I feel like the problems i have with retail wow all stem from when it became retail wow. Cataclysm. I mean, these days, wow is just a completely different game from the first 3 clients.
Not that wow since then has been horrible or that i hate it, but just a ton of decisions i have not really agreed with. Not going to quit over it. I mean, we have wierd gear names and awkward stats. Like for example, what is the difference between a soldier’s blade of the aurora, and a soldier’s blade of the quickblade? I have no idea lol, and i do not know if the balde i mentioned is real or not, but of the aurora and of the quick blade, i was used to of the whale, of the bear, of the eagle, etc on stats.
Catalcysm destroyed the old overworld and revamped the old overworld as wel knew it, with no option at the time of really reliving the old overworld in any way. It really blew players like myself away, and quite frankly, since then it just messed up that curve that i had when leveling. I love the cataclysm revamp zones, but i could not appreciate them at the cost of the old zones. It was just frustrating to me. On top of this, tons of the old instances that were not revamped got changed drastically. Like compare wailing caverns from classic wow and classic bc to retail. An entire section is gone from the instance, and it just seems so shallow when leveling through nowadays. I realize popular opinion of that dungeon in particular was pretty low, but i guess i am one of the rare ones who liked that dungeon. I preffered the old unaltered version
Even to this day, world of warcraft has pretty much done away with all of the rpg aesthetics and tropes since cataclysm. I know i am one of the rare few, but buying ammo or arrows on my hunter made my hunter feel more like a hunter. Now arrows just come flying out of my pants. I just do not understand. Most people found it annoying. Did that mean we should get rid of it? idk. Since cataclysm, blizzard has fixed things that weren’t really broken to begin with. Arrows in wow, or bullets, were relatively cheap comparatively cheap to any other mmo i ever played. It was at least 100 gold or so in runescape for 1 single arrow. Variety of ways to create them yes, but way, way more expensive than it was in wow regardless of how you sliced it. That was a common complaint in wow was having to constantly have to restock.
In wrath, you could hold 1 k arrows in a single stack, so in my mind it wasn’t bad, but blizzard decided to remove ammo from vendors entirely. Heck i am still trying to track down arrows on my retail hunter, specifically the ones from icc in wrath in retail. If anyone has any, let me know, i will buy them. I still have my quiver of a thousand arrows stuffed with arrows lvling up in retail to this day, just to remind myself of that one mechanic.
I also have not been a big fan of homogenization of classes and junk, specifically when it came to ports. For example, at every given point in world of warcraft’s retail universe, there are like 15 npc mages with like 20 different portals and teleports opened up. Just makes the world smaller, and everyone essentially becomes a mage without actually needing to be one or roll one. I miss each class having those defining traits to them, only ones i can think of now are warlocks and rogues. No one else really has access to lock boxes lockpicking except for engineers for low lvl stuffs, and warlocks closets are still useful, as portals are not an option everywhere.
Being able to fly all over and mount all over whenever wherever, at lvl 10 and 30. I miss the levels being more restricted for stuff being unlocked and to create more progression. Level 40 for the longest time was required for a lvl 60 percent speed ground mount. Levels were the restriction back then, and gold. Now in shadowlands and a few expansions prior, you had to do these crazy achieves just to fly. Typically, i am not a huge fan of flying, especially in eastern kingdoms or kalimdor, or really any of the old zones. Like i always mount a ground mount in orgrimmar and thunderbluff, because these were old zones that lacked flying for so long.
Now there are a variety of ways that i use to get around progression. If i am flying to the barrens for example, if i wanted camp taurajo in retail, i just use vendetta point, because it is just north of where camp taurajo was in wrath and before. So i pretty much only use certain flight paths, and no matter what toon i am playing, i always make sure to discover them as well, including the city flight paths, which you no longer have to do. Or i do other things to recreate the progression curve, such as avoiding all the alternative routes to leveling, sich as pet battles and pvp exp, and gathering proffesion exp. I only do each dungeon twice. I had to get to lvl 20 to dual wield on my monk. Dual wield was locked behind a lvl 20 requirement back in the day and a trek to your class trainer, so i do that. OR my goblin shaman in legion reached lvl 40 before he could dual wield. Dual wield for shamans back in the day was locked behind 40 lvls in the enhancement tree.
When it comes to talent trees, people talk about how they were better, and more involved. But the only thing i miss and was the truly unique thing about them, was the ability to cross spec. Back then, it made more sense. For example, on a warrior in classic wow, try using rend on a rock elemental. You can spam it all you want, and all you will get is immune. OR try using a fire spell on anything made of fire. It is also immune. Makes sense. Cannot make rocks or air or whatever bleed. ANd you cannot hurt something made of fire with a fire spell. With the class design in shadowlands, so far i like what has been done. Getting frost shock and weapon enhancements actually made me feel like a shaman again. Nowadays when debating talents, that is som,ething i always bring up. I miss all spells being tied to the entire class itself, rather than most spells and abilities being tied to the specific spec. It gave a reason for a fire mage to have a few frost spells because otherwise, anything made of fire, you were screwed. I feel the retail game should have the same stuff back the way it was, but i mean we do not need all the immunities tied to certain spells back. But i should not be shoehorned into a specific set of abilities just because the others are for one spec.
Certain expansions like legion brought in new concepts like world quests, which are essentially glorified daily quests, so nothing really changed there. But in general, level scaling and zone scaling was brought about here, and while i am not huge on it, it ties into shadowlands, with the leveling revamp and chromie time. My major problem with shadowlands and chromie time personnaly, is just the fact that the original classic overworld was overlooked as far as adding the classic overworld and it’s accompanying dungeons to chromie time. Like, i think it would be hella cool running through the original barrens, the pre revamped barrens on my nightborne hunter if i wanted to. Or the original shadowfang keep, deadmines, scarlet monastery or whatever. Would have added a lost dynamic back into the game. Stuff like that really makes me wish i had at least had all of my toons to outlands before cataclysm came out. SO much stuff i cannot even snag anymore because of the revamp as well. Chromie time is cool, but seriously. No one thought of this. Would have been the coolest thing since sliced bread.
People bash shadowlands and earlier expansions for alot of stuff, but to be honest, it is just as repetitive as it always is at end game. Leveling is not nearly as involved as it once was. Lvling up is all run and gun, vs strategising mob take downs, and trying your best with your skill set up to survive. It is another thing i do not care for in modern wow, but like everything else, i try my best to recreate it. Torghast gets alot of hate. Just the trendy thing to hate on retail wow now. You have mythics and mythic plus 5 mans and raids, which essentialy the new modern wow heroics after cataclysm’s heroic fiasco. End game is end game, and i will have fun when i get there. Lovin the shadowlands zones so far and the lore.
In cataclysm and pandaria, well cataclysm specifally for phasing, i never was a fan of phasings introduction in the death knight starting area in wrath. It just further separates everyone within different areas. So you never really see anyone who is not in your phase layer. IDk. I just find it annoying at times. You have chromie time and warmode off or on, which adds like 7 different phases to possibly be in at any given moment, combined with each phase having an additional layer divided between who has warmode on or off. Like i never see people leveling up anymore because of this stuff.
Pandaria added cross realm zones, which inherently weren’t a bad thing. Problem with realm match making is just the fact that you cannot trade with anyone on the other realms most of the time. So you can only talk to them. Commerce is a huge deal in the game. WHen the garrison stuff was added in wod, it just attributed to heavy inflation loads due to a huge oversight with the jewel crafting follower trait, the gold mission table, and it just was really bad when we are talking about wod. Wod just had that, but also no content. Wod looked really cool if it had all that other stuff that was promised. I mentioned ammo up above, and wod was supposed to have a class accessory feature that would have been cool for hunters.
Shadowlands overall has been like every other expansion since cataclysm, but i definitely miss the old days of the way wow used to play and work. I am enjoying shadowlands so far, particularly the class design. The lore seems cool, so much they can do with it. Most of the changes over the years since cataclysm i just have not been a huge fan of. Or something like chromie time not having vanilla wow pre revamped zone leveling as an option for me. I have no problems trying out the new stuff, like torghast. Castle nathria looks really cool to me. Kind of has that kharazhan or shadowfang keep feeling to it.