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.
I started playing in early/mid Vanilla WoW, mostly to hang out with my older sister and brother in law who lived in another state. It was probably one of the coolest gaming experiences I've ever had. I had never played anything like it, and the world felt alive and huge. Back then MMOs were fairly new. Looking back on it now, it's mostly nostalgia, but the memories were great.
However, Vanilla is arguably the best and most unique WoW ever was, in my opinion. TBC had some great additions, but it felt too corporatized and streamlined. It began to lose a lot of the uniqueness that WoW had in Vanilla. Vanilla could absolutely be improved upon, but what they did was treading down a path that was the wrong direction. For example, in Vanilla WoW the 40v40 Alterac Valley battlegrounds that could last for hours or days were absolute fucking awesome. Even if you would join up, play, and never win the match, it was really damned fun. I pity the people that never got to experience the true epic battle of original AV. All changes to it since then have streamlined it, "improved" it, and made it a lot less fun. It's an apt microcosm of WoW in general.
It's why I was turned off from MMOs in general after what Blizzard had turned WoW into. Most MMOs are just hamster wheels to keep the players placated and addicted, to keep playing and paying for as long as possible. They intentionally inflate the time required to do things and put ridiculous things behind unneeded time sinks, making a lot of it feel artificial, implemented only for the sake of the keeping the player addicted rather than having fun, which reduces the immersion and reality of the world. Even though there are obvious achievements, dungeons, raids, and items to work toward that should require investment, and be earned, the way they're implemented in the grindfest that most MMOs today have done is just bad. Simply put, they're not fun.
in Vanilla WoW the 40v40 Alterac Valley battlegrounds that could last for hours or days
Ah the good ol' days you could join AV, fight for hours, leave, eat, sleep, go to work, come back, and then rejoin the very same bg. Then it just turned into "rush the towers" along with complaints about not enough people defending cap points.
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.
Agreed.
I started playing in early/mid Vanilla WoW, mostly to hang out with my older sister and brother in law who lived in another state. It was probably one of the coolest gaming experiences I've ever had. I had never played anything like it, and the world felt alive and huge. Back then MMOs were fairly new. Looking back on it now, it's mostly nostalgia, but the memories were great.
However, Vanilla is arguably the best and most unique WoW ever was, in my opinion. TBC had some great additions, but it felt too corporatized and streamlined. It began to lose a lot of the uniqueness that WoW had in Vanilla. Vanilla could absolutely be improved upon, but what they did was treading down a path that was the wrong direction. For example, in Vanilla WoW the 40v40 Alterac Valley battlegrounds that could last for hours or days were absolute fucking awesome. Even if you would join up, play, and never win the match, it was really damned fun. I pity the people that never got to experience the true epic battle of original AV. All changes to it since then have streamlined it, "improved" it, and made it a lot less fun. It's an apt microcosm of WoW in general.
It's why I was turned off from MMOs in general after what Blizzard had turned WoW into. Most MMOs are just hamster wheels to keep the players placated and addicted, to keep playing and paying for as long as possible. They intentionally inflate the time required to do things and put ridiculous things behind unneeded time sinks, making a lot of it feel artificial, implemented only for the sake of the keeping the player addicted rather than having fun, which reduces the immersion and reality of the world. Even though there are obvious achievements, dungeons, raids, and items to work toward that should require investment, and be earned, the way they're implemented in the grindfest that most MMOs today have done is just bad. Simply put, they're not fun.
Ah the good ol' days you could join AV, fight for hours, leave, eat, sleep, go to work, come back, and then rejoin the very same bg. Then it just turned into "rush the towers" along with complaints about not enough people defending cap points.