A grey-beards take on the state of retail WoW

Community General Discussion
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Alright, my first major post to GD; this’ll be long but I think it’s high-time something like this was written.

To pre-face, I have been playing this game since late '07 and the game has changed dramatically from where it was to where it is for better or worse.

I see lots of posts saying “Why X expansion was good” and quite honestly those are fine and dandy but I would like to truly highlight what I think “worked” over the years and what didn’t and honestly how I would of expected Retail to turn out if Kaizen were applied.

To keep this readable, I’ll just highlight features from each expansion that should of stuck with us to where we are today; I’ll denote meaningful things no longer present systems with a :axe: and pruned ones with a :scissors: and likely to return features with a :star:

Vanilla

  • Raid Sets
  • Dungeon Sets :axe:
  • PvP Leaderboards / Rankings :axe:
  • Class Weapons :axe:

Burning Crusade

  • Achievements
  • Heroic Dungeons
  • Meaningful Reputations & Rewards
  • Flying :scissors:
  • Arenas
  • PvP stats :axe:
  • Profession abilities :axe:

Wrath of the Lich King

  • Jewel socket system + meta sockets :scissors:
  • Reputation Championing :axe:
  • Spec changing system
  • Glyphs :scissors:
  • Mount / Pet tabs
  • Heirlooms
  • Heroic Raids

Cataclysm

  • Archaeology :scissors:
  • Mastery stat
  • Guild Progression system :scissors:
  • Prime Glyphs :axe:
  • Reforging :axe:
  • LFR

Mists of Pandaria

  • Scenarios :axe:
  • Challenge Mode dungeons :axe:
  • Pet Battles
  • Black Market AH
  • Player Farms :scissors:
  • Account Wide features (Mounts, pets, achievements)
  • Item upgrading :scissors:
  • Mythic Raids
  • Reputation daily bonus :scissors:
  • Brawler’s Guild :star:

Warlords of Draenor

  • Multi-strike stat :axe:
  • Garrison :axe:
  • Toy Tab
  • Group Finder
  • Reagent Bank
  • Mythic Dungeons
  • Command / Mission Table

Legion

  • Invasions :axe:
  • Order Halls :axe:
  • Artifact System :axe:
  • Honor System ranking / rewards
  • Transmogrification 2.0
  • Legendary Item re-vamp
  • Mythic+ :scissors:
  • Class Challenges :star:

Battle for Azeroth

  • Auction House Mount :star:
  • Heritage Armors
  • Mount Equipment

Shadowlands

  • Torghast

I left out things like new classes / races because well… we should be getting those at regularly intervals, same for raids etc. because that’s general content otherwise anything not on the list is something I considered harmful and I am happy to see is gone from the game or made irrelevant.

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