pretty horrible. Now I know that I'm just beating a dead horse here, and that this has been discussed a million of times, but what the hell, seems to be the go to topic nowadays, so I guess I'll drop my views on the problem and possible fixes to them.
Inb4 "Not this shit again", "oh, what an exciting thread", "troll", "take off your nostalgia glasses".
Now that we got that out of the way we can discuss the main two problems of todays WoW: Progression and difficulty.
Let's start of with the difficulty part, because it will eventually lead up to the problem with todays progression. Now I know a lot of you will think I'm going to rant about how easy raiding is now a days, but the difficulty that I am referring to isin't related to raiding at all. It's rather related to the overall experience of the game. Leveling, grouping and ESPECIALLY the dungeon difficulty.
I'm going to refer to the following thread : eu.battle.n.et/wow/en/forum/topic/8427632869. It explains everything pretty well, but let's touch on what I think really makes the game mind numbing and unbearable.
First off the leveling.. what a load of bull. About 2 months ago I tried to relevel a couple characters to expand my class pool and to also try out monk. Trust me, I have never, never, felt so mind numbed before. Mind you I leveled one character with BoA gear and the other without, and it doesn't make too much of a difference, except that in one scenario you kill your brain cells for longer, and in the other, a bit less. The problem is, that everything is literally spoon fed. And I mean it. Quests? Boring as fuck. Everything is shown and extremely linear. I honestly, don't understand why people enjoy the new "flow" of quests. In pandaria, you just follow a set path or chains that just lead you from one place to another. I hate that they have done this to vanilla content as well, because honestly, I found wayyyy more enjoyable to sidetrack, search for different quest hubs, new places. Add up the fact that you now get abilities automatically when you level, and you have yourself with a brain mush deluxe - just run from one place to the other aka follow this linear path until you're 90. Group quests? Why the hell were they removed? It was always fun and exciting to see that quest that would give you blue gear, more gold, and more experience in exchange for a bit of effort. You could say that it broke the numbness of linearity and let you try something else - try to take on the challenge and solo 5 man quest alone(which I loved) or take a break and find some people to take on the quest. Either way it spiced things up a lot. The difficulty? Don't even want to comment that. It's just a mass pull fest with overdumbed mechanics now. Want to guess how many times I life tapped or stopped to drink on my warlock from 1-90? Yea that's right, zero(actually, I didn't have life tap on my bars).
Dungeons(I felt like this needed it's own space)? Oh my fucking god, what have they done? Dungeons used to be meaningful , fun, challenging and a key into the actual endgame. What are they now? Useless and boring. They are now just mass aoe fest, with a straight patern, easy bosses and overall useless(not only the normals, but also heroics). Nowadays, you can realistically, after you hit max level just go to the AH, buy a couple of pieces to raise your iLvl , go do LFR and you're set. Damn.
Now that we got most of those points out of the way we can move to the biggest problem: progression. Now this is a big one and honestly the one that has killed WoW for me the past 2 expansions, it's the progression or lack of it.
I know how much people hate when other put on the "nostalgia glasses", but let me try to give prime examples here for a second.
Vanilla - TBC - Wrath(possibly) : Okay, so at least for me, these were the expansions that I found myself logging on every day for the longest hours until the end of the expansion. Why you might ask? Because I felt an actual sense of progression, difficulty, fun and rewards. Back in TBC, after I hit level 70 on new alts I felt like I had a clear path - to get into Black temple/Sunwell/Kara(you name it). How did I achieve it? By baby steps. Hit 70 -> get all the possible best quest/rep gear(possibly buy something from AH) -> run normals until properly geared - > onto heroics -> get attuned -> run previous raids to get the latest possible gear before I stepped into the current tier. And all this while keeping me entertained also helped me find new people(no dungeon finder), and finally after so much effort help me reach the goal : to see the current tier, it's bosses, mechanics.
Cataclysm - Pandaria(mainly pandaria): The game in it's current state doesn't have me coming back for more than a couple of months maximum. Why? I'ts cause I can't find anything to fill my time in terms of meaningful progression. This is what is done on new alts today: Hit 90 - > get a couple of pieces for iLvl requirement - > LFR - > Loot shower - > eventually make way into heroics. Yes, it's that sad. With this type of gameplay I can't imagine myself spending more than 2-3 hours actually doing something meaningful in the game. All of this is done in an automized sense(LFR, dungeon finder, etc.) which makes the process even quicker thus making the game less of a time sink.
This sort of progression also makes the game EXTREMELY bland. You doing LFR means, that you already fought the bosses, saw their mechanics, dialogues, lore in the LFR. Do you really enjoy repeating it in normal/heroic just for those +10-20 iLvl's? I know that me, personally, would much prefer to have a carrot on a stick thrown at me, so I progress in a way that makes me reach my final goal in a climax. Reaching the final tier is the climax of doing dungeons/attunements/previous tiers, and is honestly always been the best reward.
Think about it for a second. What do you prefer? Hitting 90 and heading straight into LFR, getting the gear and possibly continuing into normals/heroics? Or would you rather break down your game into chunks that kept you occupied for a longer period of time, thus removing the "I'll resubscribe when new patch comes out" scenario, because you'll actually have something to do until the new patch hits. I find it funny that people blame Blizzard for not producing content fast enough, when in reality, there's more content than ever, just that half of it is useless or just done too quickly.
The game isin't dying because it's too hard/easy/aged. It's dying because of what it has become. A quick express that takes you no longer than a couple of days.
How do we fix this? Honestly at this point, it's hard to say if we can fix this. Look at Cata's heroics for instance. They were probably the closest you can get to vanilla/tbc dungeons, and what happened? QQ shitstorm everywhere. The game has has just changed too much to back to where we started. So the only thing I deem possible - a vanilla server. Look at it as more of a test, to see which way the game is actually better off and what do people enjoy more.
There are also other problems like class homogenization, reducing social interaction and others that I could touch upon, but the post is already too long, and probably half the people won't bother reading it anyway.
TL;DR: Games too quick,bland, easy thus leaving people with nothing to do, but to unsubscribe and wait for next patch, cause they are already done with the previous one in a week.
Thanks for your time and welcome to thread 9798789 discussing this topic.
Mod Note: Many more of same topic on the forum, locking this thread.