Proves they have a lot of dead realms on a 16 year old game. Your points(like many you are trying to make) contradict one another.
We’re playing a 16 year old game, the majority of people currently playing are heavily invested after years of being here. Casuals and hardcore players have been leaving over the past 2 expansions and not returning.
The olive branch of a level squish to the Classic players that haven’t touched a retail WoW expansion in years won’t be enough to persuade people to return when they see the convoluted mess that is Covenants. If anything it will push more longtime retail players away.
The broken stories, unbalanced abilities/soulbind trees, time gated multiple advanced levelling experience(AP and renown) will either push people back to Classic(which they haven’t figured out how to monetize without pissing off a huge portion of that player base) or push them out of WoW altogether.
Most of us have spent some extra money on the cash shop over the years for transfers, mounts, toys, transmogs and nu-Blizzard is willing to risk bleeding us players over the next few months because of sheer stubbornness from it’s lead devs.
As someone with a level 60 in Classic who has an active sub the phrase, “You think you want it but you don’t.” should remind you how far removed these people are from their fans. The hubris that they know what players want more than the players themselves is a joke. I know I am not be able to code, create 3d art assets, design coherent dungeons and bosses(most of this is top notch still). After 15 years of playing Warcraft I do know what I expect from a supposed AAA studio when it comes to how my class SHOULD play within the World of Warcraft and what I expect my 60 bucks plus 15 a month worth of content available at launch and throughout the expansion should equate to. These current devs keep creating arbitrary barriers of entry before we are able to play our characters at their highest ability and experience all the content available because they think they need them to stretch out content and keep that MAU high, but NEWSFLASH we don’t.
If it wasn’t time gated, I’d still spend the same amount of time in WoW because I enjoy the game play, and the people I play with. No other MMO since WoW has been on the market has felt as fluid or fun. That and the years a lot of us have spent here keep us playing, but after BFA which was the WORST game next to Warcraft 3: Refunded Blizzard has ever released I just wish they would listen to their longtime fans instead of their own inflated egos and pull the damn ripcord.