It stopped being about the journey and became about the destination.

>>343026876
>Less and less quality content
>More and more mediocre content and raiding focus plus ways to speed up getting to end-game across the board
>Just buy it if you want to
Etc.
And this
>>343027360
/thread

>>343026876
Weaker exploration aspect, worse raid logging specifically in ICC thanks to catch-up mechanics.

>>343026876
The Orange Box.

>>343026876
was the number higher at the beginning of cata or end of wrath? i'd think beginning of cata, no?

>>343026876
lots of small things that eventually broke the titans back

the biggest probably being the killing off of Arthas
with his death they removed the last real villian the series had and from that point on they were just grasping at straws as far as the lore is concern. Making big ass pulls and just forcing characters into the villain section despite there being no real reason for them to be one for the sake of plot advancement.

Tons of minor gameplay issues from the outright casualization of PvP to the first real introduction of mechanic bloat in raids are just some examples.

Overall the game became to big to sustain its own legend and the amount of content needed to appease the whole audience was gargantuan. Blizzard had to make a decision. Continue to appeal to the smaller, hardcore fanbase or expand and try to appeal to the casual fanbase as much as they could. They chose the latter

They switched their target audience from long term mmos to casuals.

During WOTLK the population spiked as it does with casuals.

However Casuals are flavur of the month people... and so they will leave after a few months regardless..

Problem is when then catered to casuals their long term player base left, and they were left with nothing.

Now it's like CoD.. release expo.. get a wave of casuals that will leave in a month or two... then work on the next expo for continued profits to lure in the next wave of casuals.

that's a perfect bell-curve
time happened

I started WoW in 2005. I played religiously for 12-14 hours a day, basically forgoing schoolwork, classes, relationships, and even food sometimes. I stopped playing it because it became bland and most content was piss-easy after the release of Cataclysm. If they got someone like me to quit playing this shitfest, imagine someone who barely has any investment in their account at all.

Fuck Blizzard, fuck Activision, and fuck Chris Metzen. Basically took billions from hardcore warcraft fans and shoveled into casual normalfag games like Overwatch/Hearthstone. What a fucking disgraceful loss of integrity from the Warcraft 3 days.

>>343026876
As someone who ragequit in early WotLK,

it's because the fucking dungeons became retard facerolls. That and the bloody Dungeon finder (aka Retard Finder).

I still get pissed off when I think about the Oculus and Gundrak.

Oculus. Why does NOBODY seem to know how to amber drake correctly?
It is literally THREE BUTTONS.
press 3 and wait
press esc then 1 when the number on the big debuff icon reads "10"
then press 3 again and wait
Interrupt the above, press esc then 2 when Eregos shouts. Then go back.

And yet people have complete maximum downs and can't figure out how to do it.

Gun'drak also pisses me off because WHY ARE YOU CLEARING TRASH? JUMP IN THE WATER. For fuck's sake.

Oh well. Sorry for getting le [TRIGGERED]. But Wrath, and its goddamn retard finder, ruined it for me.

>>343026876
BC introduced welfare loot right?

Maybe that was it. The very first sign of things to come.

>>343031854
The term "welfare loot" first applied to BC yes but that term referred to Arena, and it was a bit of a grind to get the Welfare loot.

Wrath gave you the weekly raid, though that wasn't really free epics.

The first xpac to really give you welfare epics was Cata.

>>343029618
Not really a bell curve, but incredibly smooth nonetheless.

Do any othervgames have such aesthetically pleasing playercount graphs?

there aren't infinite idiots with shit taste

>>343032058
BC welfare loot wasn't on par with what was available in the latest raid. Updates had it stay behind.
WOTLK had top tier gear for badges, and for a far lesser amount easily attainable by spamming heroics, which were really hard in a BC PUG

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/20745544759?page=2#33

>you can literally get mythic raid BiS by only doing LFR and fetch quests

Defend this.