What made you quit WOW initially?

[Wiedzemir]

Unsubbed in WoD, stopped actually playing in MoP. MoP was so awfully linear and boring I stopped playing as much as I used to and stopped raiding because raids were just not interesting and I didn't care about the story. Got hyped a bit before WoD, even went onto a raiding spree for a couple of weeks with the guild and was disappointed with raids again (ok, Garrosh was kind of fun but still meh). Quested through WoD once, tried the Highmaul raid, unsubbed the next week.

In fact WoD was the moment when I finally realized how far the game went from me enjoying it to simply becoming a habit. Cataclysm was the expansion when I started to lose interest in the game. While WoTLK and TBC brought many changes that I though to be questionable, I still enjoyed the game, in Cata the amount of the questionable changes became just too high but I kept playing because of the guild and, again, WoW became sour of a habit at that point.

[HuxNeva]

First time I quit was WoD. Need I say more?
WoD was what drove me to private servers, so i could continue to play WoW, the game I loved instead of the empty husk on retail that was pretending to be it.
I came back for Legion, best expansion since Wrath, and look forward to playing Classic.
BfA has my WoD alert spidysense tingling somehow, but let's wait and see how it tuns out.

[Wiedzemir]

BfA has my WoD alert spidysense tingling somehow, but let's wait and see how it tuns out.

I don't think that Blizzard is going to make the same mistake, that was WoD, twice. It's simply bad for business, they pushed a little bit too far with the philosophy of "maximum profit, minimum effort". What I think is going to happen is that we're going to get a repackaged Legion as it seems to be working well for Blizzard.

[azzgunther]

I made it 3 months into MoP.

-Instead of bosses dropping a collection of loot to distribute amongst the raid, MoP introducted individual rolls for loot and a token system to try for a second roll. I hated it.
-Continuation of LFD and LFR.
-There was a bug that did not allow me - on any of my characters - to get loot from world bosses. After the 20th kill of Sha and Galleon resulting in NO gold and NO chance at loot I was furious. Game Masters said that it's a known problem. I said that they can see that I killed the boss and didn't get a chance at loot, so do a manual roll for me for the 20 kills. They said no.
-Excessive dailies required to raid at a high level.
-ilvl fell way behind the other top DPS in my 25m raid group for a while because of the world boss loot glitch.

final straw:

After accidentally making Mages OP for a few days, Blizzard panicked and neutered Fire. Logging in to find that my spec did 30-40% less damage than it did 12 hours prior was too much.

Already frustrated with the above, I decided that I could no longer pay for a game whose mechanics were being determined by interns and design determined by corporate suits.

[Deleted]

Class changes, honestly.

Can't stomach Legion for that reason. Identification with my toon is completely gone, could play a MOBA at this point.

[nomaam]

Dungeon Finder did it for me near the end of WOTLK. Community died instantly. People stopped grouping for daily dungeons when you could just queue up with random people. It was the first time I quit WoW. Since then I have only checked new expansions out and I am usually gone pretty quick

[Morbownz]

Just feeling the that the old game no longer existed. It wasn't one thing, Blizzard tweaked many things over the years but in WotLK I stopped playing WoW game for 6 months, something I never imagined doing. I kept a sub going thinking I'd return but I didn't, I no longer had interest in WoW, when the next expansion dropped I gave it a try. I played Cata for 9 months and I quit again and tried a private vanilla server. I realized right there that I still loved WoW just not the modern version so much. Legion has been different though, I've found a great guild which made a big difference and now I get to clear Mythic Raids with them.

[Caerule]

I quit because WoW vanilla wasn't engaging enough for me. I played a lot of Warcraft 3, so getting to walk around on Azeroth was great. I explored every zone. Leveled up 2 characters. But WoW took up a lot of time, and there wasn't a lot you got back from that. So when my best friend quit, so did I.

It wasn't until Wrath that nostalgia brought be back. And then I found the game a lot more engaging. And it's just gotten more so since. For me anyway. I'm a fond collector of pets, mounts, achievements, toys and transmog sets. LFG got me into dungeoning. LFR got me into actual raiding. I absolutely love flying. I absorb every scrap of lore. I love that this is a game with a continuously advancing story.

Vanilla WoW just wasn't for me.

[unlink2]

I quit WoW at the end of Wrath mainly because my guild fell apart. I had been playing since the end of Vanilla at that point, and just decided it was time for a break.

[Heathy]

I think I made it to wrath before I finally quit the game, made it maybe 1/4 of the way through icc and just got bored of the game, I think I just played it too much that expansion, I had 5-6 alts at various tiers and the whole thing was quite literally burning me out. I loved how pug friendly wrath was in the end, like a pugging revolution, but i just got bored by icc. my guild started slowly dying by then though as well, problem with a guild that isn't well maintained or drifts is you end up with small sub groups of friends who basically screw the smooth flow of a guild with their shenanigans.

[Thrax]

The very first time I quit WoW I actually did not know the real reason until later, I just got bored suddenly and quit. This was May-June 2008 when all I did was farm welfare epics from H MGT and Isle of Quel dailies.

I always came back for expansions but since 4.3 DS patch I've been annoyed at how the game revolves around patch resets. The catchup mechanics were just getting insane and content got made obsolete & trivialized after a single patch, even if you never did it. This is what really made me quit the first time, t4/t5/t6 was killed off, as all you needed was H MGT and Sunwell trash to skip 90% of TBC, the welfare killed almost everything up to that point, additionally my guild sucked and couldn't progress Sunwell (like 99% of Guilds) so there was nothing to do.

Same stuff in Retail even now, but amplified tenfold. No sense of impact, progression or anything - Game basically plays itself except for the few that Mythic Raid.

+1.

Exactly the same time and reason I quit for the first time.

[Deleted]

I quit exacly month after cataclysm launch. To many casual changes, dumb game design philosophy, they started to nerf everything all around which causes many top guilds (including one i was in) to leave.

[ThrashMetalFtw]

Quit some time after reaching 70 in TBC, because the computer I was playing on at the time, couldn't handle anything else than lvling or 5mans. Had 10 min loading/login screens to any raid, BG pr any capital city, and then 0,1 fps in capital cities. No exaggeration. 10min login screens.

Came back around 2.4, because I finally got a PC that could handle actually doing stuff in the game. Quit in ICC because I thought the last patch in WotLK and ICC itself was boring and shitty.

Came back for Cata launc and played through all of Cata and MoP.

Quit early WoD because of burnout after shitty progress in HM and having been an Officer in a guild for 3 years. Came back and then quit again multiple times during WoD.

Came back for Legion, quit during Guarm Mythic progress because I hated Legion TFing, Legion Legendaries and Legion AP. The game itself and the raiding was great, but those 3 systems completely ruined it for me, causing the worst burnout I have ever seen.

Came back again later in Legion when Legendaries and AP grinding was no longer a real thing. TFing is still retarded, but I can live with it.

[Ferocity]

Quit some time after reaching 70 in TBC, because the computer I was playing on at the time, couldn't handle anything else than lvling or 5mans. Had 10 min loading/login screens to any raid, BG pr any capital city, and then 0,1 fps in capital cities. No exaggeration. 10min login screens.

Oh I remember the first time I played WoW.

I started character in Tirisfal Glades and when I took zeppelin to another continent (I didn't know it was going for higher lvl zones) there was such a long loading screen, that zeppelin was already going back to Eastern Kingdoms by the time Kalimdor was loaded. So I was stuck in the loop of loading screens unable to play until I randomly pushed movement buttons and fell from zeppelin down to some murlocs who were much higher level than me XD Now that was an adventure!

[NoRest4Wicked]

Having kids. It's too hard to find the time to set aside for raiding (the only reason to play WoW imo) and keep a healthy relationship with my wife, kids and balance other hobbies. Can it be done? Sure, but I've never been willing to sacrifice my sleep like that. My kids go down for bed at 8, I get up for work at 515. My last attempt at raiding had me getting 4 hours of sleep 3 nights a week.

[Lane]

Cata. Such an awful expansion. I guess I should be thankful it cured my 5-year WoW addiction.

Rift launched and was objectively better than cata across the board

Agreed.

[Vigilant]

Real life tends to be the answer for me. There doesn't seem to be time in a life with owning a business, being married, and having 2 kids. There's always something else I should be doing. If I get into the game, it's not long before responsibilities pile up and I end up having to walk away again for a long time (it ranges from months to the most recent 2 year gap).

[Doomislav]

Had a LOT of fun in WotLK as a disc healer, played through to Dragon Soul in Cata, just burned out. I had more important things in RL going on, and Dragon Soul made a good excuse to leave and take care of RL.

[Kithelle]

I just needed breaks from the game or just had problems with it...like I quit late Cata because I got tired of all the BS with taking pugs and I had been playing pretty much all the way since late Vanilla.

I quit for a long while in WoD...and I quit in Legion though probably come back soon to take care of stuff before WfA.

[Vandexander]

NoFly. Was fed up with it in WoD, then the devs proclaimed No Fly Forever, and I was like @##$# that!

Came back when flying in WoD was achievable.

Missed out on the Thrall statue because of it. F@#$@#$ NoFly!