It’s not that there are no things worth doing, and no nice guilds and communities, and no fun ways to spend time but… the devs sure did manage to forget a lot of the things that were popular in past expansions.
It wouldn’t be hard to argue that BfA is an experiment of just how low the quality bar can be set and not drive players off. Turns out, the bar needs to be higher than it is right now, and that despite what Ion thinks, players do actually like the ability to target gear and knowing in advance that their time investments will pay them back.
8.2 and beyond look like they might be turning the corner on this nonsense, but in many cases it’s too late. I’ve lost most of the people I returned to WoW with in 8.0, and they won’t be back before 9.0.
The major issue the game has is that Blizzard removes what i like to call ”struggles”. Basically, you’re not allowed to make mistakes.
Only issue here is that these struggles is what makes the game rich. Because every struggle you overcome feels amazing, it basically expands the range of emotions you feel as a player.
To my point, mage tower challenges are widely regarded as one of the (if not THE) best piece of content in modern wows history. Why? It has struggles, and overcomming them feels good.
I dont blame people calling classic out as nostalgia, because its a though sell. From the eyes of a player that never participated it looks like a scuffed version of wow that takes alot of time.
What classic videos wont show you is the emotions the actual player goes through in classic, because you will have horrible, stupidly bad moments in classic BUT likewise, incredible and amazing moments as a consequence. Because you have tons of struggle in classic, and overcomming them feels good, the game really stimulates your emotions and it CANNOT be shown in a video, you have to try it out for your self.
Basically, the scope of emotions a classic player is allowed to experience is huge, while in BFA the scope of emotions is a small box, you wont have good times nor bad times, only decent times - and that gets booring.
You seem to be forgetting that previous expansions did not have any challenges. Legion had mage tower which I agree, was great. But other than that?
We have (and had in the past):
Brawlers guild - which seems like a rehash of older versions.
Chromie scenario - was pretty decent I guess, tho it is hard to call it challenge.
Raids - present for all expansions.
Dungeons - Made hard from legion to BfA, however it is considerably harder in BfA (Legion was mostly brainless meatgrinds)
Mage tower - yes it was great but did not make up for legendaries garbage. Did not make legion great.
What else?
Name 10 things that is not common (Raids/PvP/Dungeons) and was hard. Go. Soloing things meant for group content does not count.
BFA is one of the worst and boring expacs ever. Some people say Draenor was pretty bad but BFA seems to be even worse.
No new content after Legion. Moreover, they took away artifact abilities and gave us nothing instead.
Most disgusting raid armor sets. Most toxic community which Blizzard made themselves.
BFA was supposed to be a massive pvp expansion with epic plot for both factions. What did we get instead? Some stupid santa barbara.
I don’t see any steps from Blizzard to make WoW great again. If they wanted ti attract players and make something new, the would at least put some new tier of talents for 120 lvl. Who cares about this silly useless azerite traits? Players want some new buttons to push, some new abilities to each spec.
I’m pretty fed up with 0 innovations, recolors of mobs, crapy armor and boring quests. Not to mention gameplay that feels 1000 times worse that Legion. Each day people quit BFA cuz the current state is just horrible