This comment by Ghostcrawler epitomizes what's wrong with Wow on so many levels.Character
Did devs take into consideration how cost prohibitive upgrading is? its next to impossible to fully upgrade your BiS slots.
One can argue maybe the game was better when everyone didn't have the expectation of BiS in every slot... (Source)
First, it totally contradicts several years of forum bashing by the player base, and blues, about all the selfish special snowflakes.
Second, it amounts to an admission by GC that constantly catering to the lowest and laziest common denominator has created a self-fulling prophecy of dumbing down content which leads to demands to dumb down content more which leads to greater dumbed down content and demands for even greater dumbing down after that which leads to content becoming consumed to fast which leads to player boredom etc.
It's why, every time they try to put the genie back in the bottle (Cata heroic dungeons, MoP grindfest), they see massive player discontent.
And much of that player discontent is stoked by spin-doctoring by the blues who are less than honest, on a regular basis, and as a result have to go negative and prickly to defend positions with logical loopholes so big you could drive a truck through them. This spin-doctoring also helps to create unhealthy player expectations which perpetuates the negative feedback loop referred to above.
The removal of the global LFG channel was never about spam it was about making it harder to form groups and forcing you into LFD to carry others
LFR was never about seeing the content it was about handing out welfare epics (those that actually wanted to JUST see the content were few and far between)
CRZ is really just a lazy and obnoxious way to solve terrible server management issues
The MoP grandest (which shouldn't have come as such a surprise to anyone who remotely followed pre-MoP release info) is not really about providing alternative ways to play the game but rather good old fashioned content gating (and, btw, it still pales in comparison to the original WoW grindfests).
Etc, etc....
At the end of the day you have a game that's so confused about what its about its become a ghost of its former self with an increasingly dissatisfied player base. If they had stuck to their guns and heeded the old adage that "you can't please everybody all the time" the game would be in a far better place than it is today.
Discuss.