I have been talking ot many friends who play, and many think this game has simply lost focus and direction on what made it so excellent. Burning Crusade introduced some neat additions, but it seems as if Blizzard has become very gimmicky as of late with patch changes, and are simply making the game too easy for both raiders and PVP'ers and are appealing to the instant gratification "I want epics now!!" crowd. The game now has over 10,000,000 subscribers. Thats huge.. But they seem to have lost the direction on what made they so successfull. They make way to many changes all at once that simply let people march into end game content. Just my .02.. any other thoughts?
About three months after BC came out I quit the game entirely. Raiding pre-BC (MC/BWL/AQ, but never stepped into Naxx unfortunately) really burned me out as my main was a tank. Combined that with the rush to get to 70 and gearing up for Kara I was just done. I came back a few months ago and leveled a shadow priest to 70 on a different server than I was on. Going back through all the old stuff was fun. I took my time in Outlands and am enjoying the game again. I realized leveling this toon that one of the reasons I'm having fun is I've had reason to be everywhere, not just in outlands. I think if Blizzard introduced reasons for lvl 70's to go back to all the older/original zones it might help. Not sure how they would do that, maybe daily rep quests or new 5 mans. I'm just throwing out suggestions. As I'm fully casual now and no longer hardcore raiding, I won't ever see Hyjal or BT, I do like that with the Sunwell being introduced in the next patch that they are putting in really hard 5 man instances, not just a new 25 man, and that the biggest boss lore wise will be in one of them.
Any MMORPG will lose it's shine after a while. Perhaps WoW even more so because for so many it's their first experience with this kind of game. It's hard to keep reproducing the feeling you got when you first walked into MC and saw those 2 Molten Giants standing there or when you first killed Ragnaros or Onyxia. Killing the Outlands bosses doesn't seem to instill the same pride as pre-BC because it's not new for people anymore and doesn't seem as much of an accomplishment doing it with 25 instead of 40 man raids. If Blizzard can be faulted with anything it's listening to their subscribers too much. The old biggest complaint about PvE was it was too hard and possibly unreasonable to get 40 people together to do anything that was taking too long to do anyway. Sure you could kill Onyxia in under 30 minutes, but everything else was a hassle. As time goes on they put in the 20 man Zul'Gulub and what do you know? People prefer shorter instances that require fewer raiders to run. They run with that and put in AQ 20 but leave AQ 40 and Naxx for the hardcore. They keep that in mind for BC and have the starting "raid" instance 10 man and drop the big raids to 25 and the vast majority of people prefer that. Purples drop easier than before and there's much rejoicing. The hardcore complain that in cheapens their accomplishments, but they're a fickle minority anyway and get blown off. So there's the PvE complaint so onto the pre-BC PvP complaint. It just takes too long to get the good gear and to get it the only skill you need is filling out a pre-form and rolling PuGs 18 hours a day for a few months. Towards the end Blizz figures out that sucks and go with using honor points as currency. Surprisingly enough, even the hardcore PvPers don't complain that much because most of them agreeed that the system sucked. They get to keep their High Warlord/Field Marshall titles and no one will be able to get those. BC comes out and they try and implement a system where skill will be the deciding factor in PvP, namely the Arena. For the most part the first season season is a success. However as with all things people eventually figure out how to work the system. People form Arena teams just to lose and get points, people sell points on their teams, and people queue up late at night in kahoots with other teams and face them 30 times in a row and win them all. Ok, Arena's not the greatest system, but it was Blizz trying to give people what they want. The game's at a point anyway (last big patch before an expansion) where Blizz is going to try and make it even easier. Attunements for the big raids are being dropped so more people can see all the content, which is a good thing. Again the hardcore will complain that people are getting spoon-fed content, but just because you can go to Hyjal without even stepping foot in Kara doesn't mean the casual player isn't going to get curbed stomped there.
I agree with everything you said pretty much. I am mixed on the attunement thing. We recently managed to kill Kael and Lady Vashj, and are in the process of killing them a few more times for attunments, and it is real pain in the ass.. As we are sick of the sight of SSC and TK.. We are looking forward to 2.4 so in case someone leaves, we can recruit easier rather than have to revisit. However, I think they just should have nerfed each one again to make the guilds "go through motions" of the planning/strats, rather than simply get rid of them altogether.. a few subtle but effective changes seem better than such drastic ones.
I kinda disagree with blizzard taking away attunements but it's a good thing for guilds that haven't seen Black temple yet. Though argubly im in the best raiding guild in US I'm glad ive seen Black temple though many ppl wont get too even step inside. good opt for guilds still making progress since most guilds finished BT last year.
Damn.... legends! Anyway, I was talking about this with a few people and I kind of disagree with you on a point you made. If you take and "average" server (like mine) only about 5 guilds have finished BT.. Many finsihing up SSC/TK, etc but overall thats such a small percentage of guilds that have finished the game. (I could be totally wrong on this btw) but it seemed like blizz just said "ok, thats only about 5% of the guilds" that have gone there, so lets keep the other HUGE group happy.. I get its a business, and the money talks, but its a shame I guess...