The end of MoP. Why? I can summarize in 2 words…mythic raiding.
Now now, this isn’t a hate on hardcore raiders, but rather the raid structure itself. From vanilla all the way to MoP, blizzard had iterated on the raid structure as know it from expansion to expansion, sometimes even patch to patch! But the mythic change at the end of MoP has not been iterated upon since. Over 6 years have gone by and raids have stayed exactly the same with no improvements at all.
But, you say…if it hasn’t changed, does that mean 20 man mythic are perfect? Maybe. But the point is…a lack of innovation leads to stagnation. And the rest of wow has stagnated with it.
Id say it was during wotlk where the seeds of retails downward trend were planted, however it wasn’t really apparent and problematic during wrath because it was just the beginning of the systems that “ruined” wow being implemented and the whole “culture” of the game was still mostly in tune with the old ways of doing things.
Lfg just came out and was cool and convenient, but people still manually made groups too. The whole “skip the previous raid tier” was starting to come into play with the token gear being a much bigger thing in wotlk but it wasn’t to the same degree it is in retail today, late ulduar was still hard even if you had ToC on farm and you couldn’t just faceroll over the mechanics with insane dps boosts from the new gear.
Cataclysm was when it reached a tipping point
I enjoyed retail up through MoP, and partially to WoD. The big blow to me was introducing LFG to cross-realm, which started a major disintegration of realm communities.
End of Cata + Panda xpac. That’s when they introduced load outs instead of skill trees. That’s not the only thing that was terrible, but it is endemic of how retail went as a whole. Remove as much thought as possible due to convenience.
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That said, I do like that the 3 different styles of rogue in current retail are so drastically different in play style and all are viable to some extent and there are efforts to try to make them all viable. From what I am given to understand, they have tried to make that true of all the classes. That is something that is sorely lacking in the earlier approaches to the game.
WoD but Legion put the nail in the coffin for me.
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WotLK with the stupid, overpowered Death Knight class & the cross-realm automated dungeon finder. Beginning of the end. WotLK was decent expansion other than that though. TBC was the overall pinnacle of WoW (IMO), even if the theme was a bit off-putting.
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LFD was implemented as a “server-only device”. It wasn’t until near the end of Wrath (around the time ICC released) that it became cross-realm and started porting people into the instance.
Honestly, it didn’t have much impact on the “server community” even back then. The realm’s sense of community was never a big deal except maybe briefly during vanilla.
The single biggest thing for me was LFR which killed guilds as people could just pug raids and see what they wanted to see, no guild required.
The second was merging servers, and putting different server people into zones with the capital cities eventually being included, and then later making basically everything into some sort of single server. It completely destroyed server communities.
Release of wrath was the end. Classes started to become the same. Repeatable raids at easier difficulties. Intro raid was the redone Naxx which was so insanely easy the hard mode was to do the raid without a single person dying.
The worst dailies (Jousting) that I have ever seen. Paired with an awful TotC raid. Then I quit. Maybe Icecrown was good but at that point I just stopped caring.
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Well it separated people who just want to see the content from people who want challenging content.
played classic for 9 months and then went back to retail, wont be coming back to classic more than likely… i HATED retail before starting classic but after coming back to it and all the qol changes that have been made over the years, it is where I shall remain.
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incorrect
It was introduced patch 3.3 as a battlegroup cross realm finder
Cross-Realm Dungeon Finder
The Dungeon Finder is now available, providing players with quick and easy access to five-player parties. This feature connects all realms within a battlegroup using an advanced matchmaking system, making it easier for players of all levels to find a dungeon group. In addition, players can reap additional rewards through the Dungeon Finder by choosing the Random option, which is available to both pick-up and pre-formed groups. Check out the User Interface section for more details.
and yes it did have an impact. Players got lazy, they got ruder and it was the beginning of the end of doing dungeons with guilds.
I ran a guild and saw all the effects it caused.
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LFD existed before it became the “dungeon finder”
Cata, specifically when DS came out. MoP was a bounce back but dropped again in WoD and just kept going down hill after that. I know all the Cata and MoP babies will cry Legion was a good expansion but it really wasn’t. Outside of Legendaries and AF weapons it was just a BFA 1.0
Yes I agree but in doing so it killed many causal guilds.
Pretty much the things that bug me the most are the things that destroyed the community. I can’t stand whatever retail “community” is left.
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but what I am talking about is the version now in the game.
The version that went cross-realm.
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You said “Had LFD been implemented as a server only device”… it WAS implemented as a server only device.
Now you’re saying “no not that version”.
You can’t have it both ways. LFD was originally just an extension of the LFG system, and it wasn’t cross realm. They added cross-realm functionality along with rewards and porting in 3.3.0.
show me the LFD server only patch note
I just showed you the patch note of the LFD I was talking about was introduced.
Cataclysm. It was the end of classic WoW and the game was never quite the same afterwards. I also cannot stand that they removed the vanilla zones and quest lines forever.
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How can I show you a patch note for the absence of a feature?
Show me a patch note for TBC that shows it didn’t have the Dragonsoul raid.
LFD existed before 3.3.0.
If you’re specifically talking about “cross-realm LFD”, how could a “cross-realm LFD” exist without cross-realm? Then it’s not “cross-realm LFD” anymore.