I’ve been playing WoW since late Vanilla, and it honestly makes me sad to see the direction Blizzard has taken.
Back in the glory days, WoW was about making friends, grouping up for real challenges, and exploring an immersive world with a perfect mix of dark fantasy and humor. The lore was solid, questlines were memorable and the world felt alive, so much that I can still remember many vanilla zone to this day.
Fast forward to now, after TWW and Undermine, and the flaws are glaring. Every expansion and major patch follows the same tired formula—and even the formula itself is weak:
Lore is a mess: 17 years of bad decisions and lazy writing left us with disconnected zones, constant loading screens, uninteresting characters, and a ridiculous power creep (Sargeras impaling Azeroth, Shadowlands’ nonsense, etc.).
Patch cycle is stale: Every major patch locks players into a single new hub for months, filled with repetitive, low-effort activities. The game still can’t handle the lag, either.
Bloat everywhere: Unnecessary currencies, toys, and collectibles clog up inventory space increasing player fatigue, while cosmetics and mounts have lost their appeal for long-time players.
Class design got dull: Instead of dealing with class imbalance by adding unique strengths, Blizzard homogenized classes, making them feel too similar.
Despite all this, WoW’s core gameplay is still top-tier. Dungeons and raids with friends are a blast, combat is smooth, and AoE feels amazing. I just wish Blizzard would fix the world and make WoW great again—not by re-releasing old versions (which was a great move tbh, grealy appreciated, but I’d rather play something new rather than the same thing I played and replayed for years already), but by actually improving the live game.
What needs to change?
Fix the world and lore: possibly dropping entire expansions that don’t really fit with the original tone of the game (which was absolutely perfect)
Better storytelling: invest in proper writing and engaging narratives, and find better ways to tell stories, in line with the best in class single player games
Ditch mindless grinds: solo content is fine, but make it meaningful and especially challenging, like group content. Without challenge, content feels like chores
Think long-term: stop adding bloated systems and funneling players into temporary hubs. Find ways to keep old content relevant instead of piling on endless fillers.
I still have hope, but Blizzard needs to break the cycle. Anyone else feeling the same?
the only thing what they want is to stretch everything so we continue playing. but i going to quit after this sub ends (for a while) maybe i will try in summer or next expansion, this rng is ridiculous. they dont give a * about us. 3 mounts can make me feel better but they only want me to continue grinding, i am full of anger. this rng is out of balance. every run is a disappointment.
After every ticket they say give feedback on the forums. But nothing change. Because 90% ppl accept it and keep grinding and not caring about it.
I wish i didnt discover the gnome pet for wow through warcraft rumble. That game is more addictive then WoW. More loot. Not good for me.
I agree.
sadly not everyone here is a hardcore old wow player like us my friend .
only few that i know them.
this brought so much good memories for me.
making friends.
this was so good
i remember back then you really needed and wanted friend.
for pve and pvp content. now days its just broken systems.
like pvp matchmaking.
also i remember when were going online into the game we were just keep waiting and Checking the friend list to see who is online and when jack for example comes online.
now days its just bunch of people talking and chating in discord instead of the game.
and about the communication: man those days this was easier. and you had more freedom but now everything can get you banned in the game. did you notice no one really talks or have a long discussion? its because of this.
…
and about the real challenes and immersive world:
wowhead…
this one website destroyed wow for good.
i remember back in the day there was a dude in our neighborhood . this dude was so gooog in wow . and he was making money with just knowing everything about wow and showing other kids how to get mounts. how to do this that. im trying to say everything had Value. now days someone comes here and keep showing off that i have 60 paladins and other things but when you look at his talents you see that he just copied it from wow head like the rest of the players before.
and about immersive world. yes those days we didnt had super sonic flying mounts to move around the world in few minutes.
you had to go on the ground most of the time and see the beauty of wow from 1 yards away,.
still to this day. in 2025 i listend to the music of crystal song forest under the old dalaran and Grizzly hills when i want to do farming or chill content in the game.
imagine .
i mute the sound of the game and listend to this old musics instead of the new ones
i can keep going about other things but i stop there
maybe yes - maybe no
i dont know.
we were kids back then even he was.
maybe he had something like wow head or maybe a big bro or someone that was telling him those.
who knows.
even after years after this i didnt know what was wowhead of sites similar like wowhead.
everything was about experience in wow in those days for us
I do think WoW has quite a few problems, so to speak.
The game has a huge world that it doesn’t use, which is very odd for an MMORPG. Every time it adds a new zone it obsoletes an old zone. And what once started out as a seamless and connected world with few loading screens, has now become a centralized hub with remote points of interest and contained zones that are isolated from each other.
It has a reward structure that is the most boring in all of gaming. More mounts, more titles, and more appearances. It’s the fast-food slop of WoW these days. The gear is so simplified as to be downright boring, every stat upgrade being a pseudo power increase in a game where everything scales.
And it has a story that took a controversial step into the realm of time travel and the multiverse, struggled to do anything meaningful with either, and then proceeded to take another controversial step into revealing the afterlife and all it entails, which the story also struggled to do anything meaningful with.
So now the story has to contend with the fact that time traveling is real, so is the multiverse, and the afterlife is known – and it thinks it does that best by ignoring all of it completely as if none of it ever happened.
There is a conflict between the game’s desire to be highly competitive and the desire to foster a relaxed and social atmosphere that…yada yada, I could pile another 50 issues on, but why bother? Holly Longdale said in a recent blog that on Blizzard’s mind was community and social initiatives, UI improvements, and approachability for new players. So that’s the scope and outlook. Plus more of the same. And Housing.
For the most part I can still get some enjoyment from the game, I am usually playing at least one expansion behind though as I am an anti social old bstd and just wanta relax and do the stuff that I couldn’t do at the time.
I find it incredibly annoying to go into the new zones like undermine ( or really, Underwhelm) hop on my flying mount and ohh no, I can’t fly! again!!
Honestly, I can’t keep up, one minute I can fly then the next I can’t. I know it’s a minor detail but I wish they would either let us fly, or not, I mean there are flightpaths still so it’s not like there isn’t enough headroom …
I like Undermine in terms of lore, story and design but you are right in some points. Activities are very reapetable and boring. It was fun until I ended story and did other activities first time what takes me 3 days and I wasn’t even rushing. It all is not fun second time… I really have enough of doing stupid dailies, weeklies and other boring stuff which looks the same every patch, every exp, every time.
The worst thing is… D.R.I.V.E. for me. It is so useless. I thought it will be gamechanger in meanings of exploring city, but it’s just faster ground mount with several mechanics I dont even use. it is also frustrating to ride it around the city out of main roads. The city is too tight for that speed.
Also, FOMO is still strong in this game and collectibles are not fun anymore for me becouse… where is the fun if we have hundreds of mounts, toys and other things? When they were rare, acquiring them had purpose, challenge, and joy. Now I don’t care about my another wolf-like, dragon or robot becouse there are tons of it.
I miss more exploration, quality quests and slow pacing in WoW.
The worst thing is, that I don’t know what should change. I have no idea what could be fun. Maybe it’s just me, maybe people really want repeatable activities and tons of mounts in this game and it is enough for them to be happy.
I think that subscription is chains for that game atm. It’s make that devs need to fill game with tons of trash activities just to keep you pay. Maybe sometimes is good for the game to not rush tons of repeatable content and give people a time to chill.
I took a break for years from the game to go and play something else. I tried both TESO and FFXIV. For a while, I found them to be enjoyable enough. The former, particularly, due to the elaborate housing system. The grass really isn’t greener on the other side.
Yet both games became incredibly stale to me once I was all caught up on the latest content.
WoW is at least trying to shake things up every now and then by comparison. Plunderstorm, Remix and D.R.I.V.E are experimental and whilst they may not necessarily be to everybody’s tastes I can appreciate that there are plenty of things to engage with, especially as a ‘jack of all trades’ player.
The reality is that it’s a subscription based model and it needs to extend the content, and keep up with the evolving needs and wants of the current community. Furthermore, there are many forms of content to satisfy the different requirement of the player. In my humble opinion, the game is doing a pretty good job balancing the PVE/PVP, group or solo content etc etc. WoW has expanded quite a lot and there is bloat everywhere, but we need to keep in mind that it is a 20 year old game and most of the content remains accessible to the player base. It is inevitable that with age, and the evolving player base, the game will develop in a way that will not be comparable to the original experience.
