I noticed the beginning of the downfall of Blizzard when the first WoW expansion (The Burning Crusade) released in 2007. Activision bought Blizzard shortly after in 2008. I can't describe it perfectly, but in TBC Blizzard began making some pretty stupid decisions that didn't make sense. Well, it made sense for making money, but not for making a better game. It was small mistakes at first, but over time they got bigger and more blatant. Even though Wrath of the Lich King was arguably the most loved and successful WoW expansion by fans, it was obvious by then that Blizzard was only making changes to make more money, to keep the subscribers in the hamster wheel. Greed can only sustain a company for so long until it collapses. We're seeing the late stages of it in Blizzard now. It's hilarious too, that greed started their downfall, and now they're essentially admitting "I hate money". Diversity and inclusion pairs with gamers as much as oil and water.
The focus on arena in TBC destroyed guild cohesion. It was much easier to get a 2-5 man team and grind pvp than a 20-40 man raid.
I get they don't want to spend much effort on content only a few no-lifes will ever see but just the existence of "aspirational" content made the game much more interesting.
The "honor" system was beyond retarded and made pvp servers close to unplayable. I know its all "thats world pvp" but in-game rewards for ganking was a really bad idea.
Cross server BGs did decrease the queues but also destroyed the character of the servers, preventing fun rivalries.
I mean, there weren't any 40 man raids and they introduced 10 man raids which made things more accessible. They also didn't ramp down the difficulty. I actually had an easier time getting raids going in TBC.
Wrath was what wound up killing my guild. Nax being a cakewalk made a lot of people lazy, then when Ulduar spiked the difficulty up a lot of people quit. The PVP fight in the Trial also broke a lot of guilds, as many players had limited to no experience in PVP. Then you had the group finder for 5 man content, which killed a lot of the server community. My guild went from fielding two 25 man teams to about 15 active raiders, but at least we cleared the content. I wound up quitting halfway through Cata as I was bored with the rehash of old raids.
Blizzard has been dead to me since Startcraft 2 required online login to play the game purely in single player.
I noticed the beginning of the downfall of Blizzard when the first WoW expansion (The Burning Crusade) released in 2007. Activision bought Blizzard shortly after in 2008. I can't describe it perfectly, but in TBC Blizzard began making some pretty stupid decisions that didn't make sense. Well, it made sense for making money, but not for making a better game. It was small mistakes at first, but over time they got bigger and more blatant. Even though Wrath of the Lich King was arguably the most loved and successful WoW expansion by fans, it was obvious by then that Blizzard was only making changes to make more money, to keep the subscribers in the hamster wheel. Greed can only sustain a company for so long until it collapses. We're seeing the late stages of it in Blizzard now. It's hilarious too, that greed started their downfall, and now they're essentially admitting "I hate money". Diversity and inclusion pairs with gamers as much as oil and water.
The focus on arena in TBC destroyed guild cohesion. It was much easier to get a 2-5 man team and grind pvp than a 20-40 man raid.
I get they don't want to spend much effort on content only a few no-lifes will ever see but just the existence of "aspirational" content made the game much more interesting.
The "honor" system was beyond retarded and made pvp servers close to unplayable. I know its all "thats world pvp" but in-game rewards for ganking was a really bad idea.
Cross server BGs did decrease the queues but also destroyed the character of the servers, preventing fun rivalries.
I mean, there weren't any 40 man raids and they introduced 10 man raids which made things more accessible. They also didn't ramp down the difficulty. I actually had an easier time getting raids going in TBC.
Wrath was what wound up killing my guild. Nax being a cakewalk made a lot of people lazy, then when Ulduar spiked the difficulty up a lot of people quit. The PVP fight in the Trial also broke a lot of guilds, as many players had limited to no experience in PVP. Then you had the group finder for 5 man content, which killed a lot of the server community. My guild went from fielding two 25 man teams to about 15 active raiders, but at least we cleared the content. I wound up quitting halfway through Cata as I was bored with the rehash of old raids.