I like to world PvP, I just turn on Track Humanoid and do a bit of Horde genocide.
I can’t remember the open world ever being particularly threatening. I played on a PvP server from Vanilla until the end of WoD, so my biggest threat was other people. 
On the PvE front the only threat was going to a zone rated higher than your current level and making sure to not aggro more than one mob. Once we hit the level cap with a few pieces of blue gear, the entire open world was basically trivial.
That brings me to what I think you are really experiencing. That is the leveling is just so darn quick now. I would tend to agree with you. But, even back in Cata when I ran with a large guild, the raiders simply saw leveling as an impediment to them getting on with “their” game. I don’t see Blizz ever going back to a slower more immersive leveling experience.
I disagree. Modern WoW feels akin to how MOBAs like LoL felt like from the very beginning, just a place to check in, press buttons, collect rewards. Everyone’s there mainly for the hype and juiced by cinematics and the flavor of their player character more than the nuts and bolts of a game.
It’s an mmoRPG, and the illustrious legacy of RPGs from Wizardry and Ultima to Everquest to Dragon Age Origins and SWTOR meant a lot of things like, calmly managing your inventory, buying food and drink, carefully delving into dungeons, checking party composition, developing unique strategies.
Modern WoW almost plays like an action game with obvious abilities that synergize and stuff like that to the point where I feel like I’m playing a MOBA like LoL. A super big popular game anyone can get into.
The only counterpoint I can think of is Blizzard did start to simplify things a lot with Warcraft 3 in the RTS genre, but even up until Starcraft 1 it was an RTS that was at least as challenging or dense in many ways as the Command and Conquer games it borrowed from.
My memory of WoW was, yes, it made things easier than Everquest, but not in a super radical way, getting to level 60 felt like an epic achievement. To do Scarlet Monastery as Alliance, you had to sneak across the lake and do all these tricky things, and then the boss battle was pretty epic, WoW was way different.
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to a zone rated higher than your current level and making sure to not aggro more than one mob.
Yep that’s the beauty. If you want more challenge it’s easy (and rewarding) to jump ahead, or to solo group quests. But if you’re struggling you can just over level stuff.
Elden Ring does this same thing.
and making sure to not aggro more than one mob.
Yea. That was basically the main thing keeping people awake and they remove it…now combat is boring.
Perfectly stated.
Agree to disagree I guess. I was part of a 200+ guild in Vanilla and maxed out guild in Classic and what you are saying about raid logging just wasn’t a thing. We were doing things, all the time. Raid logging really didn’t start to be a thing until late WOTLK/Cata.
WoW also used to be a lot slower. Everything you did required a lot of walking around (even the faster methods of movement weren’t that fast). You tended to take down mobs at a slower pace. Drop rates were lower. Spawn rates were lower. Even actions like interacting with objects, gathering, and crafting were slower.
But people wanted it sped up and every time they speed things up, people still want it sped up more. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but people shouldn’t be surprised that if they put the same amount of time as they used to each day into grinding stuff out in modern WoW, they’re going to be finished a lot sooner.
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That’s an understandable point. It’s something I don’t have experience with, as it’s not the reason I really play any games, but I can see the someone latching on for the levelling experience not exactly enjoying the current state of the game.
The game has evolved in that way, from being levelling and experience oriented to end game focused. The game was always end game focused, from the moment I stepped onto the platform, and this is the experience I personally prefer.
I think a lot of the issue for those players is that they don’t have an option, beyond classic, to get that experience in retail, since the whole thing is focused on getting to max level ASAP.
I’m not sure there is a solution though. Maybe some challenge content, SSF stuff for gearing up with a reduced levelling speed? Could be an attempt. But, they aren’t exactly willing to work on that side of the game, at least at the moment.
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My guild in BFA did this! We actually had a great time with progression and figuring out mechanics, adjusting out tactics and when we Downed a boss it was just so rewarding.
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Yea classic is nice, but the SoD team really doesn’t have the resources to make an expansions worth of content. So it’s not like I can play classic until the end of time.
I would just rework the leveling experience (which they pretty much do every few expansions anyway). And this time just give players who want to speed thru it ways to do it. Put Greyoll on the map, give them exp potion, let them buy a boost. Whatever.
And for people who like the chill RP quests I feel like that should be relegated to professions.
Well, we’re definitely been getting topics to have it play more like an ARPG like Souls.
Don’t think ppl 10+ years ago expected WoW to turn into Diablo where you can cleave down hordes of enemies easily so anything is possible. 
That attitude even held in Vanilla Classic. Many people were trying to level to 60 ASAP. Especially for their alts. They’d get up there, grind dungeons and PvP for pre-raid BiS, and then raid log.
It seems like that’s just what the majority wants the WoW experience to be, so I agree that there’s basically no chance of the game going back to what it was before.
Mists of Pandaria 2 Electric Boogaloo Dynasty Warriors Edition
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This is the part I find just so rewarding, personally. My guild will watch a fight, and will have this strat from RCP or Method, and I’ll sit there like “why?”. Then I think about how we are doing it, and just go “no, that’s stupid. Do this instead” and we get the boss down like 1-2 pulls later. Feels great being able to do those adjustments on the fly.
Those guides are great for people, but they are mythic raiders and can overly complicate things with their frame of reference. Sometimes, just standing off to the side works better than locational stacks for Normal and Heroic.
That’s the issue I’ve seen with it, as well. There is a limit to how long SoD and classic can last. And it’s starting to approach that limit. I might play MoP classic for the memes, but no one is touching WoD and Legion is just too new and riddled with weird things like Artifact Power for me to touch again.
The levelling experience has needed an overhaul for a very long time. I wish they’d put some effort into it. I do enjoy that I can speed level a toon, but sometimes I want to go back to chunking out quests in Un’Goro for an hour without levelling 5 times.
The fact there isn’t an option to do that anywhere just feels pretty bad, even to someone like me that just goblins the end game.
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No, the reason is Blizzard has spent the last few expansions making bad stories that retconn previous lore every other patch with boring new characters while character assassinating beloved ones, while also adding ever elaborating time-wasting time gates into the game.
I remember burning out and having to take a break during Legion just before Nighthold came out. I eventually resubbed in the Argus patch and made it a point to find a guild with which I could raid. My motivation was that I did not want to miss the final epic battle with the Burning Legion, one of the biggest, if not main, antagonist of the Warcraft universe. I did find a guild and had a lot of fun tanking Antorus all the way to Curve.
But in the subsequent expacks, including TWW, what’s my motivation for finding a guild and doing the raids? So that I can participate in a sub-par story that doesn’t even feel like Warcraft anymore? 
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I don’t have any motivation to raid either, my motivation is putting the opposite faction in their place.
I agree that that’s part of what I enjoyed about the game when I was younger. And I also really don’t think that Blizzard, especially in Retail, will revert that back.
I do honestly miss entire levels taking days to complete. I would argue that running raids repeatedly isn’t much more entertaining than camping a camp of bandits for several days while getting a couple levels.
I think that’s the sort of thing I was speaking about in a previous comment about the journey missing from the game. It’s just a fast, facilitated race to the end of game content where we grind once a week for a single shot at loot from the raid or from the vault. Maybe retail isn’t for me but I think that if they made the leveling process from 70-80 significantly longer and removed their stupid scaling system that we would all find that we actually enjoy more of the game. I think of they removed the timegating that I wouldn’t feel like I had to rush to the end or miss out on the chance to get the best gear. As it is now I only have a limited window to become geared before the season resets all my progress.
The seasonal gearing has become the progression, not leveling and building a character and their skills.
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if they made the leveling process from 70-80 significantly longer and removed their stupid scaling system that we would all find that we actually enjoy more of the game.
Exactly. People can have their end game fun, but it shouldn’t mean that everybody who liked doing zones should get screwed.
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Not to mention who the hell wants to get on discord and talk? Im tired and have no interest in speaking. Let me enjoy my game in peace!!! 
Nah. I was already 30 when WoW was new. It’s not an age thing. It’s how the experiences have shifted over the years. Play WoW classic today. People don’t play it exactly as they did in 05/06, but they play it much differently than retail. You can’t help but slow down a bit and work as a team.
The changes to the game are very much intentional and designed to expedite the player along the process. Barriers to gameplay have been lifted in a lot of ways, and with that convenience comes a lack of appreciation for the basics.
Could go on for a while, but I hope you get the idea.
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