People “crazy” enough to replay something they enjoy must hate themselves, but people who hang around and keep playing something they don’t enjoy enough to replay are well adjusted. 
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This issue is that the content prior to endgame or 60 stuff just isn’t relevant. The game starts at max level now and levelling in WoW has become entirely redundant.
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I’m with you I hate leveling and want it done ASAP. My wife on the other hand loves it. /shrug
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If the “journey” is hard to enjoy for a particular xpac, I just avoid working on any character but my main, with all alts playing at lower brackets.
More generally though, I have issues with how on-rails questing has been for years now. It strips away any replayability leveling had because every single character is exactly the same. Can’t skip that hub you hate because it locks you out of the zone. Can’t skip that zone you hate because it’s tied to endgame progression. Etc, etc…
Questing in older xpacs may have been droll but at least it gave more latitude in which quests you could do and allowed you to change routes significantly between alts, sometimes skipping questing for entire brackets without negatively impacting the resulting character. I wish they could’ve just spiced up the older style instead of bringing in the bland, tightly controlled McQuesting style with Cataclysm.
I love making alts in classic. In shadowlands no I just want to get done with the bullsht so I can do arenas
The last time I probably enjoyed the “journey” was back in MoP. Even liked the parts before the first patch. Nowadays it’s more of a sometime, hit or miss thing.
It’s weird given that I have over a dozen max or near-max level alts now but I hated rolling alts in vanilla and still couldn’t get myself to roll more than a couple alts in Classic.
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My journey seems a bit different from many people.
My end goal of this game is to kill the hardest end boss. It was like this since Vanilla.
Leveling was a bit long on my first run in Vanilla as I was new to the MMO genre. I leveled up while exploring stuffs. Discovered some dungeons and I brought my guildmates there. I sought all the dungeons and I kept on doing them becoz those places drop better loots. Then I reached max level. That’s when I heard about Raids. I’ve learned that I have to pre-gear on 5-man dungeons before I raid so I did that. I filled all my slots with the best items I could find on 5-man dungeons. Then I started raiding. Lots of fail on the raid. I have to switch to better guilds before I was able to beat the whole Molten Core. I was on guild-hopping until I found the guild with best players. When I got to that guild, my progression continued… Killed Nefarian on BWL, Completed AQ40 and reached Naxx40. We killed around 6 bosses in Naxx before TBC came. The critical part of my progression journey was unto getting into an elite guild. There were many applicants but only few were chosen. I was so happened to be a bit popular on my realm. Somehow, I got in.
That was my journey in Vanilla. I was doing dungeons since the start. I got raid gear. Then I was among the pioneer for timed 5-man dungeon on 45-min Stratholme run where I made countless runs doing free carries. That made me popular on my realm that lead me to be chosen to be invited on an elite raiding guild. I also PuG’d PvP. I reached Lt. Commander while doing Naxx-40. The Naxx-40 is equivalent to Mythic Raiding of Retail although Naxx-40 is way easier today in Classic. Back then, I have to produce flasks and potions for raid and we raid every night. I have to perform like a job or my raid slot would be given to other people. Competition was real. So I have to farm for gold for flasks and potions every day. Usually takes 2 to 4 hours of farming to be able to afford those. We dont have Daily quests back then. It was painful but I was hardcore no life back then so it seems okay.
Anyway, fast forward to today. I became Casual with limited play time. The goal is the same… kill the hardest Boss of the content which is now Mythic Raid Bosses. So my journey is to level up to max level first. While leveling, do the dungeons. When I reached Max level, I started doing Heroic 5-man. After Heroic, I should do Mythic+0 but no. I now need Legendary. I have to farm Heroic until it drops my legendary. When I got it, I started farming for ashes until I complete my legendary. Then that’s when I started M+0. Becoz I am Casual, the hardcores were already doing M+5. These guys wont let me join +5 as I have no experience. Fine, so I started from the very bottom with +2… Completed +2 on all dungeons. I got a strong base rio score then I climbed keys every other week.
I was also tryin my way on Normal Raiding. But, it takes more time in there. Getting a raid group is way slower and PuG’s learning curve is so slow. So I concentrated most of my time on M+. When I reached M+10, that’s when I came back to Raid to complete 10/10 on Normal CN.
Becoz I am Casual, I am still on my progression… now at M+12 and I started doing the first 3 Bosses of Heroic CN. I know I wont reach Mythic Raiding but I could reach M+15 and AoTC before the next expansion like what I did on LEgion and BFA. I have plenty of time. I am just playing at my own slow pace. I PuG everything. I play when I want to play. So far, I am okay.
I know there’s an issue on having likable on Dungeon Finder on high keys. I am only at +12 becoz that’s the key level where I am likable. I will run tons of successful run at +12 for me to be likable to +13. I got my first +13 last night. /Dance. I will do the same strat on +14 then on +15. When I reach +15, that’s when I would start focusing on Heroic Raid.
I encountered tons of wipes. But I am learning when my group wipes. I just move forward, learn from my mistakes, making me a better player. And that’s the journey. Journey on becoming a better player.
I had a blast when I beat M+15 and AoTC on Legion and BFA as Casual all on dungeon finder. I am looking forward to do the same in Shadowlands.
BTW, I have no alts. I am not fond of repeating quest for toons I wont use that much. I raised alt back in the days to help me with Resources like an Engineer that supplies me bullets and arrows. Now, I dont need those. The Sanctum upgrades are the one sustaining for my dungeon needs: Augment runes, herbs for flasks and meat/fishes for food. Dailies provide me gold and Paragon Chest also provide gold. I am self sufficient with one toon. No alts.
I enjoy the journey, I do. But, base automatic catchups per-alt have always been needed. And they have always been missing. No, not “you have to buy some macguffin-book”, automatic.
Like, If you take rep as an example every character someone has at exalted should change the rep gain rate in that faction +5%. Maybe capping at +50% rep gain speed. 50% is 10 chars at exalted, if someone is doing that much then jesus, yeah - they deserve to have the timesink cut in half.
The rule is - it has to be noticeable/meaningful, meaning “you can tell” but at the same time doesn’t break the game.
I think reps are getting to a better state. The gear they give is typically useless, the mounts are account wide, and even venari from the get-go had some account wide stuff. Locking profession recipes, I think is ok.
I would still prefer it to be account-wide, but I feel like this is as close as we will ever get given player vs. developer stances.
Leveling … only really interesting the first or second time. Threads of Fate was a cool idea, but current implementation sucks. It takes considerably longer if you are not going with an organized group.
What is ruining everything (imo) are these infinite progression systems that Legion introduced. I honestly hated Legion and rank it the lowest xpac as a result.
Things like AK/AP, AP again in BFA, renown, even the new Torghast talent trees … all of these feel like retention mechanics and are just arbitrary barriers of entry for my alts. I used to play many alts per xpac, but these systems honestly make not want to bother with a second. I barely feel motivated to do it on the first.
Did anyone honestly find the “collect souls” + “collect 1k anima” per week an interesting chore to do even on their mains? Who thought this was a good idea? Oof.
I enjoy the journey in classic. In retail, the entire journey is summed up in two words: Guaranteed Success. So no… I don’t enjoy the journey in retail. I enjoyed the quests the first time through them, as well as the campaigns. The second through fifth time through? Heck no…
that generally means:
“I’m only playing this as a single player game till i finish the story and then I’m going to quit to go work on my all cobblestone castle in minecraft”
Actually, I remember speed leveling guides coming out in TBC when I started. I didn’t follow any of them until I leveled my 3rd character, but they definitely existed. People were boasting about being able to level from 1-70 in like 7 or 8 days.
Ah, well, the infinite nature of the neck in BFA was well handled. People could spend a little time and get functional. And the people that spent more time got a little bump. And the people that spent a massive amount of time on one character got a very incremental bump.
I don’t think infinite is bad. But it has to be well designed. That’s the trick, have it be enough to feel fun and matter some but not silly-game-break. Like I played one char for a huge portion of BFA and the neck item level (for that time period) was almost highest on the server. Now I didn’t set out to do that, it just kind of happened and that was fun. But it didn’t mean I was OP compared to others. And — when they did the big catchup changes in AP gain rates people jumped up to near my level very very quickly.
EDIT: but, yeah, I do very much believe in the “right to be done”. It’s just with the neck in BFA if you just kind of generally played one was always “done”, decently functional. It worked pretty well as a system.
EDIT: reading more of your reply. I think the greater sin in SL is that the systems are more distributed, deep, and seemingly less adaptable to effective catchups without unmaking them.
I know people that deleted their characters as soon as they hit level cap. Honestly…these people don’t make sense to me.