I think we need another Cataclysm but instead the world is fixed instead of broken

Feeling like it's too late and you're too far behind is definitely a major factor in deciding whether to start playing WoW again. It's a terrible feeling. I miss playing, started in beta and just had life get the better of me for a long time.

I'm a relatively new WoW player. A friend I made in another MMO convinced me to try it a few months ago, and I've really been enjoying it off and on. It's easy to tell when I'm on a 'newer' map, or an 'old' one. Kul Tiras is def my fav maps/story so far. That said, teaming is really not fun, unless I'm with a friend. I've done some pug dungeons/etc, and people are super critical of builds, even in low level content. Even if you play role efficiently, it doesn't protect you from getting kicked because people still want specific builds/gear/stats. The level of elitism in it is unlike any game I've ever played, and will keep me from investing in any team based end game stuff.

Wod looks like the biggest betrayal in gaming history.

i think the old quests were better at getting people out spending time together. when they sent you out to get 60 razormane tusks you were out there long enough and it was just annoying enough to warrant finding someone else to do it with. or you were likely to run into someone else there. when i think of cata quests i think of stuff like click the hose to put out the fire. it's too quick and has no room for other people.

@11:16 The cloth with strength item is a leftover from when disc priest were being designed to be melee healers (in beta, before GA). That's also why they had the Inner Fire spell buff that gave them extra armor (that had to be reapplied after 20ish hits by an enemy).

Honestly I think the reason blizz hasn't had the balls to start actually 'fresh' with some form of wow 2.0, instead of the endless expansion train, is that they corporate doesn't believe that if we release something new that it would stand up against its competitors. It would potentially loose all these OG players that do keep grinding for those new mounts, gear and achievements with years of playtime poured into the game. Instead of taking a leap of faith they instead would just go for the cheap and easy to develop zone or two and call it a day.

couldn't agree more with this guy on westfall. The whole zone is perfect to me, and the fact they have this goonies based dungeon at the end of it is the cherry on top

WOD was such a content drought and the fact that EVERYBODY was closed in their garrisons making gold and not doing raids was what killed the whole thing. I loved the garrisons made a shitton of gold in it, I also know that it was one of the reasons why WOD failed... And they made Mythic dungeons way too late into the exp for them to save it.

I started WoW when it came out back in the vanilla era, i enjoyed Burning crusade that introduced flying mounts, new classes, a deeper dive into the Lore and a whole host of other improvements some successful while others falling flat, hell Karazhan is still probably one of the best raids in the game. I absolutely loved Wrath which led to my addiction to the game when it came out, Arthas was such a compelling villain and the areas and Hub city were great LFG and LFR were controversial and dailies started to become repetitive but I still enjoyed it. When Cataclysm was announced i was excited and had high hopes, Deathwing was awesome and the updated zones were needed because by that time WoW was showing its age, when it came out and I played it I was beyond disappointed with it, people were hitting the max level cap in less than a day, the new archeology profession was awful and the zones and quests just took me out of the RPG experience, I went from storming the castle of The Lich King to Riding a seahorse underwater... I tried to continue but just started not enjoying the game and quit. It was a great 8 years and I always look back with nostalgia and great times but that is the reason for me anyway why I fell off.

17:00 - WoW needs a main questline add-on that takes you through most of the main zones and the expansions to meet the major characters, kill some of the major baddies, do some of the most lore-relevant dungeons, and then complete an epic weapon-crafting build from level 1-50. Instead of grinding dungeons or doing 3 zones of quests to get there. Just give us a stream-lined questing experience, with all the "go over there and kill 6 bugs and then go over there and pick up 15 rusted spears that we'll never use" bullshit. Keep the old quests in there as optional content, shitty pre-requisite snoozer quests and all. But let new players experience a full tour of the WoW experience. As a new player with Shadowlands, most of the world was completely irrelevant to me when I got to the Shadowlands. I couldn't even finish rescuing Jaina from Tol Dagor. I just leveled up to the Shadowlands and there she was in the Maw, calling me the Mall Walker. Ysera? Don't know who you are. Giant cow man sitting around the whole time? No idea. Pepperoni Nipple Man? Well, I guess to be fair, no one knew who he was and no one cared. Sylvanas? Oh, I remember her, she seemed cool. Oh, people hate her now? Why? What the hell is Teldrassil? I did like 2-3 old school WoW zones, then went to Kul Tiras, hit 50 and went to The Maw and hated everything, running around permanently losing Stygia, and then unsubbed. It was a shitty experience, across the board. TLDR: Create a streamlined main questline experience that skips tons of busy work, introduces players to all the major characters, let the player do some of the most lore-relevant dungeons, kill some of the major baddies/dragons, and then complete/craft a new epic weapon available at level 49. ~20 hours of content. Complete the weapon, get called to BFA or Shadowlands. Go.

my thought is that the Illidan expansion and Arthas expansion were just so good. And for war3 players, their journey is just completed after wrath. I liked the revamp but not the way they revamp it. I think it is better to make the revamped map simply a higher-level map so new players and the old players who have no interest in leveling another alt can feel the changes.

WOW was awesome during WLK! My brother and I would play together! Great times, great memories.....

The Lich Kings (Arthas) story arc was finaly finished. We all have been waiting years to see him again since 2003.

Before finishing the video, for me having started college about the MOP release i kept myself subscribed but played very little. I imagine a lot of folks were just getting older and having less time. I imagine combining that with the world "revamp" that tons of folks did NOT like along with the classes really starting to get weird people just started getting burned out (no pun intended)

Asmon nailed it with the Wow2 (same playing field) statement. As someone who rarely plays and have missed expansions. A lot of times i don't play because its kina like "meh whatever I'm so far behind already". I've always felt wow should be doing trilogies with fresh starts every 3 expansions. Where each expansion is more a development on the current world vs a brand new game. It would allow blizzard to really plan out this over-arching storyline and for all i care they could use the same base world and change it up a little for 85% of the zones.

I always think of the expansions as what ones I had the most fun with rather than how everyone else received them. When looking back at all expansions w/ vanilla, here is my order of them with the fun I had playing them: TBC, Vanilla, Legion, Wrath, Cata, BFA, WoD, Panda, Shadowlands

It wasn't the zone changes for me, it was the gameplay in Cata that make me quit back then. The streamlining started at the end of WotLK, but softly, and in Cata it went full on.

I played a ton in vanilla WoW, I was in a solid raid "guild" and got the best gear. And when TBC hit, my equipment was crap within a couple of levels. I couldnt handle that, so i stopped playing mid through the expansion, never feeling as strong as i did in vanilla. These days i probably would have continued to play. On the other hand, i would not have had the same amount of time to play the game either and therefore not progressed in the same way.

I played cata, and i really enjoyed it looking back, warrior was pretty fun to play IMO However I remember my first negative experience came quite quickly in to the raiding scene, when you were immediately behind because you didn't get your 4 set week one through a combination of LFR and Normal RnG /shrug

Vashjir was really cool fwiw. Going into those krakens or w/e it was for the quests was awesome.

I like how Asmongold feels like he is literally part of the video he is reacting to.

I tried to come back to WoW about a year ago after having been checked out since Wrath. That there's years of expansions that I missed wasn't the issue. It's that none of it matters anymore. If you start fresh in WoW today, there is no way to play the old content in any way close to how it was at release. That whole "talk to Chromie and pick the expansion you want to level in" thing is a bonkers way to experience the story. I created a new character and got to Shadowlands in a couple of days of playing. And once I'd caught up to where everyone else was, I realized I had zero connection to the game. My character had been overpowered from the moment I reached Goldshire. And then I was zipped through 15 years of content in the blink of an eye. This wasn't me powerleveling. This was the game powerleveling me. And it wasn't fun. By the time I hit the Shadowlands I was just bored. I had no sense of the story because I only did a few quests in a couple of the expansions before Chromie said my time was up. And I had no sense of my character because there was never a challenge presented that wasn't defeated with one or two spells. Blizzard has a lot of faults. The worst mistake they've made was making WoW so boring. They can overhaul their image all they want. Get rid of the bad actors, do all the things they should have done years ago, and it won't matter. For a new player or someone returning from long ago, the game is just boring now.

Barrens being split in half was 2nd to talent tree being removed that made me not like cata but everything else was soo good... The Barrens is just so nostalgic for me as Horde.

Glad you brought up the aging of the player-base. It is absolutely important and Blizz probably didn't really deal with that audience change.

I started WoW about 6 months b4 the launch of tBC. I was so engrossed in the lore of the game, I didn't hit 70 until 3 weeks b4 Wrath launched. I joined a casual guild about the same time and stayed until ToC patch when I left and joined a guild that was top 5 on my server. I loved my time in that new guild. We worked so hard to get through ICC, and even Ruby Sanctum just b4 Cata, with LK on farm, helping alts, friends, even pugs (we never charged for entry) to get their achievements and gear. Truly a glorious time in my gaming history. Cata broke that. It broke guilds. New ones formed but weren't the same experience. They tried because they all loved the experience of Wrath. By MoP, everything changed again. I even swapped server and faction to find a better experience. Guilds just kept falling, breaking, collapsing, and when WoD brought nothing new to the table, a lot of ppl just washed their hands of it. I actually stayed as a casual in a mediocre guild until the end of BfA just because I enjoyed the game so much, but after 13-14 years, I couldn't justify plugging bk in for Shadowlands. I love the nostalgia of it all but Wrath was the pinnacle for me. It hasn't been the same since the community I fought with, and for, for so long broke apart. If you were on an EU server in Wrath and ever did 5-man PVP against a team called BOOMCHICKENLOLOLOL, I'm sorry, that was rude of us to make 5 nelf moonkins and go stealth kitty into Starfall for cheap laughs (it was funny, though).

This is when they completely remade talents. I know because that's when and why I left. I played a sub-par but fun build that the change in talents removed from the game

Cataclysm Heroics pre-nerf were hard, not just because of LFD. Sure, you completed Heroics fine with a guild group, but it still took hours. The time commitment made them hard, as people didn't want to do them.

For me, having played since BC, MoP and WoD were my favorite expansions, while Legion and BFA are my least favorite (I didn't play Shadowlands, so no comment there). After the initial burst of dailies on release in MoP, it was quite relaxed and easy to just focus on what I wanted to do, which was basically only CMs and raids. I could just spent almost all of my time engaged in those activities, it was great. Likewise in WoD, just with even fewer dailies. There weren't any systems to work through or barriers between me making a new character, gearing it, and raiding on it. Alongside what is IMO, some of the peaks of class/spec design we've had making many specs feel great and fun to play. Post-Legion, it's felt more and more like there are tons of activities I don't enjoy that I need to do to keep raiding. More and more daily or weekly tasks that just aren't fun but reward extremely relevant power or loot. For me, it's not fun to just mindlessly do world quests or island expeditions or *need* to do X number of M+ runs a week, let alone trying to farm specific dungeons for BiS the entire expansion patch after patch. It's tiring when all I want to do is log in and raid the highest difficulty content and Blizzard has made that less and less possible.

I think the main thing that went wrong was the graphics just didn't keep up with newer games and the gameplay/storyline was streamlined. Up until wrath you would play through the classic zones and actually follow a story same through BC. Wrath kinda made only Northrend the viable zone for gold/gear.

I'm a new player here, i've been playing for about 1.5-2 months now on wotlk classic, i got into it because my 2 older brothers introduced me to it. i played a bit during classic right before tbc but didnt enjoy it much so i stopped playing, but I've had a lot of fun leveling and playing on mage in wotlk (level 56). I'm on the new server angerforge and its honestly pretty dead but i have a decent guild that does daily raids so i dont really care all too much

They stopped listening to their players and started believing they knew better that you didn't know what you actually wanted. Whether it was the game, interviews, or community conduct, Blizzard started operating as if they were above criticism.

Talking about the frustrations of having an imbalance in a class that you had spent a lot of time leveling and how it mattered more in PVP... Well, maybe, but this video is about Cataclysm. I clearly remember being kicked from a raid group on Spine of DeathWing just and only because I was playing a Warlock (my main, which I didn't want to change). Locks during Cata were severely gimped and could not generate the DPS necessary. I was straight up told by my guild that I had to play a mage if I wanted to raid.

I never played WoW before classic, but my boomer guild cleared SSC/TK pre-nerf and I see/hear people talking about that being the hardest content through wrath. I also hear people saying Ulduar and ICC are going to be at least that hard and other people say SSC/TK was harder. I loved the difficulty of the Vashj/KT dps checks and actually having to sweat a little to complete the content. Do I get to experience that again here over the next year or so? I was feral OT in TBC and just a braindead mage in wrath, if that matters.

Willie missed the opportunity to put on top of where Asmon has his cam

I think around cataclysm a lot of original players started getting burned out including myself, right after cataclysm almost my entire guild quit. I was raiding and pvping on one of each class and had full tier and pvp gear on all except my hunter when I quit and offsets for most of them so I was playing a lot and working 40+ hours a week most of the time. I would love to play it again now but so much has changed that I would have no idea what I was doing. I do have a private wotlk server on my pc though so I can mess around sometimes.

Blackrock Depths, when you let the NPCs out of the jail cells they were 'reminiscent' of characters from the TV show Oz which was current at the time. Pop culture references have always been there.

Not sure for anyone else's reason for quitting at that time. but I personally was one who quit right after wotlk ended. for me it was simple. I played the game since it came out and personally didn't enjoy the gear grind. I liked leveling and playing but the length of raids the amount of time raids/pvp and reputation grind took. by the time you finally get one gear set it's like the next patch is coming out and it's time to do it all again. At least for me since I had a full time job and a gf I could only grind 3-4 hrs like 4 days a week. Got bored of gear grind. Sad thing is it ruined mmos for me cus its all the same shit. just a diff pile.

I 110% believe you are right about why there aren’t many new players in Wow. I started playing a year ago and yes there is a learning curve (not crazy or anything) but if you want to fully play with raiding …pvp and or alts u need to essentially learn it before u start bc no one has any patience for someone who is still learning. I would highly recommend having friends that already play and don’t mind helping when u need it. That may be the norm with every game but in a game such as wow classic that isnt holding ur hand in the beginning the first few weeks maybe months require the new player have a lot of patience and a sense of humor for those that don’t 😂

Still don't know why that had to take out the ancient petrified leaf in cata. As a hunter, I wanted the bow so bad, but the leaf never dropped for me before cata came out.

I think new quests were more streamlined, especially for alliance but I liked old quests and zones before revamp. I loved classic undead starting zone and hated the revamp version

I loved doing heroic achievements in early Cata...stopped shortly after and never went back.

They shouldn't have brought death wing in when they did. It was too much of a change. They should have literally rebuilt the background, new trees etc. as they have with dragon flight. Cata killed the nostalgia that held so many people. If they had added new zones and not killed the old ones, but made them relevant by bringing in 70+ quests in the vanilla zones that would have been huge.

I'm basically a new player -- 1st started playing Shadowlands 2 years ago. But I was in graduate school at the time and always felt like I was falling behind and I stopped playing it 2-3 months after Shadowlands' launch. My cousins who got me into it kept telling me that I really wasn't as far behind as I thought I was and that the game is designed to help catch up players who are new or who drop off with each new patch/season. I just felt overwhelmed by all the UI, mechanics, add-ons, dungeon mechanics, min-/maxing strategies, complex rotations.... etc. Also, I did not have an MMO mouse, so it essentially gate-kept different classes because "well that class has a lot of buttons/abilities, so if you can't use them all, you'll just be dead weight" However, I did play some classic and I don't like the old graphics and lack of the HUD/UI make-over of the Dragonflight prep-patch. That and my cousins would be playing retail is the biggest reason that I would not want to play classic. I'm glad that you looked at generational circumstances -- such as the age of the original WoW player base and new games taking attention away from it. I've heard WoW old-timers who never recognize these sorts of issues and always just assume that it's the game in a vacuum that determines sub counts... But I would also take that line of argument further and also claim that part of what made WOTLK so successful was how (better) internet was even being proliferated across the country at that time -- how many households got internet for the first time in the early 2000s or switched from dial-up to broadband or to fiber optics which made MMOs more viable? And compounding the issue of the original player base "aging out of" WoW is that if your friend group or guild collapses, then that is further catalyst for people who have the time to put into the game to drop it as well.

vash was so awesome. great z axis movement for the time.

Some of the biggest trues in this video, since they applied to me, as well. What little I played in Classic was for the pre-Cata zones, as I loved those zones (except Darkshore & Ashenvale). I, also, pumped out The Seeker title during Wrath, though it was mainly due to my love of The Who song by the same name. The challenge of completing that many quests was just a bonus lmao

I get with the Cata hate (I quit the game due to burn out in Dragonsoul). It would be a shame to miss Firelands though. That phase/raid was amazing.

10:00 yeah! like, make it an option in your difficulty options when going into a dungeon (Legacy) to go to the old classic version, then if it gets updated just make that version the standard

I totally agree with your point. Started three weeks ago with Retail and it‘s so much, that you have to figure out..

When I first got my own wow account in cataclysm (Cause I was only like 9 at the time) I for some reason decided to lvl in vash'jir, My older brother decided to not tell me about hyjal which I didn't know about as a zone so I ended up quitting at lvl 83 cause that zone was complete dogshit to lvl in for me.

Easy answer for me was that when cataclysm launched I found blues with better stats than my epics as that level cap increase dictated. Was sort of defeating.

I love to play wow quest. I hope theres an option that you can follow the story without worrying too much from dying. I do like how npcs can be recruited to help on quest which need more than one person. I also understand that built in frustration on games can be irritating on some gamers which can make them quit or can entice more players to play and subscribe. Blizzard must make these two ends meet and not just milking more money from subscribers.

i love how he reacts to the ads in the videos he’s reacting to as well😂

So when gear drops now is it still below your level like back in vanilla?

I agree with asmon here. I used to Mythic raid in Legion and quit when BFA came out. I can't get back into the game because you are just soooo behind when you come back that it's just not fun to play catch up for days of play time to be able to raid again.

CATA being only 5 levels had more of a negative impact than the world revamp, IMO.. I was there, and that was the biggest WTF for players at the time, the revamp was sold as needed to implement flying in the old world.

I remember playing WOD and really loving Ashran. Now that I think back. Um.....what else happened again?

They should make it so that old content gear during the expansion can be upgraded or scaled up to current content gear so that still feels usable, apart from tier gear in my opinion because then it would make making new tier gear pointless and people like new tier gear because it opens up potential new play styles. BUT if they did do this they would need to make the new gear good or better in certain ways so that it's worth going after in the first place. I also think that there is certain pieces of gear that you should only be able to get from raids because rating is and always will be a core part of World of Warcraft. Achievements and cool looking mounts should be more than enough reason to get those high mythic plus knocked out. And mythic plus could still be used to get gear to get into the raids. This also means that they would have to make it so raids are not overly difficult for normal and heroic. Obviously there has to be a difficulty increase for mythic because it is the hardest content but that's just my opinion. I'm aware of that not everyone agrees with this but in the end if you make people happy you will always wind up pissing other people off it's just how it is.

It really started in TBC DST - was likely the best trinket all the way to mirror of truth or greatness

Bruh the hair ads really hit hard im dying

i stoped play wow in 2011 when cataclysm came out because i didnt like the change on tree spec for my healer druid.

18:24 this is also the reason I don't want to start a new alt, even though I'm burnt out from my main character, I just cannot start a new character because i've had my main for 3-4 years and I done so much with it, that I don't want to do again with the new alt

As someone who joined during BFA I gotta say Legion is my favorite. I lvled all my alts there

I loved cata...the raids, classes, dungeons...

I completely agree about cata dungeons. I loved them in the first itterationn. Playing with friends was just a blast back there. And i agree the dungeon finder was the real problem of the cata dungeonns.

2:33 ....but you had your own garrison lol!!!!!!

I remember hating Vashj'ir, not because of the quests, but because it took forever to get anywhere. I tried to level there at launch of Cata. The issue was the slow movement due to being underwater.

Asmongolds commentary and his editing is what reaction content should look like to me. Not only do I get the Video reacted to, but really intressting additional input about the topic. Havent touched my wow account in 5 Years and yet here i am binging AsmonGold. Brilliant content :).

The saddest change was when they removed the damn Ashbringer interaction in Scarlet Monastery.

Keeps ads kill me every time lol

Agreed, the new quests in Cataclysm were much more engaging, and part of a cohesive storyline. Zones flowed into each other much better. Flying was a great perk. Aside from the nostalgic longing for "old" Azeroth, I thought it was a pretty solid update. There's a reason that a lot of people were kind of hoping Dragonflight would be bringing something similar. Aside from Deathwing not ending up being a very good villain, I thought the overall expansion was much better than people give credit.

as a new player who started with shadowlands, i think its pretty hard to progress in the game with all that borrowed powers and "timewalks?", do i rly need them? i think its nerve wrecking and annoying, i dont want these borrowed powers at all and timewalks are pretty confusing, i looked up some guides for it and theyre rly helpful but still its to annoying to do all this, can someone give me an advice, do i rly need them?

Reforging was awesome and I will forever die on that hill.

They used wotlk as a sort of foundation with easier dungeons, easier questing and more meaningless difficulties - Dragonflight is the culmination of such mentality. Quests are mostly linear forced storymode, no exploration - the npcs are usually 10meters from you or actually following you. No risk of dying, no need to drink/eat - Mana is never a problem during levelling. Due to the linearity of the experience and how fast one goes from hub to hub, there is no relaxation time to let the player take in the environment. And things that could happen in the classics, like interactions with players, do not occur at all - Its literally like playing a singleplayer action rpg. As a returning player in dragonflight I also felt very weak compared to the classics (vanilla/tbc and wotlk). So I tried more classes, and they all feel the same. The gameplay is extremely rotationheavy resulting in a sort of affliction warlock style of play. As for community, I've levelled 5 chars now and Ive never seen anyone talk in any zone chats. I've also noticed how imbalanced everything is, some classes hit like noodles whereas others can pull the entire zone. Dont think ever seen the game in such an imbalanced state. And there are secondary concerns such as poor animations, or animations not lining up, unnatural zone-design with cluttered microzones everywhere, abilities feel like they have less ooomph, i guess this is related to how weak classes feel. Well, I dont know how it came to this but I despise what the game has become. The only way this game can survive is if they bring back the vanilla/tbc devs.

That's where I quit too. Came back for a minute in MoP but didn't even make it through the free month.

Blanchy wasn't evil. There's actual lore about sinrunners in-game. The Court Sinrunner mount specifies that Sinrunners were "once the steeds of dark souls, carried in the wake of _either_ their sins or their masters' sins to Revendreth." Blanchy is a Sinrunner, and her own mount description specifies that she "appeared to be an affectionate and well-behaved horse of excellent disposition" to boot. She was a good horse dealt a fell hand.

"it's ribbed even " lol

Alot of people i know quit like forever in cata, thats all i know. Like most of the OG players i knew from vanilla arent around anymore, most of the people i played with now started in cata or mists, or wrath maybe, or even wod. Alot of the true heads quit then. Alot of those players to never came back. While the players who i met later on would quit and comeback all the time, some of the changes made in cata just were the last straw for some people. Thats why i dont think they should go on with any more classic things after wrath, ur basically just keeping it alive for what ? mists? and then what ur gunna call wod classic? like it has to end at somepoint.

Vanilla and TBC was casual friendly thanks to the community. I was in a family friendly guild for those two expansions. I played once a week and still enjoyed the game and did end game content with in game friends. I even raided, although it were never the latest raids. Raids became easier for us because there was a catch up mechanism through gear from badges and there were nerfs to some boss mechanics. In Wrath the game became more pug friendly. More and more players in our family friendly guild were locked to a raid id so our guild had to go pug themselves. There was no reason anymore to be in a family friendly guild if you still had to pug to do end game content. And pugging is pretty black and white. Either you like it, either you hate it. I hated it and that's why I stopped playing in Wrath. I was not the only who quit the game. Many of my in game friends quit the game. You can see it in the statistics. Although there were still many new players in Wrath, there was an equally amount of people who quit playing. This problem with player retention was not addressed correctly by Blizzard. I'm one of those players who hated daily quests. I only played once a week and could not make any progress with the daily quests in TBC or those from Sons of Hodir. I learned that Blizzard added more and more daily quest hubs throughout Wrath and Cataclysm. I don't mind they were there. I do mind however that progress was bound to this daily grind. And this is what happened in later expansions, Pandaria for example. I understand that in the modern versions Blizzard added a power grind with a daily limit without a catch up mechanism. This excludes about half of the player base that enjoyed classic and TBC. There is no problem with having the opportunity to do a daily grind. There is a problem with tying progress to this daily grind. Reward this kind of daily grind with mounts, transmorgs, toys, whatever... But do not force it upon the players who just want to do end game content at their own pace with like minded friends.

Kind of a weird observation, but FFXIV started out easy, got hard in Heavensward, and then got progressively easier in many ways starting in Stormblood. That game had continuing growth throughout all of that. WoW's difficulty may have hit a certain threshold similar to what was hit in Heavensward around Cataclysm, and combined with other changes people began to get get excluded from what they used to enjoy.

There are pros and cons to each expansion, but I enjoyed them all. Did I play less overall as expansions kept coming out? Sure! I also got busier in life and wanted to have other gaming experiences in my free time as well. There are endearing qualities to be found across all expansions. The reason why subscription numbers drop off over time is likely more complex than any of us really understand but keep in mind that Vanilla wow launched the golden age of MMOs which may have peaked around Wotlk (for wow anyways). Finally there existed an MMO that attracted a substantial player base and it was still very new to a lot of us back then. You have to consider mmo fatigue... when we were finally burnt out of vanilla then we'd pick up and try other MMOs. Eventually your brain understands the pattern of MMOs and then you just... can't play it the way you used to when it was so new. Then of course you have to factor in nostalgia. People want to feel the way they felt 15-17 years ago when they were first playing wow but that isn't possible. That's what makes nostalgia feel so special - it connects us to the past and our emotions. Then, when you try a new expansion almost 2 decades later it doesn't evoke the same emotions connected to your nostalgia and I think in many cases people just think it's a lesser game when in fact it's just our own expectations are unrealistic.

personally I loved Cata! The flying, the raids and getting leggo daggers on my rogue

I remember hating the changes to the DPS warrior from WOTLK to CATA. It went very clunky imo and lost the fluidity wrath had. Also single minded fury, I think it was called, was the top build RIP titans grip.

WoD final patch before the legion pre-patch was my favorite time in wow. Glad warrior was my main and I was wrecking face.

I love how the game has evolved, when i first went through he portal i was a young, stupid kid who had to learn lessons along the way, in WOTLK i was lil battle hardened, id seen some things. Things i wish i hadn't . In Cata i was experienced, i led men into battle, in MoP i was jaded, i lost faith in the alliance, in WoD i turned my back on the worlds and retired, then the call of my King Varian came.. i answered that call... when he died... (OOC) i cried IRL, then i saw the boy become a man, i followed that man with as much zeal as i did his father, i saw the crazed witch become a tyrant and shatter the world, now, older, wiser, i hear whispers of a land unseen in an Age, there be dragons ahead..

I liked WoD, you did not have to farm anything as you had your garrison that provided everything, and the only thing you had to do was to log in once a week to clear the raid, after that you had the time to PVP and gear up alts to raid with different classes, also the raids were really good as usual without having to do the chores that wow usually makes you to do. It was the only expantion that you were able to realistically finish 100% !

I only stopped for 2 years and I’m lost, interface looked confuse and I don’t know how to start

I used to fall asleep in DS raids while healing lfr for alts. Lmao

So the shadow lands map looks like starforge logo just bigger and blacker

I love how you recognize the Roddy Piper line, great line

I was waiting for new expansions to solo old content and get achievements. It was fun, but that was a lot of hours better spent somewhere else. Today, there are definitely better ways to spend money with less regrets.

Cata's 2 major sins:dragon soul and coming after wrath

Add reforge back but build in an optimizer for the game or limit to like 2 items

Soon after Cata came out, pretty much all of my friends quit and my guild fell apart and I pretty much just stepped away

Just a random point with putting WoW on Gamepass, is that it completely obfuscates where the money is going. I realize micro monetizations is likely the future, but if you have arbitrary 100k people playing wow through gamepass, thats 100k users that arent sending sub money to the WoW coffers. Makes it harder to allocate resources internally i'd imagine

God damn, talking about Spine of Deathwing as the hardest fight because of the damage required to break the plates. Meanwhile, my recollection of that fight was watching 9 or 24 lemmings try (and fail) to balance a seesaw for an hour.

so, i miss old quest design really... don't think new is often better, yeah, i mean basic quests ok... but... no open world bosses, no real 3 man or 5 men quests any more... i mean today 3 man quests i can do with a bad equipped twink alone, not thinking about spec spells movement or anything... back than... you needed to search for people, or level up, gear up and try 5 levels later again... this was so cool... and the steed quest... i think the best most memorable questline of all time... having to travel around the entire world mutliple times, without portals or flying, to finally get your steed... best experience ever... or old darkwood questline to summon this big undead destroying the town being an open world quest... so much better than the modern day version, a early game experience you can build on as there is nothing compareable in the modern game.... i was allways an expansion behind, so game was really difficult back than, and i liked it.... noways whan i make a new twink nude and play its even easier than the game back then... i mean, yeah you at least take damage at you did back then, and could sometimes need some food, what you needed after every fight back then... but so fast as you restore health, don't loose any mana by using spells and can't even miss..... i till today hate evere single one of the quality of life changes they did for the hardcore-players.... no more need to train axes when i get a new one but only used swords till then, no chance of missing spells, finding all the hidden traffic possibilities instead of big portal rooms.... the need of trainers to learn spells, allways being out of money to get things i would be able to get... instead of allways getting everything immedeatly, alone Hogger, so good quest back then... half an hour to get alone through the camp and then hoping nothing respawns during the fight... and now? just a runthrough... and even if the person in front of you is to fast for you everything respawns in about 30 secs... really don't like it.... and cata really was a big throwoff for me, loosing all the starting zones... especially because they tried the fading zones in wotlk, which was a big hope for the future game for me, everyone seeing the zone in a different way depending on them being advanced in the story - and then this big backthrow of everything being deleted and then not being changed till today... on of the big dislikes i have for the game for modern standards till now, that the world is so unusable, not being able to move chairs or read books, cut trees or demolish houses... and hot being able to have influence on the zones to better them... no matter how many enemies you defeat, they all insantly respawn befor you even can put in the quest... and even then nothing changes even you get rewarded fo "saving the town" and you come back and nothing changed.... till now i can't get - ok mmo-problems, wanting people play together where almost no one plays, but it takes so much value out of the game.... and till now i feel you can't get the lore any more because of the cata-revamp they made back then... but i feel really sad that they threw away that wotlk idea of zones fading with your progress in the game... that is a thing how modern games should be to me... don't know how it is today, but thats a thing i think gw2 did much better back in the time.... and not needing npc for anything but questgiving at all, towns look so useless, no wonder that they deleted and abandoned every major town other than orgrimmar and stormwind... but that killed the game for me too.... i want there a prospering town for every race at least... remember the glorious days you needed to find the right trader to get stuff you needed to do special things... to get wood to make fire, to get dream dust to reskill, to get arrows to shoot with.... ahhh, good old times.... when the world was a world.... and you needed food and drinks to survive, and you got killed when you walked in the dark woods alone and got surprised by a foe... and i don't know if its just me, but even playing Cata in Chromies time chanannigans, i never get to quest the cata-zones.... shadow high land, the underwater things, the unterstone thing, etc... and the story is so messed up right now, i really would appreciate lore-storylines.... where one could play everything stormwind-related from beginning to now or everything dragon related... or everything demon related... and get new players or old fan an 20 year of story questline of a specific topic of the lore.... so then was this, and those people were hidden dragons, and they split Varion in two, and then Onyxia, and than this, then this fleeing to outlands, what doing there, Malygos going mad, etc, etc.... or history of the gnomes.... getting alive throug curse of flesh, building that city, getting overwhelmed and then abandoned in lore for 16 years.... and yeah, old dungeons... not being able to find the right way before bing in there for 30 times... not finding the bosses.... some dungeons were really like raids back then... precious memories... i mean i don't play classic - because i don't have the stamina to do so and invest so much time in a second wow and onother game, so i don't know how the classic dungeons are... but i would love to have those big dungeons back... especially in my memory Maraudon, Temple of AtalHakkar, Dire Maul... hateloves of my live before they got shattered by the developers... and then new questline did you make those again, and then again, and then again... so fun... just love... and yeah, i stopped playing with Kung-Fu-Panda's ruining the till then well settled world.... coming back for legion a little, happily surprised by BfA-Alliance-Questing zones... and strong underwhelmed by the Shadowlands being so empty... and messing up all those long-loved storylines... so for sure not coming back for at least another 6 months till i can be called back as friend and i see if they can hold at least the level dragonflight is being told to be nowadays...

Bruh I played a tiny bit of wotlk, all of cata and most of MOP and even I cant get back into wow. I tried with BFA but it was waaay too overwhelming (plus I didnt have the time tbh). I did love the experience and the memories that I got to remember. Wow will ALWAYS have a special place in my heart and I have great memories there. A lot of them are off fishing :D

lol the targeted ad is brilliant play by the OG content creator.

Yup. During wotlk, me and the boys played Dota on the side. After wotlk, we moved to heroes of newerth, then lol. Being adults wow was much harder to maintain than jumping on a moba for an hour or 2.