Funny that when we go back to older expansion, even starting on TBC most patches had less to do besides a new dungeon or raid. Modern WoW adds more stuff for casual players than they ever did, there is not denying this fact.
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What are they doing, launching things with a gigantic mouse trap?
I think that any time you take the route of expansion cycles you end up in a weird space where you are overvaluing your recent additions to the game while neglecting the meat and potatoes of the world.
Sadly, as expansions continue to release, the player base becomes more numb to the older content as do the developers. In an attempt to keep the game feeling fresh, they implement cool systems instead of focusing on evergreen content that will allow satisfaction throughout the leveling and end game journey.
I think WoW is working on it, though. They are attempting to focus on evergreen content and revisiting older areas that need some TLC. Connecting the next 3 expansions is also a good start, since it is a more sustainable story with room to grow and truly explore over time
I’m optimistic. WoW was groundbreaking at release and I think it has the potential to be groundbreaking as a longstanding MMO that can retain a functional player base without going into maintenance mode. It’s 20 years old and here we are en mass, on the forums. That in itself is kinda impressive to me tbh.
Esports really did take wow into a weird direction in a lot of ways. Dungeons aren’t really designed for “fun” anymore and are clearly made for balanced competitive times in mythic+ and whatever competitive esport thing they do for mythic+ now.
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Its a professional corn hole tournament. Where you like. Take little bags full of corn kernals. and through them at a slanted board with a hole in it.
How is a dungeon designed for “fun”?
and what does “made for balanced competitive times” even mean
It became competitive when someone thought about making an at then bragging rights mythic difficulty and the just spiraled from there. At this time both heroic and normal existed already so there was a low skill and a high skill version and I do admit that the high skill version was pretty mild compared to the mythic we got. I am pretty sure there was an expansion where at least the mythic dungeons didn’t have the tier system they do now that gradually go harder but instead of being a pure test of skill it became the new way to gear.
This is specifically about dungeons. I didint play much of opening wod, legion and stepped back from almost all group content at that time.
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Since gearscore plagued the casual scene in wotlk. There was a small hardcore section since the start no doubt but gearscore put people on a menu.
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Mix between that and tbc heroics. Just getting denied from a tbc heroic was a quieter affair
I believe actual roleplaying slowly suffocated in a failure to police roleplay disruptive activates on the RP servers. Too many non-role-players rolled toons on roleplaying servers and too many of them actively disrupted events. Spamming AoE’s and jumping like crazy all over the place in order to actively annoy people that tried to roleplay was a problem simply not dealt with.
Locking roleplaying gear behind short yearly event activities requering OOC activities to get wasn’t fun either. And forget roleplaying as a character part of a certain group if you need to spam rep grinding like crazy just to access the groups tabard and other things that tended to require Exalted status to get. Now at least we have transmogs and this new Warband gear. If I want to level as an Argent Crusader, I just need access to a transmogrifier and a basic tabard.
There may be hope yet but the RP serves would need to be purged of non-role-players but THAT isn’t going to happen. The way to go is to convert all RP servers to standard servers and create new ones with special rules to be uphold. A 50% XP penalty would probably scare off some power levellers as well.
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No, it has not always been like this.
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It’s hilarious that people think that original WoW was some cozy farming sim that only got elitist when they put them hardcore raiders in charge, like WoW wasn’t basically designed by the Method of Everquest.
Vanilla was sweaty as hell, people just didn’t think this because they started playing when they were a stupid 13 year old.
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Which part of the game? BGs? Arena? World Firsts? It’s only competitive for people who mainly enjoy those aspects of the game, but WoW is so much more than that.
I’ve never “rushed to 70” to “do some end game content.” I have an army of alts at varying levels, 14 out of 58 at level 70, the rest are mostly under 60. I’ve not actively raided & run dungeons on the regular since Wrath. And I’ve never run Mythic+ keys.
If you love leveling, then do that. There’s years worth of leveling content. Plus since Legion, they’ve expanded solo endgame content. There’s more solo endgame content in Dragonflight (and more solo leveling content) than any previous expansion.
Uhm. What? You complain about people speeding through leveling content to get to endgame while seemingly yearning for the good ole days before that happened, then advocate nukeing the leveling process from space to insure it’s permanent demise.
You’re suggestion is ridiculous because this is a you problem with a you fix that doesn’t require the game to be changed and ruined for the rest of us who enjoy the parts of the game you find tedious for “a few days (or less.)”
Your fix = Don’t be lazy. You’re welcome. 
Same. 
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So, I’m stupid because I don’t like questing, and prefer content that’s more engaging than Farmville? Lol
Interesting take.
It is gaming in general, not just wow. Probably because competitive gaming rakes in money no matter how bad the content because they play to impress. I play to be entertained. I collect cosmetics if they look cool to me, not because it allows me to felx.
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That would be…The Burning Crusade!
Or rather, the mindset of “let’s do end game content for the prestige” went from niche to mainstream during that era, but it wasn’t until Wrath that the game could adapt and accommodate. And it’s just progressed since!
But we’ve had gear score sites, voice chat, races/firsts, everything we do today existed back then, just in more primitive forms
The people who wanted the things you suggested largely played WoW for a bit and then quit, and other MMOs such as FF11 were the Mainstays for such play
FF14 actually built off of the 11 paradigm but modern gaming wants the WoW experience for longevity and this even it has had to adapt such designs.
The core playerbase who stuck around because they enjoyed WoW as an experience got better over time, and with that comes a need to engage oneself more and more. This is much of why M+ had become a one off challenge mode and is now perhaps the sustaining end game pillar in modern WoW
WoW’s seasonal model was innovative for it’s time and is much of what allowed it to stay relevant and punch through for so long.
Nobody, and especially not developers could have predicted WoW would become an MMO as a system of scale, two decades later. The game wasn’t designed with “new and fresh blood” because that’s basically never been an issue for an MMO until WoW lived long enough!
And THAT is more fuel to the fire. The things you described aren’t fun for the enfranchised players, they want the end game. Leveling is less fun for new players after their first time because almost nobody wants to play the same experience for the 50th time, thus a need to rush. The leveling experience creates an odd dissonance where since everything interesting happens at the level cap, there is an incentive to rush the leveling because more time spent leveling is less time spent engaged in what you find fun.
BUT leveling isn’t as fun because it’s also often brain dead. In ye olde days, if you saw a player grabbing 5+ mobs, they either died, used their kits, or showed an impressive farming strategy. And this tension made leveling more engaging for…all but the casual players.
And when that shifted to cater to casual play, instead of achieving the effects you mentioned, it created the dynamics I’ve outlined. As it turns out, your enfranchised players are often the ones to bring in new blood, and thus we are seeing a slow shift in design with this in mind.
But even beyond the things WoW is doing to try to recapture that feel, the core issue is a fundamental shift in gaming overall
If Game A and Game B both costs full price, and both have comparable content length and enjoyment of play, but Game B ALSO offers an end game experience…Game B wins out
And PvP and competitive experiences make game longevity to the extra mile. And they become interesting to watch and figure out, which makes them streamable/viewable. And watching such things makes people talk about such things. And people talking about them makes others curious and interested and more likely to try. And others trying means an influx in people looking for a Game B. And it becomes a naturally occurring cycle
Even before WoW experienced this shift, the speed running community was in the early days around this time.
We don’t see much design to keep people around for the things you mentioned because the people paying and sustaining the game the most want other things, as a result of this naturally occurring cycle
Fewer and fewer come back each time. Since they steadfastly refuse to prioritize this content in any meaningful way, I’d argue their time would be better spent elsewhere.
The ‘core audience’ is there. If they didn’t cater to the end-game gogogo enthusiasts, they’d lose even more of their dwindling subscriber base.
MMORPGs have always been about getting to the endgame ASAP at least for me some of them you don’t need to hit max level and others you do either way the most fun content is at the very end.
I didn’t read anything beyond the first sentence of your post, at which point I was too annoyed to bother reading further for one reason: the title of a forum post is not the same as the first sentence of said post! So, while your points may be salient and well argued, I simply couldn’t move past one of my biggest internet pet peeves!
Your title is not a part of the main content, and is intended to be a summation, or broad description of what that content is going to extrapolate upon. In the very least, make it catchy clickbait, but don’t make it your first sentence! It’s sloppy, annoying, distracting, and amateur-at-best composition! You can do better – all you forum-posters that lazily follow this trend (you know who you are) – I believe in you! Actually, I don’t believe in you at all, and I’m certain that you’re just one of the voices in my head trying to get under my skin, so that I give in to your demands again… Either way! Stop the lazy writing!
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WoW has always been about competitive gameplay between players.
Almost every MMORPG before WoW was also competitive, so I’m not sure why you thought WoW was any different early on. Just because it did not seem “officially competitive” does not mean it never existed.
Blizzard found a way to make the competitiveness more “official” through visible gear scores, rankings, etc…