WoD had no content but it didn’t hurt the game a lot.
People want to love Legion so badly, they mention WoD pruning even though that of Legion was way worse.
4 Likes
Cataclysm. It first broke the structures and storyline of the game. It was the point where they felt they needed to jump a shark to keep people involved, and as usual what they did was demonstrate their own lack of confidence, which rattled the playerbase:
Jumping the Shark is the moment when an established Long Runner series changes in a significant manner. This can range from something relatively small, like the introduction of a new gimmick, to something that totally changes the show, like a Genre Shift. The point is that the show feels like it has to update in order to stay fresh. But it usually has the opposite effect — the viewers can see through it and realize that the show has finally run out of ideas. It’s reached its peak, it’ll never be the same again, and it’s all downhill from here. In other words, it’s Ruined Forever.
The expression comes from the episode of Happy Days in which Fonzie, dressed in his trademark leather jacket, literally jumps over a shark on water skis. It was stupid, over-the-top, and not in keeping with the show’s existing tone. It became the point where viewers started panicking that the show was going to change on them, and not for the better. And it didn’t get better;
The long corner they turned through WoD and Legion, to replace classes with … something else, and change WoW from a game made for players to one engineered for game designers was also damaging, of course, but it was a logical continuation of the Cata mindset rather than the root cause.
4 Likes
Either MoP or WoD depending on which expansion they started consistently removing older content that people could go back to for transmogs and mounts.
The current expansion content droughts would not had been half as bad if Blizzard encouraged going back to older content more instead of failing at scaling and completely removing a lot of nice things.
I think its more of the systems they keep adding or the way looting gear / gear distribution harms some of the game’s longevity, people wont want to play if you have to be part of a community and religiously take part in heroic progression every week.
SL has it pretty trash too currently, gearing via pvp is awful due to gate keeping boosters
pve has the effect of, no exp no group. + a lot of toxic people with 0 patience.
Casual content you revisit the world for doesn’t exist outside of callings / world boss currently either.
These temp systems with very little balancing being done really hurts the game / core of some classes.
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It would have to be Wrath because that’s when they added the auto LFD tool (towards the end of the expansion). The game’s been on a downward spiral since then.
They broke their game with all these QoL changes.
Legion, without a doubt.
Destroyed solid gameplay systems (pvp, glyphs, pve)
Introduced borrowed powers (as we understand them)
Ruined classes across the board
Made alting basically impossible
Added demon hunters into the game
8 Likes
For me it is Cata because this broke the cohesive story of the game. Whilst I think the premise was a good one I think that Cata was also the break from the traditional Blizzard soontm which had been in place up until this point. The old it will be ready when it’s ready was pushed aside and Blizz pushed out a halfbaked expansion as that is what it was perceived the fanbase wanted rather than delaying it until it was ready.
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I think the expansion itself was fantastic, but Legion has done more to damage the current game. It really does show that was is great at the time might not be great for longer term health.
On the other hand, Legion did add M+ which is the only thing actually keeping me subscribed to WoW right now and for much of BFA.
2 Likes
It wasn’t massive , 200k subs isn’t massive.
Wotlk = Introduced LFG system - Introduced Ingame shop cosmetics - faction change shop ( for me personally I hate it , it ruined the game in some way and people got toxic cuz not alot of alliance no , etc.)
Cata = Introduced LFR system - Destroyed our chilhood memories with revamps.
MoP = Introduced leveling boost purchase - Introduction of Thunderforge + Warforged.
WoD = Introduced WoWtokens (P2W) - Introduction of Pathfinder - Removed Reforged (SAD)
Legion = Oh wow…
1 - Introduction of World Quests ( honestly they were good in legion , it got bad in bfa and in SL its the WORST)
2- Introduction of Legendaries nonstop grinding for a random legendary ( It’s funny they made a vendor on the last patch when we asked for it since beta)
3- Introduction of BORROWED POWERS AP GRIND…
4- Introduction of titanforge.
5- Ruined classes they made u play spec not the class.
6- RUINED PVP ENTIRELY.
7- Introduction of scaling. you dont feel powerful as u get geared anymore.
8- Introduction of m+ and I.O (ITS MY OPINION, for me it brought even more toxicity to the game and elitists are taking over this , I hate m+ sorry. people like it I get it , OPINIONS.)
9- Introduction of TimeGated content. ( Not sure when this was started to happen but I remember it mostly in legion).
10- Killed alts entirely.
BFA = Some… maybe? lets see…
1- Replaced Tier sets with azerite ( Very bad decision and system)
2- more borrowed powers… (Neck Essences + Azerite Powers + Corruption currency farm + cloak upgrades … wow lol)
3- Introduction of Corruption (It kinda got a little bit better when they introduced a vendor? idk…)
4- Warfronts + Islands… went horrible.
I cant judge for shadowlands yet because its still current and not done yet.
and people who keep saying legion was best expansion well , there ya go it ruined the game mostly. although I admit , legion had alot of content and patches was smooth , it felt amazing.
10 Likes
Not sure what data you’re looking at but approx 12million down to about 10 mill by the time MoP hit is more than 200k in subs…
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Its not just one expansion but blizzards thick headed obsessive way of changing stuff for just in sake of changing them.
-Wotlk LFD would have been ok if it were done in a way that LF tool only grouped you with people on your own server. Removing social aspects from mmo is really bad idea.
-Faction change it really ruined balance on many servers to me it was one of the biggest mistakes in this game.
-Cataclysm LFR same with lfd they really should have gone with merging servers instead of LF tool grouping up people from every server without any consequences when people act like A-holes. The changing of old world would have been fine if in 1 or 2 expansions we would have had another great update that would had repaired the world but instead they did nothing and the damage is still here after a decade+.
-Mop the removal of proper talent trees and lazy homogenized class design. Sure pvp was fun and the expansion was really good no matter how much people cry whine and moan about Pandaren but the expansion really hurt wow with its class design that made everyone have everything.
-WoD the expansion with insane hype that in itself already doomed the whole expansion to be a big disappointment. I don’t really get why on earth blizzard just abandoned the expansion especially when they lost so many people in transition from cata-mop and gained so many people back with their idiotically large hyping of WoD.
WoD had so much potential but instead they started to cut so many corners on every front that it was insane.
-Pathfinder.
-Legion i think was kind of ok expansion on some parts but i really hated the first patch of it the artifact power gain was so slow that i eventually just got bored and took a 6 months of break. I liked questing zones and lore but i really really hated the borrowed power crap.
Legendary items were cool but i hated the RNG crap that always gave me the crap ones first.
-BfA it had way too many poorly implemented systems and they again did the same mistake with borrowed power as they did in legion and made it so slow to gain that it became old real fast in bfa i also took long vacation because i just don’t enjoy collecting some arbitrary crap for borrowed power that is just boring.
I actually liked corruptions to me those were cool but they really should had made them so that you could not been able to stack crap that just oneshotted people and they also should had made more different corruptions.
-SL Borrowed power again… Only this time it does not even feel power its just borrowed boredom. Legendary items but here is the twist they are all boring as watching paint dry.
-Torghast place that is maybe fun with right class but on some classes its more fun going to get your tooth removed without sedative also the color palette in there is just depressing.
-Maw i get the idea that its basically Hell but this is still a videogame and should be fun to play but Maw might be the most unfun place that i have played in my life and i have played ET the videogame.
-Anima i get the lore reasons why it is gained slowly but again its not really fun gameplay.
-Covenants they feel like alpha version of order halls everything is time gated and the powers we get from there make me hate the game some covenants have theme that i like but the powers are so boring.
Changing the covenants is also made by someone who hates players.
-WQ’s somehow they managed to make them even crappier than before BfA wq’s were crap because rewards were crap but atleast they were fast to do but SL only seems to have fill the bar crap or worse.
-PvP too bursty too much CC and Ilevel difference between players is just too big especially if i now join with my new toon on bg’s the character is nothing but burden in there for very long time and even after gearing it the ilevel difference from honor gear and bis is way too large. There really should be ilvel bracket in pvp.
That would be the cataclysm where they made every dungeon shorter and more streamlined and totally changed the old world.
2 Likes
Cataclysm,indeed made a cataclysm 
WoD ofc. It turned all classes especially healers into Major Cooldown Slaves.
I think Legion was one of the best expansions,
I think WoD was the first one to deal damage, starting by removing legedary quest lines, which I liked very much in pandaria.
Content should not be remowed by any means.
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WoD and if anyone disagrees they are literally, statistically incorrect.
Outlands man, flying killed wpvp and travel, then leet king with their lfg teleportation. I don’t care what anybody says, vanilla WoW was the best WoW ever made.
Game started to rot when they got a taste of success and that first taste was obviously TBC
I don’t know. In WoD, Mistweaver still had Chi, Stances, a melee interrupt, cocoon while stunned, touch of death, and overall just an interesting and fun gameplay.
WoD didn’t have AP grind. No borrowed power system.
I also had alts in WoD.
Only crazy fools played WoD