The game is in a bad spot. Progression feels like a black hole and the player is not proportionally rewarded for becoming more adept at their class or at accomplishing the in-game content — rewards are randomized and unscheduled; it feels relieving, but not always exciting, to receive the gear you need from a raid boss (bc you didn’t receive instead a different item or a currency for the Heart of Azeroth), and receiving anything other than that piece of gear you need from a boss, for example, is a reminder to the player that they have a reasonably low amount of agency when it comes to the acquisition of the items that are part of that player’s in-game progression.
We’ve all heard of the Skinner Box analogy used ad infinitum, yet it applies so well. The problem isn’t simply that pressing the lever doesn’t reliably yield food pellets, and so the subject must attempt multiple times for a chance of success; the analogy in my opinion (and experience) goes further: After a while, pressing the lever will yield an electric shock each time it is pressed UNTIL it yields the food pellet.
Here I’ll interject with a relevant anecdote and the turning point of my experience in the game: I was on my warrior tank. I accepted a quest to join an Arathi Warfront, and I entered the instance. Purely out of disdain, I did the minimal effort so that it appeared that I was still actively participating: I ran around inside of the base, collected iron from the chest and deposited it, moving only when Heroic Leap came off cooldown, and familiarized my character with a few chairs. Toward the end of the Warfront I decided to join the group and tag the last boss ONLY because I was unsure if I needed to tag the boss to receive the loot from the quest. I didn’t make it halfway across the battle field when I was congratulated for completing my Warfront, and I was spat back out in front of the quest giver (turns out: No, you don’t need to tag the final boss or do anything at all in order to complete the quest). My reward was a Titanforged il395 Haste, Versatility Cloak with a gem slot.
I was disgusted that I received this — I felt a pang of disgust that demands reiteration. I was infuriated that I was “rewarded” like this when I could have been rewarded for the previous accomplishments of my character. I wished that the cloak did not exist, but it was an obvious upgrade, and I wore the thing immediately. That was the last bit of gear I put on my tank, I didn’t even slot in a gem.
Now, back to the analogy, it seems that pressing the lever will ALWAYS deliver an electric shock, even when the pellet finally comes down the chute, and I never want to play a game like that again.