What I do to chill is just herb/mining. Wish there was more options though.
I don’t understand why mining/herbalism/skinning can’t be learned by everyone but limit crafting professions to 2 only.
Which is the entire point, you hate that the game has to much to do. So do less? You clearly don’t have the mindset to want to do everything (or as much as you physically can) so simply don’t. What is the alternative? Release 1 thing to do per month so you can keep up but everyone else is bored?
Then simply don’t. There are places in the world you may never visit, people you may never meet. Food you may never eat. Do any of these things matter? Not at all. Just enjoy the things you do get to experience. I don’t think the purpose is always to try to achieve everything.
Seems you need to change your perspective, not the game has to change.
I don’t.
I’ve described what I observe to be the design of the game and the player approach and sentiment toward it with the message of saying that the design of WoW is more extreme than it used to be, and that historically this leads to player burnout.
I haven’t really spoken to my own situation in detail, but I don’t mind doing that.
I have basically cut down heavily on my engagement in WoW in recent years, and continue to do so, and I largely attribute the reason for that to much of what I have described.
I play the game on a surface level, take long breaks from it, and opt out of a lot of what the game entails.
So I already follow your advice, which is also my advice for others.
But it’s a self-defeating advice, because it doesn’t lead to a more fun and engaging game experience. It leads to slowly opting out of increasingly more of the game until you become distanced from it and ultimately quit. So it is a doomed path. And I say that as someone who is very much walking it.
But as far as the game is concerned, it speaks to a design that isn’t in harmony with its audience.
The underlying cause here is that Blizzard favors an increasingly time-consuming game experience, because it helps with player retention (short term at least), and therefore they design the game to suck ever more hours out of people.
Then we get to be the mature adults in the room who advice each other not to sink too much time into the game because it might not be good for you if you do.
But at the same time I think it’s fair to question if it’s in the players’ interest or desire to see the game turn into such an extreme time sinker, far removed from the more laid-back and open-ended game it used to be.
I don’t think it is. And I am a bit dismayed that this is future path Blizzard have chosen for WoW.
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There are plenty of people that play this game to the extreme, Blizzard also has to cater to them. 10 hours a day, 7 days a week. This kind of content seems specifically designed to try and slow them down.
If you take these sweat and put them in classic look what they did. Molten core at like level 57 in greens and blues.
How can Blizzard realistically cater to casual and hardcore players? They can’t. Even semi serious players instantly finish any content unless it is time gated. The time gate makes it really boring if you finish it, why should we have to wait?
Maybe it’s because I play a healer but I really don’t care about the gear treadmill.
- I get gear as I do the content I want.
- I get resources to upgrade the gear as I do the content.
- I reach the rating I want, I stop gearing my character.
I really don’t care about having maxxed out BiS gear since it is not necessary for the content I want to do. Gear is a tool, not a goal.
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BFA is the only expansion I skipped entirely because its their GCD changes to most spells.
It was extremely boring.
Just play Fury Warrior or BM hunter.
I’m not sure it’s a question of catering to a type of player.
It’s more a question of choosing what kind of game WoW is supposed to be.
Is it supposed to be an open world where players log in, immerse themselves in the environment, socialize with each other, and primarily create their own fun?
Or is it supposed to be a consumption-driven game where Blizzard sets the goals and defines what the objectives are, and where everyone marches to the beat of Blizzard’s drum?
The answer is probably somewhere in the middle, right?
But over the years, and especially as of late, the game has become increasingly more of a consumption-driven game.
Personally I question if that’s the best design for WoW in the years to come. I don’t think it’s a design that ages very well and I don’t think a lot of players can keep up with it for very long.
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The game has always rewarded the most tryhard players in the game. Catering to casual players makes the game substantially worse. Things like one button rotation is just a race to the bottom, how much can we dumb down this game before people leave.
Casual players have no staying power. Barely seem to care what they do.
You yourself are hyper unfocused on what you want to do, i don’t even know if you know what you want. Blizzard shouldn’t focus on listless players.
M+ players know what they want. Raiders know what they want. So pander to those players.
Sure. I’m also a healer and just take whatever gear comes my way.
But that’s also a failure of design.
Because if you have a game where you heavily emphasize the importance of gear progression in your design, and then players tell you that they don’t really care about it, then your design has kind of failed to resonate with the players.
That’s not a good thing. Ideally Blizzard should create a design for gear that you care about - not one that you don’t.
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Maybe, but that doesn’t detract from the validity of the criticism that the OP presents.
If the answer to the OP is to simply say: “Sucks to be you, but you’re not important to the business, so goodbye.” then that’s a response, and maybe a likely one, but also a cynical one for sure.
And like I said before, then I don’t think this path presents a good future for WoW. It sounds a bit dystopian, lord of the flies. When do we start eating each other? 
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As i mentioned before, the current iteration of wow most people seem to want in some capacity. Give a realistic alternative.
Most of us don’t want to go slow.
he struggles with the game, many of us don’t. (the game does have bloat though)
which is exactly what we want.
Then go play Classic.
/endthread. Lol.
He is complaining the game isn’t what it was, no it isn’t. This is 2025. It isn’t even about age. I played a little vanilla also. Most vanilla players were terrible, the content was a joke. If he applied himself to current difficulty he could easily get good enough to play and find the enjoyment in speed and efficiency…not wasting time.
It absolutely is a HIM problem. If all the systems changed it would ruin it for the rest of us just because he wants to play classic.
“Let’s slow down the GCD, 1 button press per 3 seconds. Lets take an hour per dungeon. Let’s only release content once a month at most. Let’s remove the timers from everything and just dillydally”. No thanks.
I think you’re invoking a false majority by saying that.
I don’t think we can really say for sure what most players want. I don’t even think Blizzard knows. If they did, then their work would be a lot easier.
All we can say is what we think and where our conviction lies. At best we can say what some players want and what some other players don’t want. But that’s probably the limit of our insight into the broader business intelligence of WoW.
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The proof is the fact that in all content i do, people want to go fast.
I don’t have people asking me to go slower as tank. The only thing people want to avoid is a wipe.
I legit don’t think i have ever had someone ask me to go slow…like ever. If the group couldn’t handle a pull they may rarely say something like the healer sperging out.
Maybe there is a silent majority of players that want to take it slow, but couldn’t they just join communities that do that? The status quo is speed. That’s why we all go fast. If that weren’t the case we would go slow…that’s the simple fact
^^ I think you’d be surprised how many players actually want to go fast—and how much of it is more about conditioning than genuine preference.
Setting Mythic+ aside for a moment, in leveling or gearing dungeons, the “go-go-go, gotta go fast” mentality doesn’t usually come from people finding speed inherently fun or rewarding. More often, it’s the opposite: players rush because they want to get through content they don’t particularly enjoy, but feel they have to do for the rewards. It’s less “I enjoy going fast,” and more “I want this to be over with.”
In that sense, the speed isn’t a preference—it’s a coping mechanism. People want the reward (XP, gear, rep), not the dungeon itself, so the default mindset becomes “let’s just get it over with.” That creates this illusion that everyone enjoys speed, when in reality, many are just enduring the content for the outcome.
So really, the discussion shouldn’t be “Do players want to go fast?” but rather “Why are players doing this content in the first place?” It’s not unlike how PvE players push back when they’re compelled to do PvP for borrowed power or achievements—it’s not that they hate PvP inherently, but they resent being pressured into content that doesn’t match their playstyle.
Likewise, some players feel frustrated by the pressure to always “go fast or go home,” especially in content that should be more relaxed.
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Yeah, until they don’t.
Which is what the OP speaks to, and what I echo.
It’s a very engaging design and you go from dopamine kick to dopamine kick.
But eventually it just burns you out.
At least for some people that’s the case.
And in that regard it doesn’t feel like a very healthy design for WoW in the long term. Like I said, the candle is being burnt at both ends.
It is what it is.
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I like the pace of Retail and in contrast the pace of Classic puts me to sleep. FF was also too slow for me to enjoy.
I imagine this is one of those they can’t please everyone things.
Casters always feel very slow to me. Cast times are just not for me. Melee is my preferred playstyle.
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again, you can lay this at the feet of casual players. Normal dungeons/HC dungeons and M0 could be difficult. In that case it would take some time. But casual players need the content easy, which more experienced players blast through.
The problem is a huge gap in player skill. Normal-m0 is boring as hell. Why would anyone that pushes higher m+ want it to take longer?
But what is the solution? Allow M+ players to skip everything to M+ 10?
The only solution could be something like if you get X score in a season you can enable a super hard variation of all content with better rewards so the go slow casuals can have the easy content to themselves and take it slow.
But guess what, the casuals are all DPS players. I have made 10s of thousands of gold at minimum from call to arms for dungeon/heroic. They don’t want to tank. The fun in tanking is pulling 2 million mobs. Only certain people have a tank mentality. That mentality includes go fast, if i am tanking we are speedy. They can’t have their cake and eat it. If we have different lower level content the queues are literally going to take forever, or they can pay us to come back and tank it for gold/runes…but it’s going to be speedy again.
There’s no gun to your head and this isn’t your job.
I put effort in to gearing a character to push seriously this season, got to M+ 15 and realized how much i actually hate cinderbrew/darkflame and just stopped. Who cares. I won’t continue if i am not having fun, every single player can do the same.
Other games exist. Play them when burnt out. Take a walk, read a book.
It makes no sense people want to be serious about not taking the game seriously.
Sure. Like I said earlier, then I play WoW less, take more breaks, and eventually see myself quitting.
I fail to see how that’s ideal for the game though.
I do all of that and more. But again, that’s not really the crux of the matter. Or maybe it is? If we’re cynical then screw the players who don’t like it the way it is, and leave it to the players who do like it.
I’m not sure if Blizzard sees it that way, but maybe?
I know Blizzard in the past have described the playerbase as an onion. The bigger outer layers of the onion represent the general gamers and the casuals, and the smaller inner layers represent the core audience and the hardcore players.
I like that analogy, and to stay with it, it feels like Blizzard have spent the past number of years on shredding one outer layer of the onion after another. The core of the onion (and the playerbase) appears intact, but it also appears to be the only part left.
So like I said earlier; when do we start eating each other?
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Because you don’t like the game? I don’t see that. Competitive gaming has surged massively in modern years. I honestly think that this is the only thing keeping the game going.
They physically cannot win is the point. They have to choose a type of player to alienate. Hardcore players make up race to world first, MDI. Top streamers. These all generate hype and therefore money. M+ players will do the same content all season with almost no changes. Very cost efficient.
What do casual players bring? Upsetting the hardcore audience with their lack of skill/time spent playing. Demanding content that is very expensive and manhour intensive. Thinking the game is still classic. Asking for simplification of everything yet again ruining hardcore players fun. Casual players basically just pay their sub and complain, they aren’t generating value. (from a literal standpoint, i don’t hate casual players lol)
Casual players can just improve, hardcore players can’t make themselves worse.