Agree that those expansions and the community on my server in Vanilla were the best parts of WoW to me.
I remember having Alliance jump on our server (and us, Horde, jumpin on theirs) to trash talk to each other while we did BGs. I made it Warlord which was probably the grindiest thing I ever did in WoW but it never felt like a grind because I enjoyed Warsong Gulch and (name escapes me, the 5 ‘bases’ one). Wasn;t a huge fan of the huge PvP landscape that was Alterac Valley but… still didn’t hate it but just didn’t like it.
So many people quit with Cata (I did as well). I had hoped rated BGs were going to keep me playing but then they announced it was going to be a ‘raid like’ system requiring premades and that just made me lose interest as I didn’t really want to organize everyone’s schedule for BGs >.>
That’s an interesting description. I don’t want to say it’s entirely accurate, but there’s elements I question.
It’s one thing for the “newness” of a game to wear off. We’ll naturally look at the past with rose colored glasses; things like exploring the barrens for the first time, of course that can’t be replicated, we know that.
But something did change at some point. I can’t really say it was any one thing, but a combo. If I had to sum it up, it would be “homogenation”. It used to be, Rogues couldn’t heal and had to use bandages, excelled against squishies and in general duels, had a rivalry against Mages, and dreaded Warriors. Druids ran circles around everyone making them primary flag carriers, but when Paladins took off, Judgement of Justice became a hard counter. Mages were masters of mana; they could save you money via mana-restoring food, teleport you places, buff your mana, and increase or decrease damage from magic.
Classes countering other classes is not quite as extreme as it was before. On top of that, classes have been getting each other’s buffs; Mark of the Wild became a Blessing of Kings clone, Rogues lost their insane Sublety burst (Prep, anyone?), Mages got Bloodlust clone, and unique buffs like Dampen Magic were just removed. It became more balanced, fights were more fair, and the difference between max geared and ungeared shrunk. Classes became more fair, and counters no longer exist, but that kind of asymmetry was interesting.
Also, while convenient, you can now run dungeons, raid, and pvp without ever leaving a city. Like wut?
Dude, Warriors were AMAZING buddies with Druids. Between cat form stealth, helping the Warr negate kiting by rooting enemies… and, you know, healing him while hiding behind him, it made an amazing duo.
After close to 3 years of not playing WoW I decided on Wednesday of this week to reactivate my account just to pop in and see if anyone from my guild was still around and putz around a bit. Then, what, 2 days later they’re opening it back up for free?
God damn you, Blizzard! Canceled forever!!!
For me I’m not as extreme. I’d actually play WoW again (if only sparingly) if it went F2P like many other MMOs that come and gone
One problem I have is I like to keep my PC clean so I’ve uninstalled WoW. By the time I know about the weekend, and then reinstalling the thing, I end up with like only half the free weekend. Not really worth the effort.
If WoW was F2P I’d have an excuse to keep it installed, like I did with HotS for a while (but then I dropped it again)
I have had a blast with twinking at various points in the last decade, as with twinking, you gear ONCE per patch and then are free to focus on pvp without the typical grinding. However, it seems that they’ve made xp on and xp off BGs separate again, and even in the “hot” brackets q’s seem to be 20min+.
Not a fan of waiting or grinding. Traditional WoW is too much like having a second job to me. That’s what I love about hearthstone; you do your research, build your deck, then PLAY.
I’d like to point out that there is a very active f2p twinking community. Many players twink as hard as they can at lvl 20; some pure F2P, others gear with a subscription for things pure F2Ps can’t get and then let their subscription drop off(vets).
Anyway, not really my thing, but f2p WoW is its own community.
![:heart:](https://dacy5cilkxabf.cloudfront.net/en/hearthstone/images/emoji/twitter/heart.png?v=6" ":heart:")