Plus in Vanilla you had to complete the earlier raids, no skipping.
And see, this is what made the game so addicting for me, and probably so many others. There were challenges and strategies, and when you conquered them, you got that sense of reward.
I was a total mmorpg “virgin” when I started playing, and it was a time in my life when working hard wasn’t paying well (story of my life, really) and the game, actually rewarded me when I fought hard, strategized, worked my way through quests. When the game got too easy it lost this element of hard work = reward and lost its appeal, IMO.
This right here is my issue with retail wow. In Legion I only raided Antorus and did LFR for the earlier stuff. Why put in all that work for 2-3 months when Blizzard will just give me better stuff from that patch with the next one and I can be ready for end of expansion content even though I skipped the rest. Same thing with BFA, I raided semi-hard at the beginning of the exp but then stopped caring because it was easier to get gear just as good if not better by waiting just a little bit.
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Their data showed that most people who tried WoW didn’t make it to the level cap, so they tried changing the feel of leveling.
I remember on Asherons Call when you died you dropped 6 or 7 items and got a vitae penalty. Imagine if WoW players dropped their Thunderfury and you could loot it off them. The tears would cause another Great Flood.
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It’s all Diablo 3’s fault!
They ruined Diablo 3 by making it more like WoW, and in turn they ruined WoW by making it more like Diablo 3!
So…we need World of Diablo.
i dunno, Id say more ZG than UBRS.
They got shiny new developers with really stupid ideas because they listened to forum whining.
Why do you think that they no longer read their own forums? 
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A combination of mass appeal, QoL features building up, and trying to over-curate the game. In the end those three factors watered down the game to the point where it lost a lot of what people love in an MMORPG.
Think about this:
When WoW came out, people were still going to EB Games to buy PS2 and Xbox games, and you could still buy and sell PS1, N64, and even SNES, Sega, and NES games in some of the stores. The PS3 wouldn’t come out for two more years. Then, WoW existed through that whole generation and we’re seeing the end of the PS4 and Xbox One.
The game is one its way to being out 20 years. The past 15 years we have seen changes in genres, features, and expectations.
I give Blizzard a lot of hell, but thr truth is simple. They were just trying to appeal to the players. They failed at that a lot, but they also succeeded. A lot of the things I see people complaining about are things they were excited about to begin with. It really has been a slow slippery slope.
But I don’t think for a minute that Blizz was trying to harm the game.
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Well, everything seen as “making the game easier” really occurred with every new expansion. For example, in TBC the access to the standard mount/riding was lowered from 40 to 30. In Wrath, the aggressive NPCS in immediate starter hubs (i.e. Valley of Trials, Shadowglen, Sunstrider isle, etc.) were made non-aggressive, and mount level were once again decreased from 30 to 20 as the level cap was raised to 80.
Blizzard then, of course, released Cataclysm removing original Vanilla content in an attempt to make 1-60 content fresh, and to accommodate for the 80-85 cap raise (opposed to the traditional 10 new levels). However, with new expansions, that Cataclysm content became old and ran into the same obstacles as the original Vanilla 1-60 content, and so Blizzard then began the introduction of Heirlooms and the “starter” mount, all in an effort to allow players to get through all old content quicker. This all eventually lead to the level boosts with Warlords, Legion, BFA, and will probably continue for future expansions.
All of this was done in an effort to streamline the then becoming tedious process of leveling through the Vanilla content to get to Outland and then Northrend. The more End Game content Blizzard introduced with each expansion (subsequently raising the level-cap again), the larger of a leveling gap there was between old content and new content (the latest expansion).
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Hah yeah that sort of gameplay is fun. UO, Ascherons Call, Lineage 1/2 etc… you could drop items on death.
In UO not only did everything you where carrying drop, but also you could then decapitate the body, cut it open to harvest lungs and guts and brain and then the really sick bastards would then emote pee in your skull.
Wow is a nice gentle place.
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Basically…Blizzard confused casuals with entitled players.
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Vanilla was never “rough”, it was tedious. That was fine for that moment in time, but most people would not want to go back to a walking simulator till level 40.
Nice one year necro.
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The original developers had a great vision and did some great game design. As time went on the powers that be convinced them that making things more accessible meant more $. As a result, more accessible translated into less challenge, less long term relevance, and more easily bypassed content. (culminating in vanilla 1.12)
I remember when classic came out, and a lot of retail players who had never played vanilla remarked how much more they valued what they obtained in classic, how much more rewarding even small achievements were. Unfortunately, sweatlords and opportunists who knew how to run roughshod over the neutered-by-1.12-content pulled otherwise content players along in their wake. The end result being out of control gold bloat, RMT, boosting, and all the landslide effects they cause.
Blizzard choosing the most watered down vanilla patch was the first step in the condemning of classic.
Ugh, I don’t get why people are doing this… is it supposed to be humor?