What you endorse, without being aware of it I suspect, is the core of why WoW fail nowdays.
And yes, the subs, the hype, the turnaround of longtime vs new players all make the use of the word "fail" a valid one.
Let me put it this way.
Why do you (as well as me, all of us I dare to say) consider WoW to have been such a fantastic game?
- A fluke?
- Picking the good bits from EverQuest? Doing some magic with the rest.
- Pure luck in terms of timing getting the legendary ID Software network programmer that made things EQ dreamt of possible in terms of network code?
- Anything else?
A mix of the above an anything else?
WoW became a mix of those. Not due to sulking about afraid to push the boundries (lets rememember how delayed Vanilla got).
What would have been a parameter that would have killed the project is mediocrity and again lets remember WoW was about to get canceled more than once to the point of Devs bullshitting leadership in order to get it going.
And mediocracy is what your post reek. WoW is utter garbage compared to what it has been (my personal view yes... but it being garbage is shared by every metric one want to throw at it: subs, turnaround of players, #players doing raids/M+/BG/Arena you name it.
A slight correction, only metric it thrive more at nowdays than before are bots and said bots are due to the decision of making WoW microtransaction game (WoWToken if anyone need a hint). A Pay2Win game is also a valid assertion.
I dont have high hopes for WoW. But not in the sense that one might think.
The executive branch of AB got a decision to make. A long term or a short term.
- WoW 2 (lets rule that out first of all, WoW this flawed cant be the foundation to a successful WoW 2
- Keep on running as of now with a desync between all levels of devolopment and business management.
- Dial back towards a more passion driven development, to simplify (simplify) core values.
Time will tell.
I can say one thing though. The last option is probably the hardest one, pretty much the entire BLZ has been drained of the enthusiasts needed for that to happen. Today WoW teams are much made up of contracters with no investment in the game other than to get their paycheck and adding something to their CV. It wasnt much difference back in 2002-2004 in terms of contracting but the key difference being that the company was tiny compared to today so anyone with a great(or bad) idea could lobby it fairly easy up the ladder to Morhaime or someone else. And it was contagious, most of them came from the DnD background.
For me I'll look at to see if BLZ try to at least pretend they combat bots. If there is an improvement I will give the next xpac a chance to at least enjoy the lovely new Dungeons during leveling.
Some things even BLZ cant fuck up, probably cos dungeons design is so compartmentalised from the game that it cant be hurt by the rest of the bullshit.