We don’t even know how many people play retail
Enough to justify Blizzard still having the game still live with regular DLCs…
class Power
Crowd Control Bloat
CC is at its highest point in WoW history. Every class has a small army of lockdowns:
- Hunter: Silence, Scatter Shot, Trap, single-target stun, AoE stun, and a disarm.
- Warrior: Fear, single-target stun, Disarm, AoE stun.
- Demon Hunter: AoE fear, Imprison, single-target stun, AoE stun, Meta stun.
Nobody has weaknesses anymore — everyone has everything.
Mobility Overload
Mobility creep is out of control.
-
Mages: Two Blinks, Alter Time, Displacement, built-in snare removal.
-
Demon Hunters: Felblade, double Fel Rush, Meta Leap, Vengeful Retreat, The Hunt.
Specs that once had trade-offs now chain movement abilities like arcade characters. -
Old Talents, Now Free Stacking
In MoP, talents were about choices. Example: Arms Warrior had to pick between Double Time, Warbringer, Second Wind, etc. Now? Warriors literally get all of them. Juggernaut, Double Time, Warbringer, Second Wind, Impending Victory, Piercing Howl, Bladestorm, Shockwave, Dragon Roar, Safeguard, Avatar, Bloodbath, Stormbolt — the entire kit is free.
And Warriors aren’t even the worst. Windwalker Monks now get every single MoP talent baked in.
Rotational Assist = Proof of Failure
The fact Blizzard had to add a “single-button rotation” and “what to press next” highlights how bloated rotations have become. Too many stacking buffs, too many cooldowns, too many filler buttons. Instead of pruning, you just automated the mess.
Gearing Complexity
- The Death of Simple Progression
Remember when you could run a dungeon, raid, or PvP for an item and that was it? BIS was BIS. Now:
- Gear comes with passive abilities, shifting secondaries, and endless treadmill upgrades.
- It costs three different currencies to climb 2–3 item levels at a time, gated by whatever tier of content you do.
- Back then, exalted rep = a sick helmet. Bonus rolls gave luck protection. It was straightforward and players liked it.
- Too Many Sources, Too Much Grind
Mythic+, Raiding, Delves, Crafted items, Rep rewards, Event drops, World gear. Sure, on paper that looks like “options,” but combine it with a treadmill system and you bury casuals under busywork. Casuals want to log in, run a dungeon, maybe get a drop, and log out happy. They don’t want to farm half a dozen currencies for a +2 ilvl upgrade — only to swap it all out the moment a slightly better secondary drops.
More doesn’t equal better. It equals exhausting.
Lore
This is where it’s completely fallen apart. The retcons make the story unreadable:
- Old Gods: four… no, five… no, back to four.
- First Ones > Eternal Ones > Titans+… only to be downgraded later.
- Suddenly everything was the Jailer’s plan — Lich King, Burning Legion, Void Lords, all retconned into one giant mess.
- Sargeras was driven mad by Void Lords, who wanted to corrupt Titans… but apparently demons came from the Eternal Ones at the Jailer’s behest? So the Jailer wanted a demon to corrupt a Titan to start a demon army, that would then have a lich king to corrupt another titan, to use that titans power to remake reality? Nonsense.
- Iridikron has gone AFK. Dragons, restored to full power, are also AFK — despite the Void threat escalating.
- Xal’atath: kills her own master “to save the planet” … only to reveal she also wants to destroy the planet. Now she’s carrying Dimensius’s power within the dark heart, yet somehow doesn’t just snap her fingers and end Azeroth.
And why did Order Halls vanish? You spent Legion building multi-faction class hubs with the greatest heroes of each order — then they just disbanded and went AFK when the Old Gods, Primal Dragons, and now the Void arrived? Paladins following the Highlord one expansion, gone the next. It’s incoherent.
Is this specific enough on a couple points?
2 Likes
Not at all, without numbers we can’t evaluate
gw is also 20 year old game and it has expansions, but you say it is a dead game, despite imo it’s more played than retail throughout the year
Hopefully my last post is on point enough.
1 Like
This comment… plus this one:
Makes no sense.
If you dont know the data, you cant compare. And WOW is twice as old as GW2. Either way, naming 1 MMO that is still alive does not invalidate my point. Many others did die.
Much better. Now we can talk.
Nobody having a weakness is OK IMO. There used to be a time where warriors had issues with uptime, and if matched against a caster you would loose 90% of the time only because of the class you chose. Not because of your skill. Which is worse than what we have today.
Regarding the stuns specifically, from what I remember PvP was very similar to PvE. Just nuke the target dummy until it dies.
In modern 2025 wow PvP is very distinct from PvE. We could say that raw DPS is not the main factor at play. Its trading CCs and CDs. With more strategy involved.
However, for a non-skilled player all this is way too complicated and boring. It seems like you get stunned over and over again and you die.
But one could say its a L2P issue. One simply has to know what to trade and when. But again. I wont go deeper. PvP used to be my thing, but not anymore.
And what is the problem with this? The game has become more complex in general. In the past, wow’s competitors were Everquest, Wolfestein and Doom. Today, its CoD, Overwatch, ect… You simply cannot offer the modern gamer a “slow” game. People would fall asleep and quit.
In other words, the world where you had turret spamming mages in Ragnaros is dead. Because we dont play in toaster computers with dial-up modems. Now with modern computers, FO broadband and years of habit… well now you need to move, dodge, and do mechanics. It’s what people want.
You cannot have classes that have to walk from one place to the other in a world like that.
I can even give you specific examples:
- Elemental shaman picks Earth Shock over Elemental Blast at a DPS loss only because Earth Shock is instant and Elemental Blast has a 2s cast time.
You are over-exaggerating. If we did have everything, then there would not be a M+ build and a Raid build. A ST build and an AoE build. Just to name a few.
There would be just ONE build. For everyone. Like in MoP.
Lets compare, now that MoP classic exists:
https://www.wowhead.com/mop-classic/guide/classes/shaman/restoration/healer-best-talents-builds-glyphs-pve
There is only ONE build. And its the one that existed in MoP vanilla.
https://www.wowhead.com/guide/classes/shaman/restoration/talent-builds-pve-healer
There are SIX builds one can use. There is only 1 meta one (like always) but the other 5 are not far behind. And I did not even get into the PvP side of things And I did not even include the “new player friendly” builds with less active abilities for healers that are learning in low keys/easy raids.
This is a massive WIN. By all accounts.
TLDR: In MoP (and past expansions) we had the illusion of choice. We had some options, but only ONE was the good one, and 100% of players chose that. Today, we have a plethora of options. And because the power of each “option” is diluted over 60 talents, there is no such a thing as a “must have OP talent”, so you have much more variety of choice. Again. A massive WIN by all accounts.
This is a mistake IMO. But it dosent prove anything. You are making things up.
I remember that time yes. i remember running the same raid/dungeon 100 times and get ZERO loot whatsoever. NOTHING. Because the thing I needed did not drop. Instead I got some other useless object. Like a Plate with Spirit and Agility (while playing warrior).
Today, every single dungeon I run gives me something.
Now. You like MoP a lot… so lets compare:
What are these then: https://www.wowhead.com/mop-classic/guide/valor-points-vendors-items. I remember Valor tokens. I remember farming them like an idiot to get my purples… Farming some dumb rep for that OP purple it gave… It was horrible…
Today you know what you need to do to? Dont think about it. Just PLAY. Whatever you want, at whatever level you want. And gear simply falls from the sky.
Its not hard to comprehend this: Play the game. After some time go to the upgrade guy and upgrade what you can. DONE.
However, if YOU want to do mathematics and min-max the hell out of gearing, then you can. But you dont have to. That is the beauty of Retail. You dont need to min-max everything to play.
Unlike in MoP. Where you definitely, 100% had to min-max everything.
What are you talking about?
Who in gods name does M+, Raids, Delves, increases its crafting skill, farms rep, does events and world gear… all at the same time?
How much time do you play? And for what purpose? Are you a RTWF player or something?
In the past you HAD to do all that. In 2025 its not the case anymore. You can perfectly do M+ ONLY and be just fine. Or Delve ONLY and be just fine. And it gives ZERO advantage to do Delve and M+ for example. You get the same gear at the same rate.
For example: If I HATE with all my soul to farm reputations… why should I? I dont have to. I can just play M+ which is what I like and that’s it. Why would going back to the past be a good thing? Why is this even a debate?
Unfortunately, there are very few exceptions left from the old days. Namely Raid gear being more OP than anything else. But other than that, you can do whatever you want.
So basically, in Retail 2025 the shift is not in “farm stuff to get gear”… the shift is “play the stuff you like to play and you will get gear”. That is the new norm today.
And its 100% a WIN. Totally.
The game moved on. You did not and are stuck in the past. Where you had to farm like a monkey every single mode in the game to get gear. You try to do the same today and you get overwhelmed.
They start doing that, then i will just take it as far as i can in game and to hell with it - I’ve never bought anything from the shop apart from a server transfer a few years ago, and thats how it will remain…
2 Likes
I genuinely laughed out loud at the comparison of wow against COD and overwatch - both of which existed in the middle point between turret mages in 2004 and 5 x blink mages in 2025 fyi.
I can’t understand why you jump to the turret mage example from 20 years ago, obviously nobody wants to go back to this, but I suppose this is just another disingenuous response, as many of your others have been throughout this topic. Anyways - in this point, the authors comment clearly referred to mobility creep - you only need to go back 3 years ago to a mage with 2 blinks and warriors with 2 charges. Not 2004…
3 Likes
If you quit, can I have your gold?
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To me, retail is amazing. It’s a fast-paced, progression-based ARPG system and I love it.
Every season feels like a fresh start with new progress, more dopamine, and more fun.
I even enjoy when they change things around, because I like new stuff.
world of warcraft MMO died long time ago in a galaxy far away.
If we can agree on something is that blizzard is slow on changes. Things that should have happened 10 years ago happened 2 years ago.
And double blink is not the only example of this.
Crowd Control Isn’t About “Skill”
Being “skilled” does not make you capable of avoiding most crowd control. Only a handful of classes even have mechanics that temporarily avoid CC — e.g. Priest Fade with the proper PvP talent. For the vast majority, the only way to stop incoming CC is to pressure (“train”) the caster.
It’s not about “learning to play” — it’s about the fact that CC creep has exploded, and most of it is instant-cast.
- Enter a Battleground? You’ll sit in CC.
- Queue 3v3? You’ll sit in CC.
- Best or worst players alike? Same story.
This isn’t a skill issue. It’s systemic design.
Mobility Creep vs. Reasonable Tuning
Nobody is asking for Classic-era “turret mages.” In fact, Shimmer is a unique ability and shouldn’t be gutted. But there’s no denying mobility has gone way beyond reason. Some examples of how to tune it back without gutting classes:
- Mage: Keep Shimmer, but remove Displacement, shield snare removal & Alter Time’s placement reset.
- Warrior: One Charge, one Heroic Leap.
- Death Knight: One Grip, one Death’s Advance.
- Paladin: One Freedom, one Divine Steed.
- Warlock: Gateway and Portal on longer cooldowns.
I’m not asking for mobility to be stripped to Classic levels — but scaling it back to WoD / BFA standards would be 10x healthier.
Power Creep: “Illusion of Choice” Is Gone
You say I’m “overreacting” and that we have more builds than ever. Wrong. In MoP, talent rows forced meaningful trade-offs. Today? Players have all of those talents plus more.
MoP Warrior had to choose:
- Double Time or Warbringer or Juggernaut.
- Bladestorm or Shockwave or Dragon Roar.
- Avatar or Bloodbath or Stormbolt.
Now? Warriors effectively get everything at once. Same for other specs — e.g. Windwalker Monks. That’s not depth — it’s bloat.
The “illusion of choice” wasn’t whether you picked Chain Heal focus vs. Riptide spread on Resto Shaman.
The real choice was what class and spec you wanted to play, because they were distinct. Today, every spec is loaded with “everything + more.”
Rotational Helper = Proof of Broken Design
You claim Blizzard’s new rotational helper and one-button macros “don’t prove anything.” That’s delusional.
- Blizzard literally banned rotation addons, then recreated them in-game because they had become necessary.
- If it were just a “fun feature,” it would’ve been added years ago. But it wasn’t needed back then — because rotations didn’t have 10+ stacking modifiers.
In MoP/Wrath, modifiers were simple: stats, trinkets, cooldowns.
In BFA onward, Blizzard layered multiplicative stacking effects until rotations required external tracking to play at a competitive level.
Ret Paladin Example — MoP vs. War Within
MoP Ret (Templar’s Verdict modifiers):
- Trinket
- Gear
- Avenging Wrath (+20%)
- Guardian of Ancient Kings (+20% Strength)
War Within Ret (Final Verdict modifiers):
- Trinket
- Gear
- Judgement (+20%)
- Of Dusk and Dawn (+30%)
- Gleaming Rias (+15%)
- Crusade (+30%)
- Final Reckoning (+30%)
- Empyrean Legacy (Final Verdict casts Divine Storm)
- Inquisitor’s Ire (+50% Divine Storm damage)
- Blades of Light (+5%)
- Divine Purpose (+10%)
That’s triple the number of modifiers — layered, conditional, and overlapping. No wonder Blizzard had to design UI helpers. The class design has outgrown human tracking, and that is proof of how bloated it has become.
Bottom Line
- CC: Creep is systemic, not a skill issue.
- Mobility: Too high across the board, should be scaled back to WoD/BFA levels.
- Talents: “Illusion of choice” is gone — specs now have everything, not distinct builds.
- Rotations: One-button helpers prove classes are overdesigned, bloated, and unmanageable without external tracking.
More ≠ better. Complexity ≠ fun.
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Gw1 came out few months after wow. Wow classic has nothing to do with retail anymore
Ah rip, I came back after years of playing on and off and I stayed.
Can I have all your gold then?
1 Like
You did not read what I wrote.
I said that you sit in CC, YES. But so does the enemy. IF you play it right. If you dont play it right, you sit on CC and die. All CC does is increase the skill ceiling of arenas. That’s it. That is why its a L2P issue.
So its not a “problem” per se. Or a systemic design problem. Its a skill issue.
Once we have identified what the real topic of conversation is, then we can discuss it properly.
The real question is: The experience of a low rating player vs. the experience of a high rating player. In other words… the impact of “play CC right” or “play CC wrong”.
Consider the alternatives:
- What would a arena match look like with zero CC. It would be condensed to a PvE training dummy match. That’s what it would be. And that world would stink.
- OR… Reduce the number of CCs. Then you would still have the same problem. If you play it right, it interrupts some nuke that will 1-shot you. If you dont, you die. Same as right now.
For what purpose? PvE? NO. It would stink. Simplify the PvE raids and dungeons then. But if you do that, PvE would become boring.
I literally posted you WoWHead links.
YES. There was an illusion of choice. There is no tradeoff if there is only 1 talent build. 1 talent build means that a Resto Shaman IS that talent build. There is no change whatsoever.
In MoP they could simply remove the talent tree and you would still play the same. No difference at all.
What choice? The class you play keeps being distinct. A Resto Shaman still is a distinct healer spec from all other healers. Same for a Warrior.
Because in the end, what makes an Arms Warrior distinct is not whatever talents it has, or how many charges it has… its Mortal Strike and Overpower. That is what makes it distinct.
Blizzard NEVER banned rotational helpers. Addons like Lazy Macros have existed since Vanilla.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnoOnmW-0Bs
This is a video from TBC, but they existed even in Vanilla WoW. In MoP you also had 1-button macros for specs.
So NO. You are wrong.
For example: I remember perfectly well playing with my warrior and macroing Heroic Strike to everything, reducing my rotation to 2 buttons. It was mindbogglingly boring by today’s standards.
Do you really need to track all of those modifiers at the same time? There is NOTHING you can do to simplify any of that list into a rotation?
And again. For WHAT purpose? What are you trying to achieve in the game?
It’s not the same to want a “chill/relaxed” experience, than to push for the highest difficulty. Because you can do both at the moment.
If you only want to do Delves and WQ then you dont need to track a single modifier. If you want to do the RTWF you have to do all of that. And in between there is a lot of greys.
You assume that by simplifying the rotation you will somehow achieve more. You wont. Because difficulty will simply come from somewhere else. It will just not depend on YOU. It will depend on some Dev in California. So from that PoV its 1M times better that skill expression depends on YOU. Not on others.
Like I said before. As long as you have OPTIONS in the content you do… More = Better. Complexity = Fun.
That is the main difference between Retail and MoP.
Let me put it in even simpler terms:
- Give me a list of high-end activities (as in, max level) you could do in MoP? Well… other than Raiding, nothing much. And there were only 2 difficulties. That was literally IT.
In MoP it was binary: You either performed in the raid, or you did not. SIMPLE. So. You had the “pros” on one side, and the “noobs” on the other. So the difficulty was set by some Dev in California that decided that “Normal mode” was for the noobs. And “Heroic/Mythic” was for the “pros”.
Fast forward to today"
- Give me a list of high-end activities (as in, max level) you could do in TWW? The list is SUPER long. And on TOP, there are 5 Raiding difficulties. Infinite M+ levels. 11 Delve levels. Even WQ have difficulties.
So now, YOU decide how far you want to take things. Skill expression depends on YOU and YOU alone. Not some dude in California.
As long as there are difficulties for you to play in, more complexity is 100x better. If we were to return to MoP world with only 2 difficulties, where you “make it and play or dont make it and dont play” binary situation… then I would agree with you.
I know. But from what I read GW1 is not maintained anymore. The one with all the “success” is GW2. Never played it. I just write what I read after a Google Search.
What I dont get is why did they find the need to do a GW2… what happened to GW1 and why could they not simply do more DLCs like wow did.
People who play this game 10+ years and always whining “how old good wow” was better then now remind me some kind of drug addicts, who only uses 1 kind of drug, and always telling, that x-type of drug was better 5, 10, 15 years ago then now.
No, it wasn’t, u have just become tired with this, and nothing gonna help you to improve your experience.
I guess we will wait and see, if but I guarantee they will end up catering to views like mine when Midnight flops and subsequently The Last Titan flops even further…
2 Likes
Ok, bye. I don’t know what the point of your post is, tho. if you wanna quit, just quit. don’t bother people with your decisions.