I agree, Cataclysm was the final blow to tearing apart what was good in the original.
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Even after they fixed questing (used level scaling to allow finishing of questlines w/o outleveling them), and even after they increased TTK to something approaching acceptable for an rpg (incidentally also making the other 75% of a class’s toolkit relevant again), they STILL refused to raise the difficulty of world questing above mobile game level.
Since LK I’ve found myself scouring the zones for clumps of enemies close enough together to not bug out from leash distance while i collect enough to actually require the use of one of my dozen or so cooldowns.
The combat is the heart of WoW for me and without it all that kept me playing was outright addiction. I finally kicked that.
Gear score during WOtLK was the last straw for me. I came back after college and starting my career which was the end of Legion and the announcement of BFA. I’ve had a fun, casual experience but I miss feeling like a class and not a spec as well as professions feeling useful. The economy is botched and professions aren’t important because gear is so easy to get through quests, PvP, LFG/LFR/Pugs, etc.
Also classes are carbon copies of each other and there aren’t much differences anymore, aside from the fact that if you have multiple self heals you never die.
It literally tore apart the world. That’s enough of a sin in itself.
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This just made me giggle. Thank you, I needed that.
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I quit the endgame in Cataclysm. I got tired of grinding the same old stuff just to have it all wiped away with a content patch or new expansion.
But I didn’t quit WoW altogether. I resorted to twinking because it offered a way to greatly extend the usefulness of a gear grind. BiS was actually BiS for at least one whole expansion. Annnd now that’s gone again.
So I await Classic, where gear will remain relevant forever and thus I will be able to enjoy max level and WPvP for the first time in a long time.
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Quit early TBC after Kara and Gruul and Mag. Came back briefly for one of the xpacs. WoD? Panda?
RBGs and Arenas were kinda fun for a while. But the lack of community killed it. That and I had no idea what the carrot on the stick was. Everone transmogged their gear. So who was the most geared people around? No idea. I had nothing to strive for.
I did LFR and felt that I “saw” everything. So I had no desire to go back.
I guess the word I’m looking for is, empty?
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after 14 years? my 1 year old first born daughter. 
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And FOR a long time!
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I quit in wrath and i remember perfectly that the reasons the guild i was in and I stopped playing was because:
1- Community had died. This was due to LFD and raid changes made knowing whats happening on your server not matter anymore. I remember the top guilds in vanilla and TBC, but in wrath everyone raided ICC and made progress.
2- Rewards lost there motivation cause the game was made too casual. Who cares if you did heroic mode of a raid? Everyone did ICC, everyone cleared TotC. You no longer needed to be good, you just needed to wait for the content to get easy enough which was only about 4 months.
Both of those share the same theme. Wow is a social game and blizz heavily nerfed the social aspect out of it in wrath.
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WHAT MADE YOU QUIT RETAIL?
It’s multifaceted. The first time I quit Retail was early in MoP, when all of the changes to date and the changes of the expansion made it a game where I was logging in, cringing at the thought of doing anything, and logging out.
The biggest factor for me was the change to pick-a-spec, lose 2/3rds of your abilities. Holy priest sucked royally for trying to quest.
The next biggest factor was the forced-down-my-throat world story that Wrath made such a big deal (with the Lich King popping up frequently and the world phasing). MoP just continued and multiplied that, to such a degree the world felt pointless because it would change and the questing felt like being dragged along rather than something I sought out.
It didn’t help that by mid-Wrath my friend list had gone from a couple dozen active at any time to maybe three people on a good day, and by MoP one of those three had faction-changed, one was inactive, and the whole environment was not conducive to making friends because of phasing.
I didn’t even know about WoD, didn’t know about the flying debacle (I’d have been one who quit over that if I’d been playing), but I came back a couple weeks before Legion, pre-ordering the expansion, because of another friend I’d found out played WoW and thought it was so much better. Paid a 6-month sub, stupidly enough.
It was fun, at first. Given I hadn’t played in so long, there was all the content of Draenor, plus the pre-expansion event, plus Demon Hunters, plus class halls and artifact weapons. So much to do. So much that ran out so quickly. Less than a month into Legion, and I had this gal and a Demon Hunter to 110 and was already sick of the Broken Isles questing, disgusted by how far away and what a PITA getting flying would be. (I got part 1. I quit and never went back for part 2.)
I kept playing through the end of my paid game time, but I spent more time in Draenor on alts, Cataclysm zones on alts, and playing the mobile app mission tables on every character I got to 100 and in their class hall. Logging in often was no more than bouncing from character to character, doing the 4 WQs for emissary, doing the weekly boss if it was new, doing more WQs if there were easy ones for OR or specific gear upgrades, mailing stuff. I’d log out two hours later and feel like I never got to actually play a game because I was doing so many chores and so much busy work.
When I cancelled that subscription, I made the decision that I would not buy any future expansion until well after release, and I’d read up on it first. BfA still has done absolutely nothing to make me want to try it.
For a while, I did play Veteran Retail trial, and I still think it was fun to tank level 20ish dungeons, but there’s a point where that’s really all there is to do … and that all I can think each time I do WC (or BFD or any of the others) is what it used to be like and how neutered the whole experience was.
I did play 7 days of free time at one point (leveling a character from 80 to 103 via Cataclysm zones and Draenor only), but by the time they were offering the “welcome back weekend”, I only used it to get all my characters guilded in guilds I own.
I have more than enough gold on this gal to buy a token, but absolutely nothing I’ve seen anyone say about BfA makes it sound worth playing. I watch the “story” on Youtube, and hate what they’ve turned Sylvannas into (not that I was ever happy with undead being part of the Horde, but Wrath and onward I felt like the only reason they remained was that gameplay related (devs couldn’t or wouldn’t go with a 3-faction system, or come up with a way the undead survive without being disrespectful of those who died with no desire to be “revived”.)
LOL, oops, long ranty.
TL;DR - talents/skill changes, loss of community, and it flat-out wasn’t fun any more.
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I couldn’t agree more. The World of Warcraft is more like a tiny little sliver of the world, which is used as a waiting room for queues to get a random loot box. So…much…fun!
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I second this. Every now and then I still check the forums, but I’ve played wow for 10 years and finally gave up trying to force myself to have fun in this game.
I gave ESO a shot and have been loving it. Quests are fantastic stories, a constant feel of adventure, character customization out the you hoo. I just wish I’d left wow sooner, but my nostalgia kept me paying the sub and hoping for better times.
Whatever reason you all have, there are much better games out there! Have fun and take care!
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I quit over 10 years ago, somewhere before Uldaur came out. When I got my account unbanned(Taiwan as usual) a few days ago, they gave me a free day of time…between that and “free mode” I couldn’t get anyone to speak, I would try to talk in dungeons or in town and everyone just ignored everything, all chat channels were silent. I don’t want to play an MMO where no one talks.
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Good Lord, where to begin?
- Homogenisation of classes
- Removal of Talent trees
- Constant Carrot-on-a-stick changes to class skills / feel / balance
- Questing becoming too easy and streamlined
- LFG / LFR
- Faceroll / inconsequential fight mechanics
- Blizzard Store
- Bad lore / writing – (I’m sorry – but it really is)
- Every expansion making the previous ones content irrelevant - discombobulating the game over time
- Character Boost – choice or not, you should never give players the option to endgame a class they have never touched
- Achievements – the game was amazing without them
- Accessibility & ‘gifting’ of practically every item in the game whilst solo ; nurturing a generation of players that barely speak to each other and just shout “Go go go go go go go”
- The notion of being charged $15.00 a month for all the above, or have someone buy my Gold and Blizzard taking $20.00 instead
I play Vanilla from time to time and it is like night and day-- it is not nostalgia. It is simply a different game.
It’s not like Retail. At all.
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The OP reason was my reason for quitting a second time. The time gated mechanics of the allied races turned me off greatly. I had a habit of rolling up new class/race combinations with each expansion. The mechanisms by which new races are introduced and the grind involved killed it for me.
Before that I had quit during cata. The game felt flat, boring and all of the features that made grouping easier, had torn down any need to be social. The general difficulty of the game was also at an all time low.
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Simply put, Retail just doesn’t have the core MMORPG mechanics that Vanilla/TBC/WotLK had.
What happened to having to stack resistances, defense rating, etc. Having to get “hit capped” or “defense capped”… Simple stuff like this just doesn’t exist anymore.
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Lol I made a list of why I quit and it was removed for trolling. It was just a normal list of no pvp vendor, boring quests, boring professions, grey blob classes…etc. hmmm…
The game has been trash for years and the only thing that kept me coming back was screwing around with friends at the start or end of an expansion. Classic = Long time of ERP pleasure
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Classes are no fun to play anymore. All of the unique and fun abilities were removed.
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GCD. Boring boring boring, push a button and wait push a button and wait push a button and wait. Boring.
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Everything being RNG, you can’t work for anything now.
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Time gating. I just want to play, why won’t you let me? No I don’t want to do nothing but world quests while I wait for you to slowly spoon feed me content thank you very much.
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Flying, or the lack thereof until you “earn” it AGAIN then wait half the expansion to get it. Nope.
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Scaling. It’s bad enough their wonky scaling was applied to levels, but to apply it to GEAR too was unacceptable. There is NO sense of progression anymore at all. I feel like I’m wasting my time leveling.
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Allied races. We always got new races right off the bat but now we have to jump through massive hoops AND wait almost a year to get to play what we PAID for.
Unsubbed. Bye Felicia.
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