding new content is lovely, but please don’t touch the old content! To feel nostalgia was one of the most wonderful things about WoW. I don’t want to see my favorite places suddenly disappear or change into something else. If the content I love is removed and replaced with other stuff, then what’s the real difference between staying in WoW or switch to another game? I stayed because I really liked what was in it, by removing it you also remove my emotional attachments towards the game.

[Deleted]

Two reasons:

1. Phasings
WoW is no longer a big world shared by everyone. Now two players can stand at the very same location and yet the don’t see the same things and sometimes not even eachother! This is the most stupid thing Blizzard did in my opinion since the whole concept of MMORPG is to SHARE an online world!

2. Old content destroyed
My main reason for playing WoW was because I loved the content and loved doing them over and over again. But now I miss things like the old Scarlet Monestary, Deadmines, Shadowfang keep, Ragefire chasm, Scholomance and even the old Zul'Gurub raid.

Adding new content is lovely, but please don’t touch the old content! To feel nostalgia was one of the most wonderful things about WoW. I don’t want to see my favorite places suddenly disappear or change into something else. If the content I love is removed and replaced with other stuff, then what’s the real difference between staying in WoW or switch to another game? I stayed because I really liked what was in it, by removing it you also remove my emotional attachments towards the game.

1. I think the feeling that the player did something and altered the world, is more important than not seeing Bob even though he's sitting near you.
2. The only thing wrong about revamping the old content, is that Blizzard spent way too much resources on it and then gave DS that lasted a year.

[Deleted]

I did really bad in my first year of college because I was pretty much your stereotypical WoW addict. So after seeing how badly I did, I quit the game in the summer before my second year began, and haven't gone back since. That was just under 3 years ago now

[Iseeyou]

It's Community.

[godgunner]

for me i was simple. i realized that i was paying $15 bucks a month $60 per expansion and only logged in 2-3 times a week just to raid with my guild.
i had found every other aspect of wow to be so boring and tedious that anytime i was not raiding with my guild i would sit in Org and just watch chat
roll by because it was more interesting.

[Zogarth]

Community died

LFR

LFG to some extend

The new raid model adopted in Wrath (the system that makes all prior raids than the current unneccesary).

And a lot of other things...

[Deleted]

nothing to do in current patch so unsubbed the other day and probs come back in 5.4 to see what it's like but can't see myself staying too long based on the ptr so far.

[Lanthanum]

There are a few reasons why I left WoW but I think the main one was boredom. Despite the claims that there are "many" things to do at 90, most of them did not appeal to me, so I found myself running endless LFR's and dailies on numerous characters. I got to the point where I said to myself "What is the point?". I then realized there wasn't one and decided to unsub. With the direction that the game is taking, I can't see it getting any better down the line.

[Deleted]

1. I think the feeling that the player did something and altered the world, is more important than not seeing Bob even though he's sitting near you.

If you want to make a difference to the story or gaming world you should play a single play RPG. In an MMO you’re supposed to share the world and the experience with others. Earlier I could tag along a friend and do some stuff together even if we weren’t on the exact same quests. Now this is impossible due to phasing.
If I played some quests yesterday and today my friend log on and wants to do the same quests, I can’t tag along just to socialize and share this experience with him because of being in another phasing stage. That is not MMO in my opinion.