Hello!
To start with english is my third language so excuse any spelling or grammar mistakes.
Some of you might know me as a troll or a guy who likes to bitch a lot on the forums. I've just started broadcasting live on twitch and many subjects that come to my head from the viewers and the people I talk to on skype every day and who play with in general is: "What happened to WoW, and how do we fix it?"
Most responses I will get here will be "there is nothing to fix", "the game evolved for the better", and "shut up elitist". I can take it, I read every PM I'm sent on twitch, I read every post thats posted in my threads here and on other forums. I'm willing to discuss this topic and not go overboard and call people bad names. I had a long rant about this, had a discussion with a friend of mine on skype on live stream. Here I'll summarize whats on my mind right now.
In cataclysm, WoW started to decline. This was in the 4.1 patch, the patch I like to call "the welfare patch". T11 was nerfed, epics were once again in 5 man heroics. Tier 11 was the best thing I ever experienced since WOLK. It was better than Ulduar which is considered by most raiders the best raid ever made. Tier 11 had everything, challenging heroics, epic gear for the raiders, THREE instances in ONE TIER! It was jawdropping, it was amazing. I finally fell in love with the game again. I though to myself, WoW is finally good again. No more free epics and welfare handholding.
I was wrong. I was terribly terribly wrong. Patch 4.1, everyone and their dog were in full epic gear. Welfare badge gear, welfare 353 epics... I guess Blizzard got enough whining from the bad players and decided to bend over and screw the game royally. All though they did not nerf heroic raiding which would have been the last straw for me. Normals were nerfed however, I was merely annoyed by this, not flip table annoyed though.
Lets move forward to 4.3 - the patch that almost killed the game. Deathwing, the boss everyone had waited for. A disaster. The most retarded endboss fight I have ever seen (blizzard thought long and hard about this one). Nerfing the "raid" even more made this tier more abysmal than it already was. 10% was enough! Then we have LFR... Blizzard justified this feature as a way for lesser players to see content, which is fine in a manner of how much you butcher the encounters, removing core mechanics like on Dark Animus adds, Twin Consort healing. If these people are gonna some time get into normal modes, why not make LFR just like normal?
You wanna see the content? Its there! We have normal mode just for you casuals! Go and get it. But no... it appears doing normal modes are hard (which they are not) they are very easy by the way... I clear it with pugs every week 12/12 on my alt.
Now the way I used to feel about WoW is dwindling. Its fading away... the fantasy world which defined my teen years are becoming nothing but a cash cow. Blizzard are catering to the wrong people. Make the terrible players LEARN, not just give everything to them for free. Give them a GOAL. Normal raiding should be what LFR is now.
/rant over
Will also make commentary video about this tomorrow on live stream.