So I got the MMO itch again and after hearing the dragonflight was supposed to cater much better to returning players and casuals thought I’d give it a shot. Watched some reviews and videos about it and got myself hyped up. Then found out that Dragonflight was bundled in war within prepurchase so went for it.
First thing I noticed when I go to purchase the base edition is two up sell screens getting me to buy the most expensive edition. This is already a turn off. I’ll come back to this later.
Bit of background: I played a lot of hours on vanilla, TBC and WotLK and have played various expansions for shorter amounts. I played a fair bit of BFA when I had a lot of time during covid and got into mythic raiding and mythic plus. It was initially fun but burned out and quit. Currently in a busy job doing 60+ hours a week so only getting 5 hours an average to game. I went in thinking I’ll be able to play casually doing leveling, open world stuff, exploring, having fun with dragonriding and maybe getting into heroic dungeons and LFR just to experience the raid.
So I log in, realise I can make a evoker immediately since I have a level 50 on the server and want to dive in to see how fun the new class is! And that’s when it already starts to go downhill. I appreciate the customisation options but the base model just looks like a scrawny lizard with oddly placed wings at the mid back.
Leveling is not a fun experience and there are far too may abilities which don’t really feel impactful. I do really like how fire breath works but in the context of it all it’s not fun. There’s a filler, generator, spender and procs. This would be fine except I need to double this for the blue skills. Then there’s a large number of defensive, utility and offensive cooldowns. There are far too many keybinds and when everything just falls over while leveling it doesn’t even feel I learn to play the class while leveling. The story is not interesting, the voice acting is wooden and Raszageth comes across as another generic world ending villain. I’m waiting for the Jailer to pop out at some point to tell me he faked his death. I switch to augmentation to try a different feel. I find it interesting having a utility spec but there’s no one about questing near me so I can’t make use of it. The world just feels empty and while the scenery is decent it feels like a generic fantasy world.
I level to 66 realise I’m not having any fun and use my enhanced boost to get to level 70. I also did this so I wouldn’t need to renown grind. Then I look up guides on how to play various specs and realise the insane amount of reading I need to do to get my rotations correct. I also need a huge amount of addons and my screen is now filled with noise from the addons. I think weakauras is needed to play in the current state with so much to keep track of but it doesn’t make it fun. Then I look up videos on what there is to do at endgame and realise I’m already burned out without even setting foot in a dungeon.
Now back to the prepurcahse. When I later find out I am paying for the delayed start edition by not paying for the most expensive version it really dampens the hype. As someone who has previously played on launch of TBC and WoTLK starting day (with the huge queues) and the day after is always the best time to play for a really cool community experience. The monetisation just feels very aggressive with a sub, an expansion price, and services for things like level boosts. And the first thing I experience when going to Stormwind is my chat blowing up from people selling boosts for which Blizzard conveniently sells a WoW token for. It comes across as P2W for me.
At this point I realise I’m not the target audience for the game and cancel my sub
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They nearly tricked me into buying 6 months one time because of that. Thankfully I know what they are up to.
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Lol hahaha well well if u find reading exhausting then u have made the right decision. Also u can perfectly play without addons, except a weakaura for your class is recomended and not a big deal. I feel like this is a post to just bash on to the game. Is wow overwhelming ofc if i going to play another mmo tomorrow it will also be overwhelming i mean… people need to realise wow isnt for everyone anymore if u dont like repetitive gameplay then i would suggest not to play wow.
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unfortunately wow is only for people who have time to grind. at least the end-game we have is for that. there’s nothing you can do solo , you either have to have a guild or wait for a long time in queues.
it is p2w but blizzard isn’t the one doing it so people just let that fact go. this game is heavily p2w.
the next expansion is bringing something more casual and fun but they don’t seem to be doing anything to fix the pre-endgame experience. i totally get everything you say here . the real issue is there are so many people who don’t want to do anything other than grind so blizz focuses on m+ and raids. it’s just sad as a whole but it is what it is
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Yeah, I doubt you are a new player who has been away from the game since WOTLK.
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This is your problem right there. You didn’t need to do any of this.
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Im not defending token, gold rewards in the game are getting lower and lower with every expansion. Im playing m+ mostly and lost like 200k from this season begining. But calling the game p2w is a bit too much. WoW is least p2w game i ever played
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you can earn the gold in game. thats not pay to win thats pay to skip
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It’s easy to get a refund if you notice right away.
is p2w…you can buy gold with token get boosted get end gear…that is not pay to skip that is p2w
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You do not need to fill your screen with addons in order to do dragonriding, LFR and heroic dungeons. 
That’s quite the exaggeration to put it mildly.
Otherwise valid points, i’m sorry WoW is turning you off.
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Pay to win and Pay to skip are the same thing. You are paying to achieve a win or get closer to a win state. The player determines the winning state based on how they play the game. So if you are a player who views the win state as having BIS then paying for gear via in-game gold you obtained with real-life money is pay to win.
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Thats stretching the definition massively . P2w implies its something you cant get in game. Can you farm gold in game?
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Imagine two people doing a 100m race.
One paid to skip the first 80 meters of the race.
Did he not pay to in even if the other guy does not need to pay to run 100m?
It is definitely more of a pay to skip in practice though
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Not even close to the same thing. Pay to skip sure not pay to win
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It depends on what one considers winning 
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It has never mattered if there were alternative methods to farm an item, currency or material in a game. Pay to win by the very title is paying to win. The definition of winning is up to the community. Playing semantics doesn’t change the outcome of a player paying for an advantage to get said items or the item outright. It doesn’t matter if convenience, speed, utility, items, materials, cosmetics, etc. If there are players who view these as their win state, it’s pay to win, and this is why MTX, from its inception, has compromised online social gaming because it’s not providing any value that players would typically receive outside of just playing the game.
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To me in wow that endgame loot and ksm and curve or ksh. Sure you can buy a boost win tokens but that’s different because your paying players not blizzard
Blizzard gets a cut for every wow token sold. You are paying Blizzard by participating in the market. This is just company-authorised gold selling.
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I only play eow because I already invested alot of time and money im wow
It become tideous. New patch expansion. Rush to max lvl/highest ilvl then grind raid mythics fir highest ilvl . Rinse and repeat.
Wow lost it’s magic …and i play it less or less…
Not sure where it went wrong…