The game was never good. The game was, and has always been a tedious grindfest. Curious; how many to this day complain about the grind and the tediousness of some activities in this game, yet praise the very same game from an era years ago…
If anything, pre-Cataclysm was more grindy and tedious than current.
Besides, millions of players only logged on due to the possession of ‘substance’ compared to other MMOs of it’s time. Ah yes, the what, three other MMOs? Of course, you have a company like Blizzard Ent. who has all this money and fame, so obviously people will flock right to it.
You people deluded yourselves into being infatuated with this franchise you never truly became fond of, all in the name of playing the ‘different MMO’ or the ‘popular game.’ Which is, very likely, no different than small children hording around the next Fortnite or Five Nights at Freddy’s.
Yet here you all stand, pitchforks and torches at the ready, prepared to destroy the game you all thought you loved. It’s been almost twenty years and yet only few of you have yet to awaken from this insane delusion of infatuation. Most of you are simply immobilized by it, unable to see the light that lie before you.
It is quite solemn to see how many mindless drones have become slave to their own hypocrisy.
The funny thing is, I don’t mind grinds. If it’s worth it, hey cool. If it has lore involved that is interesting - even more awesome.
Slands is terribad. WoD was terribad. I wasn’t really a huge fan of BFA, it was more meh.
I liked BC, Wrath, etc etc. They were fun. The stories were awesome. If you have things that are great, then the grindfest might suck, but the good things take the edge off.
When they do not have good things to mitigate the bad, that is when you get people with pitchforks.
Nothing is a grind like it was back when I started. I couldn’t ride till 30 and had to grind gold just to get the first mount, which is only slightly faster than foot speed. And I was thankful I had the 10 level “bonus”.
Leveling alts wasn’t fast, it took weeks because you were keeping up with your main at the same time.
Some factions you had to grind to neutral first, then exalted to get the best enchantment or recipe of that time.
The difference is that pre-Warlords, we didn’t have systems. We basically just had “go grind rep for gear and neat things!”
We unlocked quests and places and gear and mounts just by getting rep and doing dungeons or raids or dailies or killing mobs. That was tedious, absolutely. That was definitely a grind.
Wow was and always will be a strange beast. Was it good? It had many highlights but never was it a perfect game by any type of means. Was it a bad game? Even at its WORST it was never the worst either.
Wow’s biggest issue has been and always will be that they keep pulling at the “mmo” part and even “rpg” part - The RPG elements in the game are pretty much dead and you can do almost anything solo so rip the mmo part out of there as well. It’s fun with friends but not required, but then the solo crew things because they killed 10 quill boars they should get Mythic level gear.
There is a huge disconnect from the game to being a game to play with friends to just whining about every little thing under the sun, there are a handful (which out of millions is alot still) of the TRUE hard core players that know what it is to be hard core and push the limits of enjoying the game - But again even if “many” still a few next to whatever else the rest of the wow community has become. Crying man and women babies demanding more gear (for what?) so they can feel they got some type of magical brownie reward and now feel all grown up.
But to OP: The old grinds did require friends, grouping, and slogging through things together: sure always a grind fest but a FUN (subjective) one you could drag your friend along with on that tormented ride.
To have a game where sooooo many players could gather together and do something as simple as a dungeon boss and world interactions together was pretty big news in 2004. Maybe people have gotten soo adjusted to every publisher in the industry copying that formula that they are desensitized to it now in 2022, but it was the coolest thing ever in 2004. Fun is subjective as well. The grind was part of the appeal…the game didn’t end just cause you were 60.