Weren't they supposed to, I don't know, scale you down to a pre-set ilvl? It hit me really hard when they said they were retiring Pandaria's challenge modes, because I had been the whole expansion under the impression that better gear or whatever didn't matter because everything scaled (they were really reassuring on that aspect at the start of the expansion), so, since I'm incapable of managing or finding random groups, I had to wait for some friends to be on the game and actually have time to go... but in the end it wasn't enough.
As for skills... who cares? Even through Pandaria they did balance changes that altered a class' power and performance in challenge modes.
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Removing stuff is frustrating, especially when achievements aren't really account wide (most of them torment you with a red message telling you "it's not been obtained by", save for the godsent blue header ones). That makes everything very frustrating, since I can't be on a "welp, achieved that forever" state and not feeling "forced" to do alt-trains. I got LOTS legendary cloaks and even more legendary rings, and I'm still frustrated because I'll be plagued by that red text on every other character. I'll remember which characters did that, I don't need that red text!
The "I was there" feeling doesn't work if I have to bring the alt-train to everything so that it "looks like" I've done it completely (and it's invalidated if I create another character).
Diablo 3 did it right: there are class achievements that you have to do with a specific class, but they're complete forever and they're not in a constant state of millions of half-full glasses.
Really, really frustrating. I wouldn't mind so much if every (or most) achievement or feat of strenght was "blue header".
Once upon a time... the end. Next time, try twice upon a time.
removed was nothing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVByTVCqDNE
you can get behind the instance portal, the old dungeon is still there, they just moved the mobs and bosses.
Formerly known as Arafal
No, not even slightly. In fact the amount of content that usually makes it (excluding WoD) Blizz are actually among the better that I know of.
Odd, I still have my mount from old ZG.
Unobtainable=/=Removed.
Ontopic though, you can say that the older quests pre-cata were removed. Not updated, removed. But personally, I think they are now better. And other MMOs have removed content, so there's no reason to say Blizz is the only company that does it.
You can tell the newer players from the older ones when they don't talk about the days before achievements. If you wanted something on all of your toons, yep you guessed it, you did it on them all. Try doing What a Long Strange Trip Its Been on more than one toon, or the Bloodsail rep by yourself each time. Making literally everything account wide is bad for the game. Let's take PvP for a prime example. One of the handfuls of main reasons so many things in pvp are character locked is because those players who don't constantly do pvp for the fun of it, but instead mainly do it for the mount/title rewards, would stop when getting said reward on the first toon they earned it on. As a result pvp queues and/or manually formed groups would be scarcer. Requiring individual characters to earn many of the rewards keeps the number of casuals groups and teams going longer, which in the end is beneficial to casual players who start later because they aren't punished for not doing the content during the first wave of players. I also think it is good for players to confuse the feeling of being "forced" to do stuff on alts because that means those toons actually see the sun on Azeroth more than once a month.
It was the BLACK Proto-Drake that was removed, not the Plagued. Plagues is still available from the BMAH. For some reason the Black one was never put up there for unknown reasons - probably just an oversight.
Star Trek Online has removed heaps of old stuff and revamped a lot more. Plenty of old things unobtainable. About to do another skill mechanics overhaul.
"WoW is stale! WoW changes too much!"
Yeah... anet is alot worse with GW2. One thing is a mount or an item. Another thing is chunks of story content.
So, Blizz ain'tthe worst. Though i'm still cross that i didnt win the roll for the armani bear before it got removed.
That's the 10 man one, the 25 man Black Proto Drake is no longer obtainable as well. As are the mounts from Trial of the Grand Crusader. All the original skins for the lvl 60 mounts are no longer obtainable, thus creating the Old School Ride achievement. The original Brewfest Ram is no longer obtainable. ZG Tiger/Raptor and of course the granddaddy of unobtainables the Black Qiraji Resonating Crystal.
There might be some more, I'm at work so can't recall atm.
The Fresh Prince of Baudelaire
Banned at least 10 times. Don't give a fuck, going to keep saying what I want how I want to.
Eat meat. Drink water. Do cardio and burpees. The good life.
If I was Blizzard I would use and abuse of Caverns of Time and make all of old Kalimdor/EK avaliable there. And the old dungeons and raids, like Zul'aman (Zuljin!). And maybe the legendary quests.
I think that nearly every game company cuts content from their games, either because they think the content will have a negative effect on the playerbase or because it does not meet up their own standard. But i do think that blizzard are one of the few, who are just really bad at hiding what they have "removed".
Well, SOE did a number on SWG before eventually removing the server plugs from the wall.