Yeah, since the death of questing and leveling, the game's social community that it was iconic for dwindled sadly. Everything can be essentially soloed, quests that use to require a group to do because you had to fight an Elite or a wave of enemies can be easily done, even without Heirlooms. Like around lvl 65 I think I was doing like 2.5k DPS or something on single target..... Back in WotLK you wouldn't see numbers like that until you were lvl 80. The Elite quests that required groups, those Elites were turned into normal NPCs. New people who started playing didn't have the patience to look for a group to do this, so Blizzard needed these quests.
I never had a problem looking for people for these kinds of quests, everyone helped everyone.
I remember I use always go around the Deadscar, in the Blood elf starting area on my Pally or Mage at lvl 80 with one my friend's alts to help him do the 2 of the Elite quests down there and people in the General were always looking for people to team with to do these and a lot of the time I'd carry some people, I was there with my friend anyway so I'd help them while I'm at it.
But Bliz decided waiting for more than 60seconds was to much for some people, so quests like this have been needed, thus killing the community.
Most friends I made was during lvling part, even when LFG came out, I'd queue with a friend who was lvling but had to do a dungeon for a quest, so I'd queue for his 70 dungeon while I'm decked out in full ICC gear.
I'd get healers that thought I was retarded noob for pulling a whole room, then realizing I'm not a 70 but a fully geared 80 tank, I brought good healers and DPS to my guild because of this.
But now things like carrying are gone, yes it's a cheap way to level but it was still a thing in the game that helped connect people.
In Legion the end game is fun and gives plenty to do but seeing the low level part of the game in the way it is now is what keeps from making new low lvls.
Sorry if my comment is negative, I still love the game and it has made a lot of improvements, old school way of getting a dungeon group was tedious, you could spend an hour trying to get a group together in the chat and one mistake and you lose a tank or healer, then it's back to city and back to asking the chat again....
Unnecessary talent trees, before anyone shoots me Lol. I say this because the Talent Trees gave the illusion of you having the freedom of customizing your character your way but in the end if you wanted to group for dungeons or raids you had to build your tree according to the Cookie Cutter Build that people demanded.
Raids aren't easier, people just got better, the game's features are better, less addons are needed for organization that people use to rely heavily on.
I always here people talking about how hard BC heroics were, I did them at level in Wrath, with BC gear no gear from Northrend and they weren't all that bad, CC and Interior.
EarlyCata (early as in before they needed it) those dungeons were brutal just on normal, ZG and ZA dungeons in Cata were dreadful if you did something wrong for a sec.
Even Legion dungeons, we now have environmental hazards that occur, Eye of Azura, while not drastic that wind that pushes you can mess you up if you're not careful.
There's more situational awareness needed now in the game for the dungeons, whereas in BC it was just CC that or interrupt that.
Alright I went off on major tangent, all in all.
The game hit a lot of bumps, big bumps, but games change and evolve to match the audience or consumer base. I'll use FF15 as an example, it's now more of hack and slash, while still requiring strategy and planning to defeat an opponent, you have the freedom to move around the environment and enemy in battle, as opposed to being a turn base game of slapping each other in the face back and forth. A lot of people now would find turn base boring especially with what games can do now. Like the logical question someone asked me when he watched play FF8, "Dude, why did you let yourself get hit, why didn't you move out of the way?". " What do you mean you can't move, that's stupid, how's that strategy when can't dodge an ability that can One Shot you?"
Both of these are valid points, in my opinion, turn base is dead. While not true to the community that grew up on these kinda of games, to rope in players to turn base is not as easy as it was before, because beyond story telling they are lack luster and boring.
Blizzard is following the follow of what people want, old school Gamers want grueling games that require a life's devotion, while money says, "Casuals bring in more money and are a larger audience."
I for one will love WoW, it's where I made some friends to who I talk to even when not playing WoW or games.
It helped me when it came to strategic thinking and it helped my wife with her confidence and helped her social anxiety.
So Blizzard although messed up a lot things in the game I liked, they did a lot of things that made me really happy. ^_^
and some advice!
