Just some food for thought, not particularly interested in why people are subscribed, but why they aren't. Here's a list of my own thoughts, usually they're not reciprocated but what the hell (tldr summary at the bottom):
- Gear resets and having everything previously accomplished flushed down the drain by 'leveling' content, compounded by the task killing trash where previously gear was earned with an epic task
- Game isn't played as a whole but by a patch by patch basis where new patches remove the importance and therefore the access of the content for new sparse content, content skipping being the biggest offender as otherwise it would be contained to expansions rather than patches
- There is no clear progression from dungeons to raiding, I preferred when badges were for helping people get out of heroics and into raids, I don't like that LFR was used to implement disorganized raiding, what makes raiding special is the organized nature of a mutually shared goal involving medium to heavy teamwork
- They took away the distinguished differentiation of how rare or difficult to acquire an item was by its colour quality, it helps distinguish how impressive your accumulation of gear is or how you got it, it was a nice trophy back in the day that added depth at no cost of complexity, it only positively added to the game, why was it taken away
- Nothing useful from leveling, it doesn't teach you anything new about the game, it doesn't intrinsically help your character like end game does, if only you could achieve some progression, this is what compounds disdain for expansion resets, it has become an expansion routine rather than an expansion opportunity
- Too many skills, where most don't do much, debuffs/buffs with no trackable non-UI based visual representation, most of combat is engrossed in the UI intertwined with 3rd party addons to keep up with or organize the mess of bloated information, the action is in the UI and not in the game world: #MSExcel
- Classes were founded on roles and not flavors, it seems the designers have continuously struggled to understand how to distinguish the classes while making them equally versatile, I hate Jay Wilson but D3 did manage to succeed here and with proper customization to boot
- Complete lack of positive reinforcements for socializing and comradery with toxic behavior running amok unregulated without the community being able to do a damn thing about it
- Guild perks achieved through arbitrary means rather than through tasks requiring any actual guild interaction and the focus of down sizing raiding now causing smaller guilds to be self sufficient so they don't socialize with other guilds destroying yet another vehicle for community interaction
- Chestplates are still spandex, adding pandas and their giant guts you'd expect they wouldn't allow plate spandex to continue; plate kilts are still dresses, collars still move with the head instead of the chest, cloth is still made of rubber and only comes in one design: the cone
- I don't want to buy redundant expansions so I can play the most recent expansion, any 'expansion' after the recent one has no legitimate content that is a part of end game and spending money on it is only a barrier to entry of the current expansion
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[Recurring points brought up by other afflicted posters]:
- When guilds split or players take a break it is very difficult to get going again as a new patch will put you behind the curve and at the bottom of the roster (not present in Vanilla/TBC's linear progression), it is also very difficult to find new friends who are on the same page by means of progression, personality and schedule (2 of 3 pre-existing problem since Vanilla)
- The growing number of expansions on top of subscription fees is creating a huge barrier to entry for new players; convincing friends besides $$$ is also problematic as the majority of content is irrelevant making it difficult to justify forking over so much money to begin with on top of the fact no one will be there to generally support them to get up to speed both in leveling and raiding due to the prior point
TLDR; game has some issues.