It’s exactly as I said. The rush to get players into the latest content. I saw players trying to rush content in Vanilla - paid leveling services led to experience nerfs which led to heirlooms and bonus XP, which led to LFD and then LFR.
Players would not stop complaining about the grind of doing doing old content in order to do new. Again, the rush of trying to get players into the latest content took over.
It stopped being about dungeons, and became a focus on raiding. At endgame, dungeons were something to just blast through in order to get points to buy the latest gear for the newest raid.
You had heirlooms, you had LFD, you had teleporting, catch-up gear.
anyone that thinks this never played on a dead server. my realm nazjatar was as dead as a door nail
cross realm stuff actually saved the game
It was just a question.
But even in the “difficulties” you list, the first one is ridiculously easy and the second is simply easy.
Not to mention you didn’t say anything about leveling, 5 man reg, or 5 man heroic. Which are all set to to cream puff difficulty. Which is why I asked the question. Of course, those are all at the “ridiculously easy” difficulty as well…
Not that I am a fan of LFD I think if it was just LFD It wouldn’t be that bad. LFR is what killed guilds and ruined the game for most.
I quit before LFR was ever added, so that “most” definitely doesn’t include me, whether it includes 99% or 1% of the people who have found the game ruined.
even on a PS with no Cross-realm, just having LFD dramatically reduces the interaction with other people and instead of a dungeon being an experience to enjoy because it’s something you worked hard get together it becomes something you just want to rush through quickly, maybe say thx, bb and then start the next one ASAP.
Too much convenience and it stops becoming something special and just becomes a thing you do. Same with showering in blues and later epics. When they become too common there’s simply no joy when you get something because it’s just what you do at that point. There’s a balance to be found there (like having every raid drop badges and when you get enough you can simply buy the piece you’re wanting if you didn’t get it via random drop yet, a kind of like an official DKP, That gives you a goal to work towards but you can still get that excitement if you happen to earn the item you wanted sooner via random chance. However they ONLY apply to the content you’re running, you can’t share them across other raids (maybe have a cash-in mechanic where you can convert badges into a lump sum of gold once you no longer need anything from the raid, to help cover any repair/consumable costs you spent running it anyway)
Likewise rate of gear aquisition is simply too high. They had to nerf down Enchanting and JC (and add/remove Reforging, which was a system I actually liked), because you simply got gear too often and instead of being excited about it, you had a laundry list of things to do to bring it up to snuff, instead of that gear being a good investment because it could be weeks/months before you get a replacement unless you’re REALLY lucky and then you don’t care because you got to progress even more in such a short period of time.
Id say it has more to do with flying and the shift of the game to hardcore raid progression in TBC, which was great btw it was just different.
People forget classic’s content is all azeroth with RP behind it from lvl 1-60 then into raiding, and in that world pretty much every zone is being used by a bunch of different level ranges of people at all times, for farming, class quests or other RP quests.
Blizzard made one of the worst mistakes you can with an mmo when you have an xpac and that’s making the original or old worlds completely pointless to be in