Question/debate: has the original wow audience vanished?

[Shadowspire]

There was a fairly new thread that made me think about wrath and Cata, my two favorite expansion(yes I am one of the defects who liked Cata) and if given the current times if they would have been liked. And honestly looking back at the content brought I think my love for them wouldn't have changed honestly but then I thought about the talks on most of the forums I visit.

And while I'm sure most of these comments are insults, but honestly is there a chance blizzard and other game company's are focusing on the generation that is after the original wow playerbase. I mean it's been ten years that's a pretty big attitude leap and stuff from when I was 12(tho when I picked up wow I layed it for like a month the didn't touch till mid BC ) compared to the 21 version of me. Maybe I would've been more critical or maybe not. But what of you guys think?

Think maybe blizzard is just aging wow in the wrong direction or think the players have just aged into over critics.

[Vaelorian]

I like to think I am of that original audience. The first pinch I felt when I was less the target audience then before was during WOTLK when we did Dungeons. Too short and too easy. Catching up mechanics were even easier then in TBC. I did not like that at the time. But come Cata I really felt ignored after they nerfed the Dungeons into the ground. Raids (tier 11 and 12) were awesome but the rest felt a bit meh. But then Pandaria and WoD came. Pet battles and whatnot. More and more solo content, more anonymity = more assholes. I liked server communities. I liked knowing who not to pug with and who you should pug with. What guilds are top and whose are bottom feeders. All of that is gone now. Everything is solo content. LFR and Dungeoneering is solo. Sure you have 4/24 other bodies there. But you do not care about them at all. You do not start a conversation with them. Why would you?

So yeah I picked up raiding now again in WoD. Enjoying myself with that aspect ONLY. The rest is a mere shell of its former self. There is no community.

[Aschen]

I think the target audience changed a bit with Wrath and has changed again even more so since.

I feel like the game is catering more and more to those who prefer a singleplayer experience. No more need to group up with people to complete quests. Dungeons are now asocial 10-15 minute affairs. Hell, there's no need to join a guild or form a PuG now to experience raids as you can queue for one with the click of a button. Then there's the whole host of solo-specific content like farms, pet battles, garrisons and shipyards.

Perhaps that's what the younger generation wants. More power to them if that's the case, but I find myself enjoying the game less and less outside of raiding. To me it feels like less of a MMORPG and more of an ARPG with multiplayer elements.

[Gaidax]

The original WoW audience grew up... I picked up WoW ten years ago when I was 19, now I'm 29 and I have no time to waste on random bullshit grind I was merrily doing when I was 19 with an ocean of free time.

If WoW would not evolve to what it is now, I'd drop it a long time ago. And it has nothing to do with alleged "instant gratification" new generation nonsense I keep reading here, the time available to the original WoW audience shrunk considerably with years due to RL.

Simple.

P.S. I am also very happy that people came to realize that you don't have to do artificial grinds to have fun in the game. Grinding for access to fun times is not fun times and people no longer stand for this bullshit scheme. Good thing!