Posted 25 October 2011 - 04:38 AM
The reason why players who played in former expansion days (Myself being a former 6+ year veteran with endgame raiding experience) is that the game has been dumbed down and simplified to the point that it's not a game anymore. Blizzard holds your hand through everything and it's not that it isn't hard - It's that so many people that aren't able to preform endgame raids properly still try to.
Example: Back in the days of Naxxramas 40 person in Vanilla WoW, if you didn't have at least certain gear requirements, you wouldn't be considered. In addition, you would be taken on trial runs to see how you preformed, and would be denied outright. You maybe got 3-4 applications a week, and of those 3-4, maybe 1 would work out if you were lucky. And in addition - You constantly recruited, because you needed extra bodies to replace the slackers in order to improve. Fast forward to now, and you get 5-10 applications a week and if you're lucky 1 MIGHT work out on certain days because most raiders are very casual or very hardcore. Either they have 3-4 nights a week to play or they want to raid hardcore. Plus, there are rarely "Trial" runs. It's basically "Come to this raid with us and we'll see what you can do." and you go to the actual raid - Not Molten Core or Blackwing Lair where farm content existed. Blizzard completely negates previous content by making the next tier SO MUCH better than the former.
Yet one more reason why I think Blizzard screwed up - They made it so difficult to get into raiding late into expansions starting with Lich King. Why? Sure, they offer badge gear and up it every time. The problem isn't gear - It's skill. You gear up toons so quickly, most people don't realize how to play them in a raid and don't know which abilities do what for what situation. I've watched Rogues go into the LK encounter and do nothing but spam Fan of Knives. Why? Because that's all they DID do. They never went to a boss fight in their lives, but had decent gear because the badge gear and maybe random drops from bosses on that run got them better. I'm not joking when I say I would rather Blizzard FORCE you do to content in order before you get to the next wing (ALA Attunement) rather than hand free gear and no skill. The reason you got gear in the first two expansions was skill about 80% of the time until the Sunwell content came out and they went "Whelp, we better cater to casuals now," instantly giving people Tier 6 gear for free, basically. And considering when that content came out I had close to 2000 unspent badges on my Druid, 1000 unspent on my Shaman, and by the end of the expansion, I earned well over 3000 more between those two toons - That's just showing you how easy it was to get retarded gear all of a sudden. Zul'Aman was probably their biggest triumph in making a "Casual hardcore" dungeon, in my honest opinion - And I'm talking the 10 person version, not the current iteration. That was fun because you could gear up in it, then when you geared up enough, challenge the "hard" mode while doing the same thing but with speed and skill. Every little min-max you did helped.
LK and Cata were really catering to casuals more and more. The first change gave us retardedly easy content (Save for Ulduar and to a lesser extent the late IC encounters. Flame Lootathin not withstanding in Ulduar), the second xpack added in "Oh by the way, here's shorter raids with easier bosses." And before anyone says anything - Yes, I did beat the encounters in the first two raids of Cata, no they were not hardmode. And yes, I beat over 50% of them in PUGS before I even did it with a raiding guild. And that was when they were still the "Hard" raids of the xpack. So yes, I do think the content got easier. Coming from the old school menality of "Gear and Skill both are necessary," I personally think Blizzard dropped the ball. If - and a BIG IF on that - Blizzard can create difficult content that is accessible to new players, but challenges veterans with hardmodes and not making the gear scale so retardedly quick (IE: Going from a 239 epic from Mimiron hardmode [which was second only to Yogg in retarded insanity in that dungeon, pun intended] only to replace it with a FREAKING 10 PERSON DROP IN THE NEXT RAID ON A NORMAL), maybe there's a chance I'd come back. But the odds are Blizzard will dumb it down more. Giving you three choices per talent point and making them blatantly obvious as to what to pick for your nature (IE: PvP, PvE, or Leveling or perhaps Tank, DPS, Heal), it competely removes the strategy in not only playing the character but CREATING the character. I guess the roundabout version of all this is that you lose meaning to your character - In Vanilla WoW, you had so many choices of gear to get, and depending on that gear defined your talents (Holy Light vs Flash of Light paladins, HT4 vs Regrowth Crit Druids, etc). I think it'll take a lot to get the veteran players back again. Pandaria is a make or break expansion moreso than any other, seeing as how Blizzard will likely post ANOTHER mass dropping of players from their star game.
Hopefully once Blizzard realizes that WoW is a dying breed, they'll actually focus on projects that aren't 7 years old and either create a new IP (Helloooooo Titan) or focus more on existing IPs that need help (Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, and so on).
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