Unfortunately no matter how well Blizzard may do, this game will never be as fun and mysterious as when I first played it back in vanilla. I still enjoy it, but I'll never enjoy it THAT much again. That's what happens after playing for so many years, even new stuff doesn't feel new. That's not Blizzard's fault, but rather something that just happens.
Albeit I always avoid joining betas or watching streams so not to spoil it and that helps a ton.
The proper waifu is a wholesome supplement for one's intrinsic need for belonging and purpose.
Ah, I see. WoW is dead again. Ok then.
its simple
the mystery is gone because you have been playing the game for 13 years, you know how everything works, you have addons that allow you to know where every rare and treasure is, you look up the incoming changes in the ptr and beta you watch boss fights time and time again before doing them
heres an example
when i was 8 and started playing pokemon, i did not know any of them, (i started with ruby and saphire, was too young to play red and blue, gen 3 for life!)
every time i ran into a new pokemon was an experiance i was in awe, i was so happy, excited, i caught everything, it was amazing, i would brag to my friends and show my parents
then when i found they could evolve me and my friends would talk, trying to find out how each pokemon evolved, and when one of us traded a haunter and it evolved... holy shit the 6 of us fucking blew up, we started trading every single pokemon in the game, it was madness, it was the funnest thing ever, 6 kids, all working together, talking about all these cool things we found, and all these awesome evolutions, we each had our favorite pokemon and we loved it
now adays, when the game comes out i know every pokemon, every way they evolve, and where they can be found, aswell as how strong they are, so i dont fucking use my favorite because it sucks (Example, my 2 favorites are both super fucking boss, garchomp and metagross so) but yeah you can see how years and years, age, and having acsess to everything can ruin something
it runs into the issue of adult versus child, atleast in multiplayer games were you compare to others
child likes mystery and having to find things out
so they just play the game and learn things for themselves
adult wants stuff to be the most efficent
so they download addons to let them find rares and treasures, leveling paths, and boss fights aswell as coming stuff in patches
WoW lost it's mystery when i starting looking at data mined stuff in the TBC beta. I had a TBC beta client sandbox and everything. Then once this site came out for wrath beta, it was all over.
WoW never really lost its mystery. I do feel the internet and places like YouTube, WoWhead and MMO-champion really killed the real mystery. I remember when I first got WoW in 2004 I had no idea what I was getting in to
I remember speculation threads on the WoW forums like Salems Chest and Ashebringer and unreachable areas hidden objects and strange quests. There were very few places to go for spoilers.
As the internet evolved WoW became so spoilerific...I dont think I was not aware of any sites outside of the WoW forums until 2006/07 (other than Thottbot) when I discovered all these other WoW sites.
WoW isn't really to blame its out use of the internet that made WoW lose its mystery, wanna know something 99% chance the internet will have info about it... Try and not visit any WoW sites when the new expansion is announced, I guarantee that'll get your mystery back.
I love Warcraft, I dislike WoW
Unsubbed since January 2021, now a Warcraft fan from a distance
The game ended for me after about a year straight of ICC. That's when i truly started to lose interest in wow, and never fully regained it. Played since day one until then religiously, and since, maybe 2 months a year if that to check out the new xpacs
I think this is the reason I don't enjoy raiding. I hate watching people play games. I can't be bothered with watching someone (or a whole raid team) down a boss. I'd rather do it with a few deaths using trial and error. Talking and laughing while having a go for it. Raid leaders put a lot of stress on people to perform at a high watermark for something they have only seen and not done.
All that creates is anxiety and nerves hoping that you can remember the movements you've watched someone else do dozens of times. To me that's not fun. That's going through the motions of a choreography that you've studied but haven't done in front of a live audience. It's just too nerve wracking to be fun. So I'm generally self exiled to LFR until I learn the basics good enough to fill in for RL friends when/ if the need arises.
Sounds like the vanilla style 5-man dungeons would be the perfect content for you. Large group play basically always boils down to getting everyone to do the same dance correctly, so if you don't enjoy that you shouldn't raid. It's a shame Blizzard is forcing large group play down everyone's throats.
I believe the mystery started to disappear when Blizzard started making the mini map/world map/quest tracker too quest friendly. When WoW first came out you HAD to read the quest text to know where to go or what to get. You had to explore and figure things out. Now the mini map throws an arrow and a highlighted circle around the area to need to go and the quest tracker makes it very clear what you need to kill to get what you are looking for.
Mankrik's Wife?
The feeling of awe and mystery in a raid dungeon took a serious blow with WOTLK release and died with LFR.
It lost its mystery when we didn't have to think anymore. No need to research where your BiS comes from and how to get there, no need to try to figure out how your spec works, no need to try to figure out how to unlock things. All you need to do is get on the ride, go in a straight line and have everything explained to you and someone guiding you on the rails every step of the way.
The game lost its mystery when it lost its depth. Streamlining killed the mystery and it drove the RPG straight out of the MMORPG.
I miss those real mystery places that vanilla had, which could be entire areas that weren't meant to be seen by the players: Shatterspear Village, Uldum, Old Ironforge, Ironforge Airport, Hyjal, Emerald Dream, Gilneas (getting behind the gate), old Quel'Thalas. They don't make these kind of inaccesible zones anymore, but it was fun to speculate about them and I actually had a lot of fun trying to get inside each of these areas which used to be quite tricky to get there.
Imagine being blown away by Warcraft 3 lore and the universe.
Then you jump into a world that you love from before where you have thousands of other players walking around in wast areas.
Even trivial things like getting leather for a new pair of gloves is meaningful. Maybe they'll be awesome!
Ah, this was my WoW-youth, where even "boring" stuff was great. Where we would group up to do even meaningless things with no reward, and still enjoy it, like killing every NPC in a camp and "claim" it.
Yes, the deep mystery is gone, game mechanics are familiar to put it the nicest way possible. It's still enjoyable, but not magical, not addictive in a degree that I think about the game when I'm not playing.
I blame time, but that's inevitable. I have happy memories and still play casually.
Mother pus bucket!
For me, it's not the mystery, it's the scope of the world.
In classic through Wrath you were a murderhobo making a name of yourself by killing things that needed to die. You obtained glory and reputation by stepping above your peers and slaying the most evil of the evil, only then did you have any prestige, otherwise you were just a joe in the world. In Cata onwards, the player character is a superhero regardless of their status as a player. Raiders to the most casual of pet battlers have the same RP value because the game defines your character for you.
The shitty travel system and with mounts being so hard to get made the world absolutely expansive. There's one thing you can always argue against flying's addition, although flying in and of itself isnt a problem. It made the world small. 280% and 310% flying speed destroy the scope of the world. What was so huge became miniscule as player movement advanced in both speed and dimension. No longer did you have to navigate the world, but now you can fly up, press auto run, and get to your objective in a set amount of time.
Transmog also did a number on the natrual flow of player ranking. Prior to its addition in 4.2, there was no reliable form of epic gear outside of raiding. You could visually see who raided and who was very fresh on their character progression path.
WoW's early days are a classic RPG. Not too hard mechanically, everything was about who you know and organization. Nowdays, WoW is more of an action adventure game held back by game engine limitations. There's very little RPG to the game outside of stats. The flavor and RP elements are gone. There's no community made divisions of players into set roles anymore. There's no room to rise above and thrive, being the elite, killing the biggest of bads. There's also no room to be a meager blacksmith and make bank selling crafted goods to levelers and capped players alike. It's automatically assumed that by playing the game, you, according to lore, are the biggest, baddest motherfucker on Azaroth, even if you just want to pet battle.
Que based systems such as RDF, LFG, and LFR destroyed the ability to grow your server community by running content. In the past, when you could only play on your server, you had so much room to grow your community just by playing and contributing to group content. Now it's Que up, finish the content, leave.
WoW isn't the same game it was for me. If mythic raiding and the heavy numbers crunching and stratagy didn't exist, I wouldn't be subbed. There is no magic to this game anymore. There is no community outside of isolated guilds. Servers are dead, their concept outdated and destroyed by cross server matchmaking options. WoW is a game I treat like League of Legends or Overwatch. You log in, do your desired game mode, then log off. It's no longer about a living breathing world full of players at all progression and skill levels, it's about an isolated superhero who doesn't really make companions because he doesn't need to, because they're given to him randomly via ques.