When will World of Warcraft become World of Warcraft again? the spark is long lost.

[zoomgpally]

PvP was fun back then, but there was hardly any skill involved, warriors for example, they just had one charge in combat, intercept with 20 or 30sec CD, no heroic leap, no gap closers in combat other than intercept, they were ridiculously easy to kite.

Sure, it was easy to kite a warrior that didn't have intercept ready, but as soon as it was ready it was intercept oneshot.

PS: But rogues don't scale with gear, eviscerate has static damage!!

[Deleted]

You won´t get that stuff again, dude, game changed, community changed, get over it, srsly.

Only thing what changed was game and blizzard (from creating games for players to creating games for money). Players didnt changed game changed players. WoW become too casual friendly so lot of players become casuals. If blizzard keep their exclusive content from TBC and do no go full casual. Players would still play. Some poeple would complain but they would still play and we could still have amazing epic game.

[Bentusi]

Someone should tell this guy that 7.5 million people PAY for it just to be able to play it, each minute in China and each month in the West.

It assembled over 1 billion dollars in 2013 alone and if that is dead, the whole gaming industry is dead too.

And ... you are wrong. Every day a new player enters Azeroth for the first time in his life. I encountered several of them in RL over the past few months even.

The subscriptions went mostly down because new recruitment was VERY hard when all other MMO's went free to play over the past 3 years. This garbage had to change their subscriptions into a free to play system just like a single map iPad game to even attract players.

As this movement is now mostly finished we will see growth again as WoD will launch and the movie attracts new blood.

Your opinion is that from an old war horse that is talking like HE matters. You don't. You are just ONE of many who played WoW and your personal single perception pales to the numbers of present day active players.

That's all really. Your WoW life is gone, others are very much alive. You don't matter at all really. If your feeling is otherwise, you are even more stuck to yourself than you think.

Hence the horse carcass allegory. Times are good for all the flies there as well. And I understand that my opinion "doesn`t matter", but by golly neither does yours! And where, pray tell, should one go to gripe about the travesty that is WoW but to a site dedicated to the game, and which does not require you to open a WoW account in order to complain? Hell, scratch that! If I opened a WoW account and wrote any of this on the WoW forums I`d get a forum ban for daring to criticize St Blizzard. And I`d get people exactly like you telling me nobody is forcing me to subscribe. Which of course they are, because I want to complain about the destruction of WoW and have to have an account to do it, unless of course I come here to have my pointless arguments.
Anyway, just to remind you that you don`t matter at all either, yet you sound as if you think you do. Just how are we different exactly?

[Mytheros]

Opinion that's a key phrase to focus on when on threads like this. Its all our individual opinions and points of view nothing more , nothing less. I too started with "vanilla" (I always think of ice cream when someone says vanilla ...I wish the trend of saying "classic" wow won out...lol) Feb 2005, I "missed' only 3 months of release. I don't remember Vanilla as the OP remembers it. It wasn't all awesome sauce, but I can agree on some select points the OP made that I did like from the early days of the game. He is dead on accurate with the point that it felt a lot "better / cooler " whatever word you want to use....."gratifying" perhaps?....to score some sweet epic piece of gear than it does in recent years within the game. I'd say easily through all of TBC it was kind of a big deal to score epic gear in a raid situation. Now people are so used to the experience of see the purple stuff...its like "oh yeah..hey....congrats dude...."....then just moving along.

Also as weird as this will strike some players....I kind of really liked that it was hard to earn gold back then....I think its ridiculous at how common it is to have players with several hundred thousand gold on pretty much all over the place. In vanilla , if you had 1,000 gold....you were the man...that was like having 500,0000 gold today (or more). Today 1k gold is not far off from just questing a few hours and selling the junk gear you don't need.

I liked the epic AV's the OP speaks of as well....I'm with him 100% on that point.....my inner geeky wow player's heart broke a bit when AV's went from epic huge battle campaigns to 15 minute zerg fests. In the early days that was one of the biggest things I bragged about with WoW to my non-MMORPG playing gamer friends....and its gone...its all gone.

To this day....probably two of my top 5 most fun experiences playing WoW has come from those epic multi-hour AV battles...it was just so much damn fun...sure you had some jerks pop in and try to ruin people's fun...but tell me that doesn't happen in any game , any time these days...its not the game's fault some people exist in life only to annoy others.

But there's stuff I prefer better NOW than then as well.... I don't get the other long time WoW players that were in love with traveling more in the "old days".....I hated that aspect of vanilla....I love that there's accessibility for nearly any player to max speed flying mounts, I love the increased number of flight points.....

Listen I don't care how awesome a game is to me, it could have the best graphics ever produced in the computer gaming world.....it could be perfectly balanced and 100% bug free....I'll NEVER say to myself EVER "Well I'm glad I'm wasting my play time just trying to get to where I want to go in the game over actually being there and DOING what I want to do in the game...".....because hey after all, I have unlimited game time , no other social engagements, responsibilities or other such things to worry about ever...and as such time is not important to me.

in the end , and I feel like a broken record because I say this same thing in game forums all over the 'net when people recall the "epic early days " of a game....while its not to say that some games really do just go down hill over time in game design and what not....I think the major factor is really the player themselves. When things are new they tend to make you feel more excited about them, when you are excited about something you will often exaggerate the "good" in whatever it is. Take a new car....you get your shiney new car home....most people will feel pretty excited when they just get a brand new car. They'll have promises in their mind..."I'm washing you every week, and I'm changing your oil exactly every 3,000 miles baby!"......six months later.....your care is filthy and hasn't been washed in the last 8 weeks....your last oil change was 7,0000 miles ago.......

Get my point?

Half of the "fondness" for how epic the game was was purely because it was NEW and it was a NEW gaming experience for you back then.

Its quite a normal human reaction that over time we taper our enthusiasm for things that become part of our routine...things we get used to.

Its probably good we humans are built that way too....imagine if we NEVER lost full excitement for anything new....picture a mall full of thousands of women freaking out every single time they bought just about anything....God help us all...

[coldrain]

the better thing to think about is the mmo genre as a whole. you try other mmo games, but just don't get hooked to them like you did when you tried wow. all mmos are suffering from this. wow was good because it was new and interesting at the time. it is no longer new and interesting. other mmos don't feel new or interesting either. if you've played one mmo, you've played them all

[Deleted]

Someone should tell this guy that 7.5 million people PAY for it just to be able to play it, each minute in China and each month in the West.

It assembled over 1 billion dollars in 2013 alone and if that is dead, the whole gaming industry is dead too.

And ... you are wrong. Every day a new player enters Azeroth for the first time in his life. I encountered several of them in RL over the past few months even.

The subscriptions went mostly down because new recruitment was VERY hard when all other MMO's went free to play over the past 3 years. This garbage had to change their subscriptions into a free to play system just like a single map iPad game to even attract players.

As this movement is now mostly finished we will see growth again as WoD will launch and the movie attracts new blood.

Your opinion is that from an old war horse that is talking like HE matters. You don't. You are just ONE of many who played WoW and your personal single perception pales to the numbers of present day active players.

That's all really. Your WoW life is gone, others are very much alive. You don't matter at all really. If your feeling is otherwise, you are even more stuck to yourself than you think.

7.5????? that was the peak when WoD was released or something, it's not even 5 mill right now lol

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the better thing to think about is the mmo genre as a whole. you try other mmo games, but just don't get hooked to them like you did when you tried wow. all mmos are suffering from this. wow was good because it was new and interesting at the time. it is no longer new and interesting. other mmos don't feel new or interesting either. if you've played one mmo, you've played them all

it wasn't just fun because it was new lol... i enjoyed it for years... and i still do... i just want some fixes that would make the game better... i can't enjot leveling a new character cuz its too easy etc...

Having played back in vanilla and on private servers, I must say that Vanilla was and was not awesome.

You gain so many things including how to do:

- Proper mana management
- CC
- 40 man raids (if you dont like them, is cause your group sucked) both on live - back in the day, and on private servers, those raids feel just as awesome....actually even the 25m raids from BC were great. After that, very few have been that awesome.
- Frost Shock! and Wind Fury!

I could mention things that I think would make WoW a better game again. The problem is that it is too late. Too many features have been introduced. Too many people have been spoiled and casual catering is beyond repair.

Even the casuals from back in the day enjoyed playing WoW because it took time and dedication to obtain something. Even if it was 1 item. Nowadays, you pay to win and in less than 2 hours you don't know which purplz to delete from your inventory.

Legendary cloak quest was awesome. Letting everyone get it wasn't. Should have taken a lot longer to obtain imo since everyone was able to get it.

um.. dont pay too much attention to me anyways.. im bored, doing homework, watching the hangover iii and its 12am..

well yeah... something LEGENDARY... was given to everyone... LEGENDARY... come on... i remember when 2-3 people on the whole realm had LEGENDARY... that's what i call LEGENDARY... now everyone has a legendary =p

[Bumbasta]

WoW is still WoW. The big difference is that is more lineair and not so much a sanbox game. At least not like it used to be.

[Goretex]

Go play another game, and stop typing about WoW on forums you negative nancy!

[Deleted]

If the game had stayed like some wanted aka tbc. It probably would have died out by now.

All these changes, and you don't have to like or dislike them, was why wow stayed so relevant for so long.

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7.5????? that was the peak when WoD was released or something, it's not even 5 mill right now lol

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it wasn't just fun because it was new lol... i enjoyed it for years... and i still do... i just want some fixes that would make the game better... i can't enjot leveling a new character cuz its too easy etc...



well yeah... something LEGENDARY... was given to everyone... LEGENDARY... come on... i remember when 2-3 people on the whole realm had LEGENDARY... that's what i call LEGENDARY... now everyone has a legendary =p

The amount of people having a legendary doesn't make something legendary, the effort you have to put in it does.

And if you look at the legendaries, the only true legendary WoW had was the Atiesh, because it was pretty hard to get.

[Independent voter]

I think the OP is suffering from burnout. I've got burnedout on WoW a few times over the years. I stop playing, I play other games and in a few months or so I'm back playing WoW. I'll resub again for the next expansion.

That said let me tell you about an experience I had a year or two ago. Everyone was sitting around Orgimmar like usual. Then the BG servers went down, people couldn't queue for BG's or Arenas. Everyone said, 'Let's go attack Stormwind!'. Apparently allies had the same idea. Everyone said it was the most fun they had in game in years.

And then the server crashed because it couldn't handle all those players in one zone.

[lagmoose]

I often wonder if I'll ever feel the same excitement that I did when I first started playing in early '05. I still have some old screenshots from back then and looking at them does bring my memories back to when I took those. I smile to myself about remembering the circumstances revolving the screenshots. Sometimes it even triggers a series of memories in a row. It would be simple (or as others may see it, "stupid") stuff like being amazed there were spots at the Crossroads that guards wouldn't attack you if you played Alliance, nor get you flagged. Just sitting there going AFK. There's a screen I have of the AQ gate opening and remembering how much the server lagged out, where I had finally got back to my corpse (after dying and being tossed at Barrens to run back to Silithus), I res'd and was still able to see my full corpse on the ground. It's just the little things, you know.

However, each expansion offers the same chance to produce those memories. When I first started playing Mists, that "spark" hit me again, but I was unable to fully grasp it because real-life started to finally tear me away from the game. I'm hoping with Warlords, I'm able to fully get that spark back, especially since there's going to be the graphical update. Really though, it could be you're just burnt out (if not, that IS a common thing that most people share, sometimes mistaken for boredom in any case) and you need that special something to reignite it. Maybe that moment will happen with Warlords, maybe it won't. Being burnt out happens to me with gaming in general a lot. I'll go days and weeks without turning on my PS3, but then I'll get a title that I just can't put down (like Last of Us or Arkham City) and my appetite for gaming is renewed.

[Deleted]

OP dishonors his avatar and what it stands for. ^^

[Deleted]

I think the OP is suffering from burnout. I've got burnedout on WoW a few times over the years. I stop playing, I play other games and in a few months or so I'm back playing WoW. I'll resub again for the next expansion.

That said let me tell you about an experience I had a year or two ago. Everyone was sitting around Orgimmar like usual. Then the BG servers went down, people couldn't queue for BG's or Arenas. Everyone said, 'Let's go attack Stormwind!'. Apparently allies had the same idea. Everyone said it was the most fun they had in game in years.

And then the server crashed because it couldn't handle all those players in one zone.

haha i've also stopped playing 1000 times but it will never be the same... everyone is acting douchebag-ish and just wanna farm their VP and Honor/CP :3 they cant even help cuz they need their damn shit done FAST

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I often wonder if I'll ever feel the same excitement that I did when I first started playing in early '05. I still have some old screenshots from back then and looking at them does bring my memories back to when I took those. I smile to myself about remembering the circumstances revolving the screenshots. Sometimes it even triggers a series of memories in a row. It would be simple (or as others may see it, "stupid") stuff like being amazed there were spots at the Crossroads that guards wouldn't attack you if you played Alliance, nor get you flagged. Just sitting there going AFK. There's a screen I have of the AQ gate opening and remembering how much the server lagged out, where I had finally got back to my corpse (after dying and being tossed at Barrens to run back to Silithus), I res'd and was still able to see my full corpse on the ground. It's just the little things, you know.

However, each expansion offers the same chance to produce those memories. When I first started playing Mists, that "spark" hit me again, but I was unable to fully grasp it because real-life started to finally tear me away from the game. I'm hoping with Warlords, I'm able to fully get that spark back, especially since there's going to be the graphical update. Really though, it could be you're just burnt out (if not, that IS a common thing that most people share, sometimes mistaken for boredom in any case) and you need that special something to reignite it. Maybe that moment will happen with Warlords, maybe it won't. Being burnt out happens to me with gaming in general a lot. I'll go days and weeks without turning on my PS3, but then I'll get a title that I just can't put down (like Last of Us or Arkham City) and my appetite for gaming is renewed.

:') i feel you! but the thing is... some things that was added was REALLY GOOD...
but some things that was added was only good in the beginning... but turned out to be really bad... i mean... am i really going to be limited to 40-50 friends? (guild mates)?

back in the days my WoW real was like school, everyone knew everyone... and we all played together, helped out and traded with eachother :/

[Deleted]

I agree with everything, most of all the RP feeling and world feeling. WoW is very much an instance game now. Very little stuff happens outside anymore.
None herioc raid stuff is too easy. Its way to easy to get epics. Challenge modes are fun but not really a feature a RP game should have. I mean why does the boss in a castle care how fast you kill him? Makes very little sense, it removes the RPG feeling. This may sound silly, but thats probably because you dont care about the RPG in a game. For me RPG is very important in a MMO. I wont say WoW is a bad game, because its not. Its just that the RPG feeling is long gone because 1. everything outside herioc raids are way to easy/basically no elites in the noninstance world that add RPG feeling(you want that big dangerous looking castle that feature a raidboss to look scary) 2. world feeling is gone because of flying/instance teleporting/no world bosses with good loot and high difficulty, that open up for griefing and drama/to much server merging and sharing, good thing for playability - bad for world feeling. 3. when stuff are to easy to play and get, the game become to predictable and static. Thats a bad thing for a mmo and yet again removes the feeling of an open RPG world. A mmorpg sandbox game should not be too structured and planned out for the player. Annoying, bad and sudden events must be able to be created and the player need to adapt to these events. For example, in vanilla it happens so many times when you planed and went to do an intance, instead there was 1 hour of PVP ruckus outside. You might say this is boring, sometimes it was annoying but it made the game so dynamic and less static.
I just leave this screenshot here. How many times have events like this happens in recent years of wow? PVP event outside with both faction have a temporary truce and just enjoy watching a 5on5 event. Totally player created and not planted by developer:

[Deleted]

I just leave this screenshot here. How many times have events like this happens in recent years of wow? PVP event outside with both faction have a temporary truce and just enjoy watching a 5on5 event. Totally player created and not planted by developer:

Ive mentioned this before and i totally agree with u.

Wow community very rarely organise in-game events themselves and thats alot to do with the RPGers stopped playing Wow a long time ago. I play GW2 and our realm has its own TS channel and the community still holds weekly meetings where stuff is planned, there are a large amount of player-lead events going on there.

Basically the Wow community still playing will only do stuff if they get loot from it. U dont get anything for raiding enemy cities, therefore nobody does it anymore. U dont get anything for PvP events as u picture above, therefore nobody does it anymore. U dont get anything for going out in the world and creating an event yourself, therefore nobody does it anymore.

We all remember when it was easy to get together a large group of people and go off and do something for the lols... i remember 200 of us creating a lev1 Gnome all with green hair and raiding Orgrimar!!!! awesome fun

[Tenjen]

the spark can only come from us.

i most definatly havent lost that spark. neither do i mix it up with nostalgia. Been having a grand time since vanilla and that has only improved as i know my guild friends for longer

[Deleted]

I agree with everything, most of all the RP feeling and world feeling. WoW is very much an instance game now. Very little stuff happens outside anymore.
None herioc raid stuff is too easy. Its way to easy to get epics. Challenge modes are fun but not really a feature a RP game should have. I mean why does the boss in a castle care how fast you kill him? Makes very little sense, it removes the RPG feeling. This may sound silly, but thats probably because you dont care about the RPG in a game. For me RPG is very important in a MMO. I wont say WoW is a bad game, because its not. Its just that the RPG feeling is long gone because 1. everything outside herioc raids are way to easy/basically no elites in the noninstance world that add RPG feeling(you want that big dangerous looking castle that feature a raidboss to look scary) 2. world feeling is gone because of flying/instance teleporting/no world bosses with good loot and high difficulty, that open up for griefing and drama/to much server merging and sharing, good thing for playability - bad for world feeling. 3. when stuff are to easy to play and get, the game become to predictable and static. Thats a bad thing for a mmo and yet again removes the feeling of an open RPG world. A mmorpg sandbox game should not be too structured and planned out for the player. Annoying, bad and sudden events must be able to be created and the player need to adapt to these events. For example, in vanilla it happens so many times when you planed and went to do an intance, instead there was 1 hour of PVP ruckus outside. You might say this is boring, sometimes it was annoying but it made the game so dynamic and less static.
I just leave this screenshot here. How many times have events like this happens in recent years of wow? PVP event outside with both faction have a temporary truce and just enjoy watching a 5on5 event. Totally player created and not planted by developer:

oh god! I REMEMBER THIS! darksorrow did it too! hahaha i love this picture!! :'D got more!? <3

p.s. good reply, i enjoyed reading it! <3

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Ive mentioned this before and i totally agree with u.

Wow community very rarely organise in-game events themselves and thats alot to do with the RPGers stopped playing Wow a long time ago. I play GW2 and our realm has its own TS channel and the community still holds weekly meetings where stuff is planned, there are a large amount of player-lead events going on there.

Basically the Wow community still playing will only do stuff if they get loot from it. U dont get anything for raiding enemy cities, therefore nobody does it anymore. U dont get anything for PvP events as u picture above, therefore nobody does it anymore. U dont get anything for going out in the world and creating an event yourself, therefore nobody does it anymore.

We all remember when it was easy to get together a large group of people and go off and do something for the lols... i remember 200 of us creating a lev1 Gnome all with green hair and raiding Orgrimar!!!! awesome fun

i even remember guilds having KoS lists... "Kill on Sight"
for instance, a guild on my realm ally side added me to their Kill on Sight list cuz i ganked one of their Officers... so they made a thread about it @ Darksorrow Forum... where all of us were threathening each other, but it was mostly just for fun and we arranged 1v1 fair duels and all that... for them to get revenge :P it was amazing... i loved it!

you could have friends, enemies and rivals... but now? i don't even see allys around, i know no ally guilds or anything... which is sad... very sad...

[Lotus Victoria]

WoW is more casual friendly now. That's why it's easier to get loot and things like that. Vanilla and BC was for the real hardcore, and people like me, who couldn't raid because of gear, would be left in the dust.

I just don't like raid finder.

[BenBos]

Hence the horse carcass allegory. Times are good for all the flies there as well. And I understand that my opinion "doesn`t matter", but by golly neither does yours! And where, pray tell, should one go to gripe about the travesty that is WoW but to a site dedicated to the game, and which does not require you to open a WoW account in order to complain? Hell, scratch that! If I opened a WoW account and wrote any of this on the WoW forums I`d get a forum ban for daring to criticize St Blizzard. And I`d get people exactly like you telling me nobody is forcing me to subscribe. Which of course they are, because I want to complain about the destruction of WoW and have to have an account to do it, unless of course I come here to have my pointless arguments.
Anyway, just to remind you that you don`t matter at all either, yet you sound as if you think you do. Just how are we different exactly?

But those 7+ million who pay a subscription and that have fun playing it, DO matter.

You on the other hand are just an old weary whiner. Complaining about things you no longer can enjoy... Complete and utter pointless.

Of course you will get a forum ban by writing you THINK you are alone in this world that matters ... Well : you are not.

The rest are having fun. WOW has NOW more choices of play than ever before. I am sorry if you think present players are flies on a dead horse. The only one dead is you to them.

I couldn't care less what an old dead horse thinks about MY game I like to play, this along with Multi million others.

For once look behind you: for every day that passes, a new born child is ready to accept life. Simple fact.

[Deleted]

Thanks for making this thread OP! I completely agree to your statements here.

then i hit ranked up in PvP which took me a couple of months... i eventually got the shoulders from being exalted with Arathi Basin which was nice... and rest of my gear was rank 1-9 blues... until i had played for another few months and actually ranked up to rank 11 i believe it was? to get boots and gloves? i almost felt mighty... as if i had accomplished some greatness in the game... people were happy about me ranking up... i was starting to get a littlebit famous... if it wasn't for that guy Ztar from a particular guild who climbed in ranks like ridiculously fast because he actually achieved a LEGENDARY WEAPON (Ragnaros Hand) and he was the only one on the server, so he started smashing the pvp big-time.... well, i can't say he didn't deserve it... he totally did... he was a true legend on the Darksorrow Realm... but he was no match for the Alliance Human Female Warrior... Anise... She was rank 14, a real grand marshal... every horde feared her... even in the local defence chat "/3" people would say RUN!!! ANISE IS COMING TO TYRS HAND and seriously we all abandoned the place because we knew we'd get humiliated by her skills...

This is exactly the same sentiments as I have. I used to do some raiding, and I had a couple of epics, but the guild eventually disbanded and reformed as a new one and I wasn't able to get in, so I just focused on the PvP epics.

And when I finally got exalted in AB, it felt so epic. I finally got to around 4.4k health, and the set bonus, it felt such a nice accomplishment, and although it was the maximum amount I could reach without raiding and rank 13+, it felt so good. I only wanted more similar PvP/reputation grinds like that for every gear slot and I would've been more than happy just grinding my ass out of every single one of them. Add this along with all the engineering trinkets/fun items that existed back then, and PvP was already superfun! It's almost the same feeling I got when I got trolls exalted with the same undead rogue(in Vanilla), wich was quite the accomplishment in itself, and quite enjoyable and rewarding in that regard.

I think old WoW touched upon the sentiments what many of us wanted from open-ended RPG games in the past. When we played Morrowind and similar other open world RPG's, I think alot of us could have hoped for something like that but wich did it alot more grander and better. So when WoW came out, for any diehard escapists, it could have been like the dream come true.

I think WoW really answered to what so many of us wanted back then, by providing us with what I call a "realistic medieval fantasy simulator." In terms of providing a realistic item grind and progression, like in real life - unlike the one infested with expansion and invalidating of content, that I feel the state of the game has become right now. Everyone had to work hard for raid, epics and recognition, and your epics wouldn't get invalidated by every new patch(although by the end, some PvP epics started to be invalidated by Naxx gear, wich was alright, in that they should've just released a second generation of PvP epics to help with that, if it ever came to that).

Nowadays, WoW just feels mostly like a dumbed-down arcane game. I think it can still offer some content for people who never played it absolutely, but I don't think it's nowhere near it's reach the peak it used to be as the top-tier MMORPG. I think that the WoW devs never quite understood what made their game so great, and that was what slowly became their downfall.. Afraid of the incoming sub loss of competition, the developers even made a number of these "convenience" features in order to convince people stay. But it is these same convenience features also that I feel have slowly turned the game into nothing but a mere shadow of it's original glory.

Remember realm transfers? Innocent convenience tools to give raiders and easier to way to get to good raiding guilds.. but ironically, at the same time, it completely and utterly destroyed unique realm communities and memorable personalities.

No need for summoning stones; LFG and LFR; join battleground tools; innocent "convenience" features, but dramatically served to destroy the immersion in the world.

Easier to acquire epics? This is the worst one imo.. there is nothing sense of accomplishment in the game anymore. Epics should be HARD to acquire. But there is nothing hard in joining LFR and playing a bunch of random strangers to get some epics. I feel it has completely served to ruin any grand sense of accomplishment and greatly reduced immersion within this game. It's truely as you said, the game feels nothing like an open-ended, epic, RPG game, and more and more like arcade game these days. Just click H/whatever the key for dungeon finder was, and off you go, barely need to do anything in the world anymore, like quests, dungeons attunements, or prepare for raiding. No need to even walk there since the dungeon finder tool teleports you there automatically.

And the best thing was... the demons there respawned either by walking out of a gateway looking object, or by falling like a meteor (infernal).
So i was pretty much never sure was there a demon about to drop on my face or teleport in through an unnoticed gateway.

I really liked this example! It is really small things like this that used add to the atmosphere and make the world feel far more unique, dangerous, and immersive back then. Now you just 2-3 hit all the mobs, and soon outlevel the content pretty fast anyways. Boring!

it's just like IRL... if anything was given free/easily, how can you be happy? think about that... i'd rather work long and hard for a new item than getting one very easy with the mind set on getting another one tomorrow anyway? i couldn't be happy that way...

Exactly!

To me, to you, and likely many others, the adventure/realism aspect of WoW is what got us hooked into the game in the first place. It was what I call a "realistical medieval fantasy simulator." It was good for what it was, and it was never required for it to become anything else(e.g, like the dumbed down arcade game that it is).

vanishing powder
poison
blinding powder
arrows / bullets using a quiver and even 1h weapons if you were to get into close combat...
portal runes

In hindsight, someone might say that those were annoying; but, in the end, it's small things like these wich used to make classes so much more unique and interesting before. I wouldn't mind them in the game, but it obviously wouldn't fit into the current dev mindset.

This is coming someone who hasn't played WoW in a long time, so I think I am being quite objective here. I used to jump on the PTR's to play abit every now and then(since it's free), even multibox, but I don't think I can take what the game has become to do even that anymore.

Sadly, I don't think that this game is in capable hands anymore. They get too much revenue from things like server transfer to cut them off completely, especially with the recent sub losses, plus they already alienated their older playerbase, so changing some things might hurt them more at this point(at least in the short term).

The new expansion idea also seems pretty ridiculous. it's like they completely ran out of content/ideas for story this time around, and openly admit it. "Hey, we give you something that was epic in the past, because we are uncapable of procuding anything interesting new, so let's use something wich many players are familiar with from the past, and hope it attracts enough consumers."

It seems like WOW has completely abandoned the idea of this unique, interesting and open-ended roleplaying game that it once used to be, and gone for extreme mass-appeal instead.