Yeah, but you laser beamed your reply on that tiny word as well, instead of focusing on the post as a whole.
That’s a bit cheap, in my opinion.
what this people who keep calling for changes all the time and ask “bring wow back” they seems to forgive one of the most brutal thing a NPC sayd ever in a fantasy universe “TIME CHANGE…”. as big as wow is, you can’t be meaningful over 21+ years and still expect people will farm wolfs in Duskwood for eternity !!! People at Blizzard changed, story changed, view points of CEOs changed… there are wo many things changing in 5+ years let alone 21+ … Do you all expect new guys which starts playing nowdays will enjoy the old classic were you do nothing but leveling ? I don’t think so, in this time and age where new generation of players enjoy and want to have theyr “things” fast and delivered will never accompany your old bump farming some Bandits for few scraps of Junk and lil xp… Times change… people change… everything change in a spam of 21+ years… I, personaly enjoying the game since Legion started i preorder that expansion, but my first interaction with WoW was when an online friend told me and few others to download a private server way before WoD was announced and i remeber my first Troll Hunter MM farming and learning the raids, bosses and mechanics in Molted Core, at Ragnarok Raid… but years passes by, I again start playing retail in Legion and the diference was enormous compared with old classic Raid and even the gameplay was completely new and overall way better then what my first interaction was… So, the morals of this long comment is, Accept that times change (for good or bad still changing tho regardless) if you can’t then, go away, nostalgia and all of that feelings will never return 4 ya, Accept it or not, thr games still go forward with you or with out you in it !
Totally fair to disagree , and I get that some of these changes made the game more approachable. But I don’t think the discussion is about accessibility vs. elitism — it’s about depth vs. disposability.
Let me unpack a few things, because I think we’re coming at this from two very different views of what makes WoW special.
Neither do I.
What I want is a world where effort feels meaningful, not just rewarded through seasonal systems that get wiped every patch. The original WoW wasn’t elitist , it was simply a world with stakes. Whether you were leveling, farming mats, working on professions, or just traveling from one zone to another, there was a sense of effort, danger, and permanence.
Today’s design is efficient — yes — but that efficiency comes at the cost of depth. Content is fast, consumable, and repeatable. But does it really feel earned? Does it create memories?
Totally fair , no one should be forced to do anything in an MMO. But we’ve moved from a game that encouraged social bonds into one that’s actively designed to let you avoid everyone, all the time.
In Classic, even if you could play solo, the game gently nudged you into cooperation. It wasn’t about forced grouping , it was about shared experiences that meant something: grouping up to kill elite mobs in STV, running dungeons that weren’t cross-realm, needing to build a reputation as a good tank or healer.
Now? Queue, loot, leave. You don’t even need to say a word. That’s not freedom, that’s not fun — that’s isolation with a UI.
And that’s totally valid.
But again, socializing in old WoW wasn’t about chat bubbles or Discord calls — it was about being in a world where your actions had social weight. If you ninja-looted, people remembered. If you helped others, you built a reputation. You didn’t have to talk , but the game’s systems made community a byproduct of play.
Modern WoW removes nearly every reason for players to care about each other. I think that’s a huge loss , not just for “tryhards,” but for anyone who wants a world with texture and meaning.
You’re right, the servers are up, the content flows, and the queues pop instantly. On paper, it’s alive.
But the spirit of WoW, the world that felt vast, dangerous, and worth getting lost in that died a long time ago. Not with an announcement or a patch note, but slowly, update by update, until the world we once knew was replaced by a treadmill dressed up as a theme park.
What we have now is a game built to retain attention, not imagination. It’s slick, efficient, and endlessly busy , but the heart that once made every level, every dungeon group, every whispered invite feel like the start of a story? That’s mostly gone.
WoW used to be a place where you made memories just by existing in the world. Now it’s a place where you log in, finish your “to-do list”, and log out , and nothing you did really lingers, it doesn’t stay with you, emotionally or memorably, once you log out.
So no, WoW didn’t die. But something deeply human inside it did , and that’s what many of us are still mourning.
In the end, you don’t have to want the same things I do from WoW , and that’s totally fine.
But for many of us who were there when Azeroth felt like a world you lived in, not a service you log into, the magic didn’t fade because we changed — it faded because the game did.
We didn’t outgrow WoW.
WoW outgrew the very things that made it timeless , and not all of that was progress.
I remember the so-called good old days. How exciting it was to get first mount, how amazed I was walking to Ashenvale for the first time, how there was a sense of winderness instead of quest hubs every 50 metres.
But that was 18 years ago for me. Sure the game has changed a lot but so have I. I’m now 18 years older and getting that same feeling is simply not possible, not anymore. That world, that era has passed and no matter how exciting and awesome it was it will never come back. None of it will ever come back, not in game, not in real life. That’s just how the life goes and all we can do is try to adapt even when if feels so wrong, so weird when compared to “our time”.
Fair , I respect that you’ve found a way to still enjoy the game as it is. And honestly, I envy that a little.
But I don’t think speaking up about what’s been lost is the same as “dragging around disappointment.” For some of us, WoW wasn’t just entertainment — it was a world, a community, even a formative part of our lives. So when that world gets stripped down into a hyper-optimized content loop, it doesn’t feel like something to just “let go” instead it feels like something worth defending.
I’m not stuck in mourning. I’m just not willing to pretend that a live-service treadmill is equal to the living, breathing MMO that WoW used to be.
“Hyper-optimized content loop” sounds awful and that’s the reason I don’t do it. Currently most of my characters sit in their garrisons, some go farming old raids, some raise cooking skill in old zones or try catching fish.
For me this world is still very much alive though I must admit I sometimes miss all those people who used to be here with me, clear instances, rp, talk about life and stuff, but who are now gone one way or another.
You do realize that early 2000s and now, communication was way different.
People where more isolated and when the feeling in WoW that you could talk to somebody from the other side of the planet felt magical and exciting.
With social media today where the first thing you see in your phone when you wake up are 10 facebook pings, and 5 whats up pings…not to mention other apps such as discord and etc. Getting a rando call from Brazil feels like a nuisance more than something exciting back in 2000s. People changed. With being overloaded with communications, people are once again preferring their private bubbles and isolation.
So no. People change and their communication habits also change. Your average’s persons mentality from 2000s and 2025 are vastly different. No matter how much you would want to argue against it.
I hear you. And honestly, I think a lot of us made that same shift . Classic when we had time, Retail when we didn’t. It makes sense. And I respect that you can enjoy both versions for what they are , that’s rare.
That said, I don’t think Vanilla was the only time WoW felt like a world. Sure, it was the most raw and organic , travel mattered, danger was everywhere, and the world didn’t bend to you. But even in TBC and Wrath, there was still a sense of continuity and immersion.
You had attunements, reputation grinds that actually unlocked things, group quests in zones, world PvP objectives, class relevance , systems that tied the player to the world, not just to an instance portal and mostly not just your gear score.
For me, the world didn’t stop at Vanilla , it slowly faded as the game shifted focus from immersion and identity to efficiency and throughput. Vanilla might have been the spark, but the fire lasted longer than people remember.
I agree completely. One of the things I miss most about the early days of WoW was the sense of scale and danger in the open world. The slower pace and more powerful mobs made the world feel genuinely massive. Exploration wasn’t just a side activity; it was the core of the game loop. The world felt alive because it was a real challenge. You’d meet people out in the world, form impromptu groups to take down a tough elite, and have to really think about how you approached quests.
I think we could get some of that back today without affecting instanced content. Even if it’s more time-consuming, the journey and the adventure of being out in the world should be a bigger focus. Instead of rushing to gear up for raids and dungeons, the open world itself could be the adventure. Imagine if open-world mobs were significantly tougher, requiring players to team up more often or at least be more mindful of their surroundings. This would make quests and stories feel more impactful, and zones could become living, breathing places rather than just a place to run through and check off a list. We could even have specific “open-world only” RPG elements and class abilities that don’t work in raids, Mythic+, or instanced PvP. This would give the open world a purpose beyond just being a weekly checklist and make it feel like a vibrant, living place again, where we aren’t running around like gods among mortals.
Then they would just open random insta invite “doing quest X” in custom group finder, get 4 randos and quickly do the quest-chore as quickly and possible and leave the moment its done.
People who don’t want to talk, cant be forced to do it.
As I mentioned in my previous reply already. Its not 2000s when a “whisper” is something exciting and magical. Now people are dealing with 5 whatsup “whispers” or 10 discord pings while playing WoW. They dont have time to deal with another rando whisper in-game.
You’ve hit on a core point. I completely understand and agree with the sentiment that people will always find the most efficient path forward. You’re right—even with tougher mobs, they’d likely just use the group finder to form a quick “Quest X” group, rush through it, and immediately disband. It’s not the '90s anymore; people are used to multitasking and getting things done quickly. They have multiple pings from Discord and WhatsApp, so an in-game whisper from a stranger isn’t the social event it used to be.
That’s why I think the solution isn’t just about making things harder, but about a more fundamental redesign of the open world. It would have to be built from the ground up to encourage interaction and exploration in a way that feels organic, not forced. The goal shouldn’t be to slow people down just for the sake of it, but to make the open world’s challenges and rewards compelling enough that people want to engage with it, rather than seeing it as a chore to get to the next instanced activity. The problem isn’t the players; it’s the design of the world itself.
Man, I could’ve written this myself . Seriously.
You nailed something I think Blizzard has completely forgotten: progression used to feel personal. Not optimized, not datamined, not rushed. You made gear choices based on your gut, your encounters, or even what looked cool. You experimented because you could, not because the system auto-swapped your stats for you.
I miss that era where you’d run a dungeon ten times not for a BiS drop, but because you were still deciding what kind of character you wanted to be. Weapons had personalities — procs, swing speeds, elemental damage , and those little quirks mattered. They gave your character flavor.
And yes , 100% agree on raid progression. It wasn’t about burning through the “season.” It was about your guild’s pace, your server’s drama, your raid comp slowly evolving week by week. There was no pressure to dump an entire tier every few months. Older raids stayed relevant. People stayed together.
And that last bit? About recognizing names, seeing familiar faces while leveling alts, and watching people grow as players? That’s exactly what I mean when I say WoW used to feel like a world. Not just content to consume , but a place to exist in.
Maybe they are rose-tinted goggles. But they’re the kind you earn through years of memories , and yeah, I’ll happily take that +50 to fondness too.
It was. It very much was.
It’s just that most players were noobs back then, so it didn’t matter as much.
Just look at Classic. That was elitist as hell with people’s new attitude towards gaming vs the attitude they had back in 2005.
I think that feeling is still there for the most part.
But I will agree that I too am growing weary of the seasonal treadmill. I’m not sure I’ll bother much this season, honestly.
It does, as far as I am concerned.
I don’t think either of those statements are true, to be honest.
It didn’t encourage it; it forced it. You had to be part of a guild to do progression raiding in vanilla. I know because I did it. You could pug dungeons and such; but pugging raids wasn’t a thing for a long time: It was elitist in that sense.
I don’t enjoy (and didn’t enjoy) any of those things, so for me that experience did not mean something. I guess that’s where our mindset on this game differs.
I disagree. It’s fun, for me. I enjoy it. I don’t want to talk to strangers; I just want to get some content done. I’m not playing a game to make friends.
I know. And I was at the receiving end of that. My noob self joining a pug to kill a world boss and when the drops showed up, I saw all kinds of people rolling, so I figured: Oh, you just roll. Cool.
I proceded to win 3 of the drops; 2 of them not even usable by me. And this was in a time that that stuff was soulbound immediately. So I got blacklisted for a long time. Thankfully I played the game mainly with real life friends back then, because otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to do much of anything. I never want to go back to that type of environment.
We feel different about this. It still feels like that to me; well, not dangerous for the most part, but I don’t want it to feel dangerous. That’s not why I game. I game to relax and have fun.
I get where your opinions are coming from, but they are simply contrary to mine. So we’ll have to agree to disagree on this matter.
I know that feeling way too well. Every time I go back to retail, it’s like I’m chasing a ghost , hoping to catch even a flicker of what WoW used to be. Sometimes it shows up in little moments… but yeah, it fades fast.
man, that hits. For a lot of us, the end of Wrath felt like the final chapter of the world we truly loved. Everything since has been… something else.
Not always bad — just not the same soul.
It was about LotLK that it got ‘easier’. The start of Cata was much, much harder and it put people off.
Yeah, that’s not good However, it was all new back then.
Why did MC classic get cleared so fast… was it because it was easier… no, people just know how to play an MMO now.
It wasn’t golden, you just need to wipe that rose tint off your glasses.
There is only 1 problem with this.
Players are not lab mouse which will run whatever maze you want them to, jump through whatever loops you desire…as long they get their in the end. Even going to instanced high end PvE stuff such as raids/M+, we got some folks demanding solo queues or whatever other solo play encouraging thing and when told"just socialize and network with people" they lash out like you are demanding them to marry said person and thats just a small part of the playerbase. And you want to Blizz to design the world which encourages group play…something which affects a larger player fraction than “some m+ runners alone”?.. Good luck and have fun with that. I will just stand here…way back and see what happens when you start playing around with fire and dynamite.
If anything:
They tried to remove it with WoD’s launch. Result? There was a huge backlash and I am not talking about 1-2 angry forum threads but it was written about in many 3rd party PC related news websites. Blizz got defamed so much, felt like people where hating them on a level that Blizz tried to burn down a sacred place such as Jerusalem for example.
And all that because blizzard wanted to remove flying.
So you are right that Blizz can design whatever world they want but they also need to respect that people wont be lab rats and swallow whatever bullet Blizzard wants them to and will dance to whatever tune Blizzard pleases.
No. They need to design their product to a player base who live in 2025(not in early 2000s or late 1990s) and are easy to raise up and rebel if they get squeezed too much.
This is one of the most clear-eyed takes I’ve read , and it cuts deep because it’s true.
WoW didn’t fall off a cliff. It diluted itself slowly, patch by patch, system by system, until the thing that made it unique , that spark of world-building, danger, identity, and shared adventure , got buried beneath layers of “modern design.” And like you said, this isn’t just a WoW problem. It’s a genre-wide drift toward homogenization driven by risk aversion and monetization models.
The tragedy is that WoW used to set trends, not follow them. It didn’t need to chase what was safe , because it was the phenomenon. But over time, it started shedding everything that made it distinct: the social fabric of servers, the friction that made choices meaningful, and the world that felt dangerous and worth exploring.
Now, it’s slotted neatly into that “third-person live service loot treadmill” mold alongside every other game chasing retention metrics and cosmetic sales.
You nailed it with the Candy Crush comparison , many of us don’t even enjoy it the way we used to. We just remember enjoying it, and we keep poking at the ember hoping it sparks again.
But for WoW , and games like it , to become truly special again, they’d have to stop trying to be like everything else… and start daring to be themselves again.
I can see why You may think so. Many people do think lily You, but allow me to defend my case:
Let’s focus on quests. In vanilla, quest markers (exclamation marks) didn’t appear on the mini map. This encouraged exploration - will there be a quest giver in this cave? Maybe in this building? This changed in TBC. Now You didn’t have to enter every single house in a town to look for quests - one look on Your mini map, and You knew where to go.
It’s worth noting, that (at least some) items that started quests (like a letter lying on the ground) did not have a quest marker at all, not on the mini map, and not above them. This encouraged interacting with environment, looking for details.
Zones had large quest ranges. This meant that You couldn’t finish most zones in one go. This was immersive, and encouraged grouping to tackle “orange” or “red” quests. Also, it encouraged exploration and travelling: You had to travel between zones to focus on manageable quests. This changed in TBC - now You were able (and encouraged) to clear zones from start to finish in one go.
Cross zone quests: many questlines had quests that required You to travel to a different zone and back. I can’t overstate how immersive this made the world. You need special herb to heal someone? It grows only in northern climates go to another zone. You need special ore for a weapon? Well, it’s rare and only found on another continent. You need the best blacksmith in the world? Go to Ironforge. This ended in TBC - the zones are mostly self contained. You’re in luck! Special herbs grow just on the other side of the fence, rare minerals are minted in a mine next door, and the best blacksmith in the world is right behind You!
Tied with cross border quests is quest log: in Vanilla, You could have only 20 quests in a log. With all the cross border quests, it made it impossible to gather many cross border quests and do them in one go, when you changed zones organically - You had to either abandon the quest, or just do it, run somewhere and return to do other quests. This changed in TBC - quest log was expanded to hold 25 quests.
This also had an impact on dungeons: since You’d get quests for a specific instance in various zones, and You were limited by quest log, it was common to run instances many times organically, just to do the quests You picked up later, after Your first run.
Final nail to the coffin came with WotLK - quest objectives were added to the map. Where previously developers had to write quest text in such a way, that a player had to know where he’d have to go, after that change they stopped giving You any kind of directions, because they knew the players will find objectives via the map.
All these changes killed the World in WoW in my opinion, and most of it happend in TBC.
I know that since the zones were still small, the world felt alive both in TBC and Wrath, with all the players around, but any sense of discovery, exploration, immersion and interconnectivity between various zones was already gone.
back in the day i loved sitting there 6-12 hours a day in WoW
in modern WoW i only love the first 2 weeks of the new patch. then its boring and stale.
… theres no randomness to loot or exploration, sit in an automated system waiting for queues to popp and do the same quests over and over again
back in classic wow i would get excited finding a chest or a rare mob…
After 17 years playing the game (had an old account I lost before)
Retail is in an amazing place, people and their nostalgia is a big problem, the world isnt the same as back then, people arent the same as back then, people have grown, people are adults now, they have irl responsibilities and things to do in life, that’s a part of growing up.
I myself miss when I started the game in very very early BC, it was an amazing experience, but boy was the leveling atrocious back then, I remember crying out of boredom leveling from 68 to 70.
The game is in a very good place now, and classic is there for those with nostalgia, however the dooming of the game lately is absolutely off the charts and honestly ridiculous.