Most common answer I get from people who stopped playing is that:
-Game is too complicated
-They need to think too much, rotation, lot of mechanics
And what’s interesting is that some of these raided mythic. And they just can’t be bothered by all the mechanics anymore.
Did WoW go too far with number of mechanics and visual effects on screen, constant dodging of circles on ground?
Game complicated? What? The gear is thrown at you. It’s never been so easy to play the game and gear toons and alts.
You have to be trolling.
Is the game hard. NO. Has it become more intricate on boss mechanic’s and how spells work with each other. YES VERY MUCH SO. I been playing since 2004. There have always been mechanics, some very hard to manage despite being very simple in design.
So its not harder. It just requires you to know more, but at the same time has become in many cases more forgiving if you mess mechanics up. At least if your not playing Mythic Raiding or M+ keys above 20s.
Hrm I think difficulty can vary based on your background.
I was playing with my friend Rhi and she was having a hard time with the class she actually enjoys (Boomkin) but she is not used to a live action game and previously did turn based games so it was a big challenge.
My last MMO before is FF14 and Grand Fantasia and say Melee jobs at 90 usually have a lot more complexity and positionals. There’s more buttons also. Most classes here feel relaxing in comparison.
There is a lot we do take for granted that we assume because we’ve done it for so long. (Pooling CDs for a big mob pack/boss, switching rotations in AoE).
Is WoW a complicated game? No IMO
Is there a lot for someone absolutely new to this type of game or games in general ? Absolutely
I agree that it is also harder than it was in parts of the past.
Yes. Though I’d call it more annoying than difficult.
I wouldn’t want every single fight to be Patchwerk, but sometimes they go too far in the other direction.
It’s not so much difficult from a rotation perspective, more from a mechanic perspective. All those numbers don’t matter when most mechanics are one taps to most.
It’s tricky because in Vanilla it wasn’t really a big song and dance: For most fights you had one place to stand and you only moved occasionally. Now it’s 'move from all these circles, watch out there’s a cone, oh no lure these mobs into this circle WATCH OUT more circles." It’s like geometry is waging war on us.
I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing, but I don’t think it’s ~too~ difficult, given that people have been able to succeed. Too difficult is pre-nerf C’thun.
If you want play this game seriously at the top end?
Yes.
You either have to be incredibly lucky in finding the right group of people to play with, landing on the right realm, not running afoul of what a good chunk of other players experience in things like PuG groups and by following the meta to a T by referencing online resources.
Trying to play your way (without using any guides or cookie cutter builds) will be regarded as sub-optimal and will seriously deter you from getting raid spots or completing high keys - unless you’re willing to try running it all yourself which increases pressure and difficulty as I doubt many people would want to jump into a competitive scene like its a second job.
Pre-nerf C’thun wasn’t too difficult…it was impossible
Gear is only part of the reward for the time you put in. OP is not here saying gearing is too hard, they are pointing out the game in general is too hard.
If you want to compare go look at Classic, gear is much harder to come by because less of the good stuff drops, less in general drops from raiding, but the game is super easy when looking at the mechanics and what there is that is just needed to do.
There’s a wide range of difficulties to accommodate everybody. 
But is that a good thing though? What are the downsides of this?
For example: We have 3 dungeon difficulties that are relatively pointless to do which are normal, heroic, and mythic.
Pfft.
If you like spamming raids or dungeons.
Otherwise the game is one big boring sandbox, loaded with meaningless chores.
I need to start making a list of the oddest things said in posts on GD, and share them with my WoW friends. I might start with this one… 
PS: Just shared it with a guild mate. The response was “perhaps they need to go play Candy Crush”…
To anyone who has played MMOs, I’d say WoW is fairly standard.
“Too Hard” doesn’t really happen, simply because WoW offers content for every possible level of skill. If something is too hard, you drop down the ladder a little bit and focus on whatever that content is.
Rotations are probably middle ground. It’s not action combat so you end up with a lot of abilities to shove on a bar, instead of just like 5 at a time ala GW2 / ESO. Realistically core rotations are still about that many buttons, but all of the CDs, CC, Utility, and other niche-use abilities make it more intimidating than it actually is. But it’s still less than something like FFXIV (in terms of core rotational abilities for most classes).
The most confusing bit about WoW is trying to come into an expansion as a new/returning player halfway through. Blizzard is AWFUL at making it clear which content is old patch content and therefore irrelevant for everything but story purposes. Getting to certain patch zones and such also gets awkward if you DO want to go, because they often change requirements to help active players on alts, so articles will have outdated information based on the original method.
I think Blizz over-corrected and made some specs a little too bloated. Otherwise, gearing in DF feels really good. S1 was painful as ranged, with all the obnoxious “move” mechanics, but S2 has been better.
Yeh but than you could be missing on upwards of 20+ iLVL of gear, and even than M0 and LFR has it’s own difficulties, they are not all that different from normal+ and M+, things just are less convoluted.
You have smaller circles to dodge, 1-2 less mechanics and so on, changing difficulty doesn’t all of a sudden null and void the problems we are facing with just a natural progression of 19 years of gaming, you still have a song and dance in all difficulties.
Dungeons, raids and pvp.
The same endgame for the past two decades. Well, I guess dungeons are a more recent addition.
It’s a progression. If you stop at lower difficulties then the gear slows down or stops.
I gave gear as an example but the game is really easy. You have content for casuals and also for elitists.
On the flip side my guild would kind of agree that the game has gotten too involved with what you need to do to succeed at the highest level. You need to remember the statistics of this game, 2% of all accounts got CE in S1. The highest CE of all active accounts currently is sitting at 4% only, and that was in Legion when the game was going strong.
Even looking at AOTC, where a lot of players pay for a carry and many crapshoot their way into a pug group who carries them through, highest is 34%, with most at or below 20%. It’s the same for KSM and KSH, the % of accounts that have those achievements is quite a bit lower than the “Game is so easy you suck” that players spout.
World of Warcraft
Flames of Geometry
Next expansion, be there or be SQUARE