In summary, I am a world of warcraft veteran, I started playing the beta version in late 2003. I’ve loved the whole humans vs orcs since Warcraft 2, Back in In 2003, I was fighting for my life in a cancer battle. When I was recovering from the chemotherapy, I was invited by a friend of mine who knew an executive at the time into their closed beta. That got me hooked, I purchased the collector’s edition in 2004 upon its final release. Joined the Alliance side with friends from IRC and it was Archimonde.
World of warcraft was an open world and more of a free will area, you can do a series of Quests if you meet the level requirements and other pre-quests. It was free and open. You can explore and adventure everywhere and not be bothered by random events or forced zoned areas. Burning legion added new levels more areas to explore and some other random for Wrath of the lich king, but shortly after that
The Items upon the first release of the DLC, the loot of the era. The moment Burning Crusade dropped all items and stuff people worked weeks to months just to gain an edge with epic to legendary rare items. The dlc instead of letting your current armor have a grip on the new DLC, it erased that with the new loot that was “green” uncommon was better than the items you spent hours grinding to complete. This became the meta for all future DLC, and over time this became exhausting including after the release of Battle for Azeroth dropped as it threw away artifact weapons that were buildable to grow with you.
The moment Cataclysm dropped, it changed the game literally, the initial change was starting to be phased in this change is the forced phased content. Alot of animation, lots of new changes and flood the system. Lore changes, system changes, the whole world changes to revamp a full rework to allow flying making taxi service obsolete.
Mists of pandaria dropped, this DLC is what caused the DLC people hated the most, this causes all new zones in a full phased content. Once again more weapons, items, armors obtained in Catalysm all replaced yet again with uncommon. To even play with anyone they would have to be on the same phase of the story with you, this became the one where questing with friends died off.
Warlords of Draenor, this dlc dropped and it once again forced phased content but now introduced more achievement driven and months of forced farming to get the achievements just to even fly in the Warlords of Draenor. Repetitive farming was worse than farming for legendary Mounts, and became extremely hard to play. I technically uninstalled after a month of this DLC release as farming became worse and worse and if I recall they started to introduce more pay to win features such as the store offering level up tokens, and tokens you can exchange in game currency for to keep up with your subscription or buy tokens to give to others.
Legion dropped a good story, same phased content but introduced a feature with artifact weapons and their lore. Possibly the best feature for this DLC, leveling up your weapons along with you. Legion had some good lore, they added factions to this one from void elves, (blood elves for the alliance) and nightborne elves (Night Elves for the horde) but the problem is months and months of more farming for achievements. Took atleast a month to farm and unlock void elves. Dungeon+ modes was introduced iirc this was a bad idea as your awesome build up of the end game will be erased in the new DLC.
Battle for Azeroth brought Artifact trinkets and kills the artifact weapons to make them useless again, changes alot of the story but same forced phased game play, same months of grinding achievements to unlock various things from flying to more factions. It was really hard to play due to the forced content. To fix the level higher, they readjust it with adding a band-aide to cut how you level up and now with leveling up forced phased content was released for the new game experience. (you can just buy a cheater token from blizzard store and get you 90% complete)
Shadowlands, Same deal more forced phased content, same all the end game content ruined again with dlc release, more grinding technically this just enabled more of the new game experience with more forced phased content, they cut end game users merged into shadowlands about 10 levels down iirc, or a magic token (you can also buy from the blizzard store) to get you to level 50 where you can level 60 with shadowlands.
Dragonflight, more rinse and repeat again, this time you are down to level 40 from your level 60, same tokens from blizzard to level you to 40 even the new dragon class. At this point, corny graphics, same forced phased content. Adventuring like the old days is just done. Vanilla versions get you to experience the old days but that isn’t the same.
Any future DLC is going to be the same meta, new story but forced in phased content, new something introduced with farming, but same level now changes again instant relevel again, more farming, more meta end game.
This game to me is dead, people who keep playing are still playing for the story at this point even though the story is and has been changed alot since release
World of warcraft lost it’s thunder since Cataclysm, what they should have done was never introduced the forced phased content as the world expanded, instead of glorifying their dlc with justification of the new weapons and armors and turn old stuff into legacy stuff. they should have made armors and weapons obtained from the first game as good as the DLC armor with different stats. Artfact armors and weapons to level up with you they almost had this perfect in Legion with the Weapons. Instead of phased content, they should have changed the game to be moree survival as it is how mmo’s should be focusing on the change glorify the old hard earned work put in. Instead of buttons mashing but more of a control over your avatar utilizing your own party or able to take on boss fights solo to also challenging fights as a team or clan. DLC has re-invented this game multiple times, to make it better and better experience is what needs to keep it relevant, the reason for even souls like survival opens this game up to consoles easier. Forced Phased content needs to go away, return to the social aspect of the game, leave the game open world and return of hidden riddles and clues to find stuff again (the original the ashbringer mystery was the funnest mystery even tho it was a fake mystery this game needed this for a long time now).
This game was good when it started but now it’s nothing but a milk and repeat process.