Buckle in, story time.
In the off chance Blizzard wonders why I haven’t taken xpacs beyond wrath seriously, and why I care so much regarding the mounts. You didn’t take away my favorite mount in retail, I’ve chosen to not ride it.
You did what I like to call, a flavor flop to my favorite spec. (You’re lucky I wasn’t attached to combat)
Long ago, young ol Dimitra was downing bosses and putting up numbers. I received through hard work, help, and dedication from my guild mates; my first legendary. The main hand glaive, though to this day(not much effort) I don’t have the off hand. (To put into perspective, I was reasonable, when I had seniority I suggested to our GL that if an OH drops, our 2nd rogue could have the set)
3.0 Comes out or w/e Wrath pre-patch, Acti-Blizzard is a thing, I’m racing around outlands collecting achievements. Grand ol time, with good ol Dimitra… life is peachy. Save one thing, Power Rangers with overly monstrous sized weapons. Today, I still have the same opinion, though if 12 year olds think its cool, I’m cool with it!
Through out wrath, you went back and forth on “balancing” TG, but overall, the message was clear. Acti-blizz didn’t like that you put “Warrior” on the warglaives and neither did a lot of rogues; the amount of $hit I got for sub 50 raid dps was insane(not guildies), this was the first step of “Balancing” while taking flavor away.
There was a stint, in WoD that had single minded fury, I was playing with friends on horde so I leveled blood elf Dimitra to max, as money was tight at the time. While it was nice to have the flavor back, the spec just wasn’t the same.(Dimitra wasn’t the same) Many returning players felt this way. (My friends regarding WoD) When your surroundings don’t care, its hard to.
Back to my favorite mount- to add insult to injury, I have a prestigious achievement on young ol Dimitra, dating 11/30/2008. Another on my main rogue(not this one) Dating 10/24/2008 both clearly were earned prior to these dates. However, for myself and many other players you cherry picked one achievment that aren’t worthy of those dates. My speculation is it was done because of Acti-Blizz’s obsession with E-sport authenticity, which IMO destroyed your game.
(If the paragraph above is unclear, you can look at my past GM tickets) There should only be 2 over the past 10 years.
I have chosen to not ride my favorite mount, because I didn’t want to level or boost/transfer my OG character. In my mind, the biggest flaw with WoW start to finish is that you pick a class for a single character. When it should have been Main character that unlocks jobs. (Yes Stash space would be an issue, but not one that doesn’t have solutions) Though that wouldn’t have been lucrative enough for you guys over the years.
TL’DR - When you take fun things away for the sake of balance and or money, you still take fun things away. So look at your sub numbers and keep wondering why cash shop isn’t cutting it.