]I have to add this post about gaming addiction. While I have liked games before very much no other game has made me so much addicted as World of Warcarft MMO. It is not so fun subject you might think.
I continued and enjoyed World of Warcraft MMO.
As for your take all is bad after Wrath of Lichking expansion? I enjoyed Cataclysm expansion and while perhaps not so good as Wrath of Lich King basically Cataclysm was cool it had a Werewolf race example and also Dragons and earthquakes, volcanoes that had changed the world.
I never said it was bad. I just said it was not for me after that. My therapist and I are working on less elitist language options.
Vanilla WoW was a singular MMO experience for a few reasons.
1. You earned all your equipment - you didn't get an Epic unless you busted your ass for it. That meant 40 man Raids, which meant you had to be able to work with others, accept criticism and get better. 2. There was no handholding at all. The Map generally didn't tell you where to go, if you got lost you looked it up on thotbot. You had to read stuff. 3. The game had a real sense of danger and challenge, and the risk/reward/loss balance was excellent. 4. The PvP felt like you were in an actual warzone - you get caught out in contested territory and no allies? Well you better hope they are carebears. 5. There wasn't a problem that could not be solved with friends and allies. 6. It made a space for solo play but there were clear and strong rewards for non-solo play. The game encouraged teamwork. 7. WoW Vanilla killed it when it came to building faction culture. People were loyal and invested in Horde or Alliance. Especially if you had to level in the Barrens. 8. The Barrens. 9. Barrens chat. Kek 10. The Dread Citadel Naxxramus - hardest Raid ever, less than 1% of players completed it. 11. PvP games that could last for days! Looking at you Alterac Valley! (Play for 6 hours, leave, sleep, come back to same game for 6 more hours) 12. Easy to play, hard to master. A lot of subtle complexity.
So going from that to even Lich King was just not a good fit for me. It became too easy to get Epics and there was less cooperation.
Oh and Classic is a very watered down version of Vanilla. Blizzard admits this. All raids nerfed. The landscape is much more friendly (less dismounting), and servers are huge. Its all GDPK guilds now. Transactional, empty relationships.
