Above all what motivates me to stay subscribed is having fun.
As far as I can see many of the mechanisms that frustrate me are there to try and keep us subscribed. Rather focus on making the game fun, and people will stay subscribed.
We play games as an escape, not as a second job.
Grinding and RNG. There is too much of it, it needs to be minimal.
While its good to work towards a goal, it defeats the purpose if you’re burnt out by the time you achieve it.
While it is fun to be surprised by something nice once in a while, it defeats the purpose if you end up being disappointed and frustrated almost all of the time.
Faction Balance. As long as faction is a factor in any aspect of the game, its critical for the population to be close to balanced, else the systems fail or the experience is ruined.
Queue times, war mode, finding players for high end content are all victims of this problem.
You have to commit to either fixing it, or removing it. You can not leave it in this broken state.
Classes. Class means almost nothing anymore, every spec is essentially its own class, and everyone can do almost everything.
The emphasis should be on class, not spec. In fact I’d be as bold to say that there should be no spec, just a class with a lot of customization. Neither the old nor the new talent systems are good enough imo, as they both force you down a spec tree to some degree. I think it should be more open.
Every class should not be able to do everything. Everyone does not need a heal, stun, interrupt, root, fear, battle res, etc. The whole point of having classes is being good in one way while being limited in others.
Every class should have something unique and useful that no other class has, that moment you get to shine because you’re helping the group in a way nobody else can.
Class quests and things that only specific classes can do. Fond memories of obtaining my Succubus, Aquatic Form, and running for Barman Shanker with another rogue. Something I loved about Legion as well.
Call me crazy but back in BC I used to like Strength Leather for my Bear/Cat.
Rotation
This is up to preference and I think class customization should provide some options in terms of the intensity.
Personally I like the following:
I like to be pressing buttons all the time, but the abilities must all be meaningful. Using a filler ability with no impact/damage is as bad as auto attacking while everything is on cooldown.
That said, I don’t want to be staring at my action bar all the time, it should be natural and only require a glance once in a while.
I want to have a manageable amount of abilities, that is everything that needs key-bind speed to fit into 12 buttons, and then a few more situational/buff/res/big cool-down type of abilities.
I don’t like multiple abilities that do the exact same thing. We saw a few of those creep in since Cata for the sake of adding more spells every expack, and that is the bloat that should have been pruned, not the iconic abilities from before.
PvE and PvP
Back in the run-up to Classic I remember an interview with Kevin Jordan where he mentioned that mobs were designed to be as strong as players to accommodate the challenges when designing for both. This makes a lot of sense to me, and as a bonus gave us a more challenging leveling experience.
While I understand the attempted to keep PvE and PvP gear the same, and would have very much liked it to succeed, you don’t seem to be able to tune it properly. Perhaps its best to go to a system where PvP gear is always superior for PvP and adequate for PVE and vice versa.
In terms of classes, healers are too powerful, we need to go back to a state where they are vulnerable and need to be protected. Too much CC, want to actually play the game, not watch it. Fixing classes as suggested before should help address this issue.
I would also suggest that if balancing classes is too difficult, that you change to a system of counter classes. Rock, paper, scissors, eg Rogue kills Mage / Mage kills Warrior / Warrior kills Rogue.
More visual customization of your character. Seems to be in the works though, but worth mentioning the more the better.
Special request for fixing the lower eye lid on male night elves. I cant use the Night Warrior skin because of that, and if the new eyes are going to expose it even more then its going to become unbearable. The model is already ugly enough as it is.
Weather. I can’t explain why but I used to enjoy this.