This was not an opinion shared by the majority… or even a considerable minority. Yes, we hated Warforging/Titanforging/Corruption. They were awful systems. We wanted drops to matter.
Making them rarer and more scarce is kinda a 2 step forward, 2 step back solution. While I personally like SLs loot better than BFAs, it’s not by much. They have hyperfocused on the negative aspects of raiding (IE: walking away with nothing) but haven’t really made the loot feel impactful.
1.) There’s no set bonuses to go for.
2.) When I actually do see a piece of loot, I don’t get to be excited at first. First it’s: “Is this a piece I already have?” … then its: “Are these my right stats?”… then its: “How big of an ilvl upgrade is it over the piece I already have?”… then it’s: “Is this already sitting in my vault and, if yes, do I have a better option to pick?”
Back in Classic… you didn’t ask this questions. If a drop happened for you in a new raid, it was an upgrade in almost every instance.
So combine a stupidly low drop rate with about 4 different questions I need to ask when I actually DO get loot… all you have is the tedium of Classic (leaving empty handed so often) without any real excitement when loot does drop, since the piece dropping is just the 1st step of about 5 to determine whether you actually should be excited.
I like to refer to it as swinging the pendulum They swing hard in one direction, listen to QQ then dial it back I guess the alternative would be don’t swing it as much, listen to QQ then dial it up
Getting raid gear for playing a stupid match game on a mission table is still one of the most absurd things this game has ever done, and it still didn’t make a raider out of me.
Seriously. During MoP people complained “too many dailies”. So instead of scaling back a bit, in WoD we got 6 or 7 and that total was only after Tanaan opened.
They weren’t impossible at all. I had more succssful runs than not of random heroics. The problem was that people except zero failure rate comming off WotLK. Where one or two people could realisticly solo/duo a lot of the dungeons. I know i did on my Paladin in early WotLK.
WoD was just a case of bad management. Too many ideas got scrapped and too many things had to be redone. So we ended up with very little by their deadline. They were also trying to get a new expansion out every year back then. Which obviously were never going to work because that meant they needed to get the Alpha for the next expansion up and running only a few months after the launch of the previous one.
Imagine if the Alpha for Legion went live just before patch 6.1. Doesn’t sound very realistic, does it? But that’s what they wanted to do, hence why WoD got so little in terms of content patches.
When it first launched, the heroics were nearly impossible in group finder. They did a massive nerf shortly afterwards where they became somewhat doable.
Because creating problems gives blizzard something to fix later to get easy good will with players.
I expect they’ll end up repruning a lot of unpruned abilities that were purposely added back to be clunky and buggy just so they can say “see? We told you you didn’t want us to unprune stuff!”. That way they can do less work when it comes to actually balancing more abilities.
It also allows them to monkey paw wishes so they can remove them later and "think you do but you don’t " the community.
An example would be how some in the community wanted player housing, so blizzard monkey pawed in garrisons. When those ended up being garbage, blizzard pointed to them as a reason why player housing would be a waste of time.
My wife and I were just talking about this. We think that whatever group of players gets the ear of the most persuasive developer then sways future development too far in a certain direction.
For example, MoP was hugely casual friendly, with robust professions and tons of things to do in the world, with the farm, with sets to farm in LFR, with new pet battles and all of that. But raiders complained that they HAD to do the farm, HAD to get rep, even HAD to do LFR to get into normal raiding. ANd they obviously got the ear of somebody because we got a raid or die expac in WoD with everything from professions to gold-making compacted into garrisons so raiders didn’t have to play world content as much.
I’m not saying, by the way, that these vast swings to accommodate a certain kind of player get it right for even the group they are trying to accommodate the most. Often they get it wrong even for those they are trying to please because they don’t take in all the feedback and latch on to a very few ideas.
Legion was the sweet spot. We got M+ introduced, raids as usual with 4 difficulties, and world quests which I think are better than dailies. Legendaries you could do multiple things for BLP (not just world content). Also had the MT with very very nice rewards.
Cata Heroics weren’t hard by any means, the problem was people coming out of WotLK where we were literally gathering up every mob in between bosses and just aoeing them down, hell in Utgard Keep we would aggro every mob between the start and finish while the bosses did their RP, and kill them all in one swoop.
They swing hard in one direction, listen to QQ then dial it back 
I guess the alternative would be don’t swing it as much, listen to QQ then dial it up 
