You forgot the shareholders. The ones who make the dumbest calls and fire devs for not doing what the command. Yet have no clue what is actually good.
Entitled Solo players
Good ol bobby
None of the above. Management who pushes them to code for time not fun are the issue.
Itâs Popcorn. Popcorn ruined WoW.
I need more btw.
ATVI shareholders
I agree to an extent, but some of the stuff Blizzard does canât really be chalked up to corporate greed or meddling, like Ion trying to remove flight going forward from WoD, thereâs not a corporate accountant on earth that would have loved the idea of Ion pulling that crap and watching all of the subscribers walk out the door, that was his pet cause and he should own all of the blame for it.
The main problem with wow is that talented people are misplaced or misused.
The game would be much nicer if for example the people who write the game were the people who write the storyboard for cinematics like these:
What hurts wow most is incompetence. The company exudes it, the management epitomizes it, and the devs embrace it.
Itâs a whole combination of factors
Iâll get flack for this⌠but Discord. As both a Voice chat and text chat platform⌠it has really just gutted WoWs need for ingame chat. When it was just Teamspeak/Ventrillo you still had to in game chat with people in dungeons/guilds.
Streamlined dungeons where Mythic+ (high keys) are the only time where CC is required. Otherwise itâs AOE or skipping packs with stealth ect.
The one and only true answer. Putting pressure on devs and enforcing a culture of fear driven development does not create amazing timeless games. It creates things like Shadowlands. 
The players cannot ruin the game without the devs. The market cannot ruin the game without the devs. The anything cant hurt the game without the devs. They can literally -not make the game.
Honestly, I know for a fact that if you are in the position to decide the route the game takes in the team, you can leave Blizzard and earn more in a dozen studios where you can do what you want. The devs there now are the ones who cant. Cant make games properly, cant choose where to work. Still the devs the problem. The studio simply selected good devs out of the company.
The players will most likely play the game whatever the devs make of it provided it is a good product. They can dislike the outcomes of the story without disliking the story. They can dislike what they do in the quest without disliking the quest design itself.
That is the main reason a game developer exist in the first place, to make a game that players would like to play, and for that reason might like story it tells, however it tells it.
I might like alliance, I still might like a good horde story. I might like evil, I still might like a good ending story. It all hinges on the skill of the developer.
It is like a restaurant: Good food restaurants might only be contrained by the preference of the customers, but there is no way a restaurant will have the types of food âeveryone likesâ, made the way âeveryone likesâ, and appealing to âeveryone everytimeâ. Still, restaurant that have good food will still have more customers than a varied selection restaurant that makes everything âmehâ.
Honestly Iâd rather see the development team rejuvenated instead of walking in a minefield that is World of Warcrafts production. Itâs either hit or miss now with the players. As the saying goes you canât please all. I wouldnât mind seeing WoW just go stagnant while they work on a new project. I am in no rush to play WoW Iâm not an addict. I can stop for years and thatâs how people should be with games. Donât abuse yourself by playing something you are going to constantly complain about.
Not really. It is just a matter of doing what âgame dev schoolâ teaches you about the games and about the industry. If you are in the business of making âjuiceâ, would you choose to sell rotten apple juice or orange juice ? Unless you are in the business of making people sick and just making juice as means to it, you will make orange juice. Not a hard thing to choose.
That is the main thing here. OBJECTIVES. The devs in the WoW team now are not in the business of making WoW a good game anymore. They are in the business of making it âadequateâ to other ends. That is the pre-limbo phase.
There are plenty of leaving devs in the recent history of WoW teams because of that. WoW is not for Act-Blizzard in the business of being a good game.
Whoa⌠hold on there bud. The Devs are the ones who advocate for quality, stability, etc. Itâs the money class, of senior managers, c-suit and financiers that are shoving out sh*t to the masses to consume so they can cash out on their obscene stock options.
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Forums for sure.
The bean counters are probably the ultimate culprit.
Devs 100% Streamers do not hurt wow at all IMO. What the Devs need to do is go to a vote system when they want to make changes. When a player logs in and they have major changes proposed they ask each player before they log in yes or no. That would give them a better look at what players want and do not want. Once they gather that information then they can begin discussions on the matter. Most simple of things though is ask themselves is this fun? Whatever change they make is it fun should always be asked. All this grinding and time gating should be an instant No! Then they need more things for players to do that are actually fun.
Maybe the forums? If I were just dropping into GD to see what people are talking to Iâd probably never log into the game thinking that 95% of the forums hate the game they are playing. They hate the game so much that they have epic meltdowns when they cant play the game for an hour. Yeah, I would definitely determine that only complete psychopaths play this game. 