Autistic analysis:
The game gets bigger over time, more bloat, more user friendly streamlined time saving features appear… because else nobody would have time to do anything.
First summoning stones instead of walking to a dungeon.
Then more flightpaths and LFD teleporting.
90% of humans are on the lower end, by any measure, and prefer to take the path of least resistance. “There’s a button that saves me time and trouble? Of course I’m gonna use it!”
This creature… feature of habit consumed most players.
No more benefit in talking to others, creating bonds since there’s barely any reward to such a time investment and risk.
It used to mean everything to know players in classic, who plays what, how well, how familiar are they with what parts of the content etc., so you can ask them to team up and clear stuff with a mutual benefit. It was almost always worth your time talking to others back then.
Now it’s almost always a waste of time because everyone is just a npc.
We don’t need others anymore, every player is so easily interchangable.
Top that off with cross realm phasing. Wanna do a 500 man raid but 100 players are 10 seconds late? Click click boom done, replaced, let’s go.
Just meat in the machine.
A super social classic experience CAN be done, even with retail.
It’s hardly profitable for blizzard so they won’t do it.
But it can be done. Just remove all the “skip features” like LFD tools, cross realms, summoning stones, forcing players back to a classic era vibe with a key factor being social, as without that clearing content won’t be possible.
Niche audience, clearly a lot of people want that,
but not profitable enough to be implemented sadly.
