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.
I started playing near the end of Vanilla so never got the chance to do the original raids as they were but I did play throughout all of TBC and managed to get all the way to t6 content before things opened up more [Champion of the Naaru and Hand of A'dal titles] and actually enjoyed some of the more niche encounters since I was my groups mage tank during the t4 and t6 fights that required one. Still my favourite expansion as things still needed tactics/cc back then and pulling entire rooms then aoe grinding through dungeons wasn't yet a thing. There were also still payoffs for putting in extra effort like getting the key to summon Yor in the Mana Tombs dungeon, something that ended up being relevant again in TBC Timewalking, or bothering with fishing skills to then summon the Lurker in SSC.
Then Wrath happened.
For all the "good" Wrath is praised for, almost entirely Ulduar all things considered, the expansion introduced 2/3 of the worst things to ever happen to the game.
LFG. This singlehandedly killed open world exploration since players could just sit in a hub and queue for every dungeon in the game. One of the consequences of this was players having no fucking clue of the corpse run directions needed after wipes because they never learned the location of the dungeon entrances in the first place. It also killed a lot of server socialising. When you can run a dungeon without needing a be in a guild and may very well never see the 4 other randoms you team with ever again that results in both increased trolling/ninja looting as well as decreased server interactions.
Actual welfare epics. While Sunwell Plateau and IQD content added in the token vendors at the end of TBC they were there more to supplement raiding activity as well as help gear up alts late in the expansion. Wrath however did this far more than TBC had done from the get go. By the time ICC was out fresh 70s could quite quickly find themselves not only decked out in acceptable 10m raid gear but also work on upgrading that without doing any actual raiding. A consequence of this was "gearscore" which caused more problems than it fixed as ilvl meant nothing at that point regarding player skill when even literal huntards and noobs could gear up easily enough.
The WoW store and "that retarded horse". The significant start of MTXs in WoW. The Celestial Steed became a meme after Totalbuscuit started calling it "that retarded horse"/TRH since then the game pushed more and more MTXs on players eventually culminating in the WoW Token in WoD letting players buy officially buy in game gold for real money. The horse mount was so in demand that it resulted in a queue for online purchases.
It costs $25 USD. Its sole in-game function is fulfilled by hundreds of other things that don't cost $25 USD. Hundreds of thousands were sold in a few days. And you know you want one.
The welfare epics before wrath required hideous grinding, which prevented them becoming as ubiquitus as the easily fought ones in wrath. And the horse was always gay, we said it would ruin wow, and it did. Never wanted one, your last quote is kinda gay too.
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.
I started playing near the end of Vanilla so never got the chance to do the original raids as they were but I did play throughout all of TBC and managed to get all the way to t6 content before things opened up more [Champion of the Naaru and Hand of A'dal titles] and actually enjoyed some of the more niche encounters since I was my groups mage tank during the t4 and t6 fights that required one. Still my favourite expansion as things still needed tactics/cc back then and pulling entire rooms then aoe grinding through dungeons wasn't yet a thing. There were also still payoffs for putting in extra effort like getting the key to summon Yor in the Mana Tombs dungeon, something that ended up being relevant again in TBC Timewalking, or bothering with fishing skills to then summon the Lurker in SSC.
Then Wrath happened.
For all the "good" Wrath is praised for, almost entirely Ulduar all things considered, the expansion introduced 2/3 of the worst things to ever happen to the game.
LFG. This singlehandedly killed open world exploration since players could just sit in a hub and queue for every dungeon in the game. One of the consequences of this was players having no fucking clue of the corpse run directions needed after wipes because they never learned the location of the dungeon entrances in the first place. It also killed a lot of server socialising. When you can run a dungeon without needing a be in a guild and may very well never see the 4 other randoms you team with ever again that results in both increased trolling/ninja looting as well as decreased server interactions.
Actual welfare epics. While Sunwell Plateau and IQD content added in the token vendors at the end of TBC they were there more to supplement raiding activity as well as help gear up alts late in the expansion. Wrath however did this far more than TBC had done from the get go. By the time ICC was out fresh 70s could quite quickly find themselves not only decked out in acceptable 10m raid gear but also work on upgrading that without doing any actual raiding. A consequence of this was "gearscore" which caused more problems than it fixed as ilvl meant nothing at that point regarding player skill when even literal huntards and noobs could gear up easily enough.
The WoW store and "that retarded horse". The significant start of MTXs in WoW. The Celestial Steed became a meme after Totalbuscuit started calling it "that retarded horse"/TRH since then the game pushed more and more MTXs on players eventually culminating in the WoW Token in WoD letting players buy officially buy in game gold for real money. The horse mount was so in demand that it resulted in a queue for online purchases.
The welfare epics before wrath required hideous grinding, which prevented them becoming as ubiquitus as the easily fought ones in wrath. And the horse was always gay, we said it would ruin wow, and it did. Never wanted one, your last quote is kinda gay too.