What made you quit retail?

[Lardin]

missing some points on the list:

- ability pruning
- equalisation of classes
- lore lol
- pvp lol
- trivialisation of 1 to 90
- removal of old content

I only played wod for 3 months after hearthstone appealed to my nostalgia and made me revive my lvl 70s. I realised that it wasn't the game I used to play anymore I found out about nost and never looked back.

[BoxerBriefly]

I quit because, everything that is wrong with retail, is right with classic.

[Alexpulos]

Panda's ruined it all.... Worst than Taurens....

[Glas]

When they changed the combat system with the class changes and how abilities worked and scaled. (Cata / MoP?)

Graphics didnt matter, gameplay was important to me. They just made the game dumber and dumber..
Changes that frustated me more and more were, Resilience in TBC, Main objective in PvP was suddenly only Arena (Game mode: Zerging) (Who zergs efficent, wins ... ) and Battlegrounds became a place just to get points for temporary/secondary gear... aka fast win or fast lose, none cared of anything else.

Then they removed Naxx from Eastern Plaguelands and Onyxia and puted in Wotlk, that showed me how lazy they could be and trying to fool everyone. There was a good amount of lvl 60 community in Wotlk still and we thought they are trying to kill us. Then they introduced XP-Stop battlegrounds which completly killed the lvl 60 community, then it was Goodbye for me.

[Bloem]

- Started in early TBC. I was blown away by the game. Altho i only raided in the lower tier like KZ i completely fell in love with the game.
- Did some serious raiding in WOTLK, together with some insane achievement grinds. still loving the game.
- Guild fell apart in CATA, started to play the game alot more solo. Didn't like the revamp of the old word. Did hardly any raiding.
- Continued to play solo in MOP while doing LFR. started to lose the feel of any accomplishment... Also, the endless grind of dailies... boring.
- Leveled during WOD which was an okay experience, but couldn't be bothered to invest anymore energy into the game. Standing alone inside my garrison and asking myself WTF am i doing in this game?
- Unsure if i'll ever revive retail again. It just doesn't feel right anymore.

Currently loving Nostalrius. The old world feels like coming home
Already excited for an TBC lauch as it feels like my best expansion.

[cigss]

when wotlk was announced i was so hyped to see the continent of the scourge. youve seen the cult of the damned and stuff in scholo and strath you played wc3 and stuff. I was hyped to see the undead streaming from the north. and ice continent ruled by the lich king with his nearly infinite scourge. and what we got was really depressing.

you go to northrend to see only a fraction of how it was described in lore. you see freaking ZEPELINS flying around in icecrown glacier, not even worrying getting instakilled by countless frost wyrms. the only zones that really got the nice feeling were dragonblight and a few other places. the rest was shit. just wanted to say what i felt about wotlk from a lore point of view.

[joshbpepper]

Having things easier is where the current version of Warcraft is today. So I guess I put the blame on us, the players, for complaining about the game being good and challenging.

[Amalinë]

I've played retail since Vanilla, and I quit one week ago because :

- Retail Wow is now a solo, phased game, with automations replacing human relations.
- Retail Wow ambient is a mess, with ridiculous activities like pet combat and archaeology. And pandas.
- Retail Wow is now too easy for levelling, and the gameplay is boring and too restrictive.
- Retail Wow isn't a Alliance versus Horde story now, it's all people versus the Big Bad Boy of the extension.
- Retail Wow has a world map too fragmented since Cata, full of empty zones.
- Retail Wow is a gangbang of quick solo activities, with no real goal or objective shared by all players.

[PanTheSatyr]

- Retail Wow isn't a Alliance versus Horde story now, it's all people versus the Big Bad Boy of the extension.

I never understood the whole "Alliance vs Horde" thing when there was a common enemy (e.g. Lich King, etc.). I mean, if something is threatening all of Azeroth, shouldn't my first goal be to rid the world of that thing and THEN worry about the Alliance/Horde?

[Fatherben]

Some major reasons I can think of based on each expansion:

BC: the dailies and rep grinding were awful. And aside from Nagrand, the zones were depressing and not mystical like Vanilla. Draenei were added. Draenei suck and have nothing to do with orcs vs humans. Alliance could roll shaman and Horde could roll paladin. Even though I played an alliance shaman for years, this change never should have happened. It was cooler and more consistent seeing that horde and alliance were completely distinct with their own classes. Flying: eventually turned into one of the worst things to happen to WoW.

WotLK: Blizzard got excited about their vehicle addition, and used it too often. The new battlegrounds were awful. Again, the rep grinding (Sons of Hodir) and dailies were terrible. But I have to say that the expansion wasn't that bad.

Cata: they intentionally destroyed all of the old zones. This was cool for the temporary dramatic effect of the expansion, but the fact that it became permanent was depressing. PHASING: in my opinion, the worst thing to happen to WoW. Worgen: never should have entered the game. Wtf is a worgen? Those mobs from Worgen in the Woods quest? I don't remember them from Warcraft 2. Classes: they allowed almost any race to pick any class. Too much customizing like transmog. Cata was fun to play, but the changes that they made put WoW down the wrong path. A positive: rbgs, it reminded me of premade AV or AB games in vanilla. Crossrealm stuff: maybe inevitable because of unsubscribers, has its positives like for pvp, but it was overdone. Instant queues for everything: made sense, but ruined the game.

MoP: ruining the talent system. PANDAS: never should have been in the game. MONKS: my main class, but never should have been in the game. Pandaria: never should have been in the game. MoP was kind of fun, but the changes were bad for WoW. Too many quality of life things: hunter dead zone removed, etc. Stats changed and simplified. Abilities redone or removed. Catering to the wrong audiences: battle pets (which were kind of fun, but don't below in Warcraft), extreme mount collection, farming at a fake phased farm, etc.

WoD: adding a bunch of new stats, as if that worked before. Simplifying stats even more: removing hit, expertise, etc. GARRISONS: the death of WoW. Instead of hanging out in IF or SW with a bunch of people, you're stuck in a depressing hut with a family of NPCs.

What I appreciate about vanilla after experiencing the bad things added from each expansion:

Everything in the world is just *there*. We all see the same things. Phasing destroyed the world. Why are there a bunch of random npcs and bears just sitting in every zone in vanilla? Because it's an rpg. Yeah, it is cool in games like Skyrim where you come across npcs who are in mid conversation before you fight them. But before that came about, in rpgs battles are initiated, and in WoW you have control over how they are initiated by seeing the mobs and controlling aggro. Not every single npc has to be animated with a purpose, they are just things to fight.

The mobs in vanilla are HARD. The first thing that returned to me when playing on Nostralius was that I respect the world and the mobs much more. Sometimes a mob your level can solo you. You have to use your head. You need help from other people. You're forced to be social, as other people pointed out. This is really important, because by MoP you just regard world mobs as weak annoyances that stand between you and your goal.

The features which were removed later such as weapon skills are back in the game. No quest helpers or major quality of life things: you have to read quests, investigate, or look up what to do on the web. You have to go to the actual dungeon to enter it.

Aside from maybe Gnomes and Tauren, which are okay in my book, the game is true to previous Warcraft games. It really feels like a concrete game/universe. Stormwind is a castle, and you can walk around to find farms, lumber mills, stables, just like in the rts game. It feels like you're just one person in a large army or universe, especially in 40-man raids. The only added races which make sense are goblins and blood elves, because elves and goblins are in the original damn game. When you see a blue space squid riding on flaming phoenix mount, is that Warcraft??

The zones are mystical and comforting. I like "pointless" areas like Feathermoon or Azshara; there was no need to change them.

Balancing is out the window, and it always was, even when Blizzard tried to fix it. If you roll a hunter instead of a rogue, you take responsibility for it and use the right spec for raiding. You adjust to the world, the world doesn't adjust to you. If you want a fast mount you get creative and use a riding crop, mithril spurs, riding gloves. If you want to swim faster you have an azure silk belt in your bag.

Despite all the customizable things, there is no theorycrafting. Using your class in a raid isn't like taking a college exam. There is a limit to how far you can push your performance. It makes things less intense. Things are cooler and more calculated, you don't have to stress over missing one gcd in a rotation, or whether you should ignore a socket bonus with a red gem or not.

Alts and mains: In Vanilla you have one alt max. Your main character is a huge deal, it is who you are. Your race isn't a huge deal, unless you're an alliance priest I guess. Professions do not impact your performance, they are basically for much needed gold. For comparison: by the end of MoP, the good pvpers needed an alt of every single class. People rerolled to the flavor of the month if a new patch came out. In pve people changed their main's race every expansion for the best racials (which in MoP was most likely the horrible pandas). They changed their professions to the best profession of the patch. Ridiculous waste of time and money.