If I had to choose, I would say that the "unrepairable breaking" of World of Warcraft happened somewhere around WotLK, which is arguably the very last expansion that was beloved by the ENTIRE Warcraft community.
That said, if we really want to get into it, the bricks of this problem were laid long before Wrath.
To get started, I should mention that I was an original player of World of Warcraft. Way back when there were only 2 continents. Way back when there were only 4 races on each side of the battle. Way back when guilds were huge. Way back when we still had to use CD's to install the game. We call those "The Glory Days", which is why you see such amazing success today with World of Warcraft, Classic edition.
The first time that I had a sense of Warcraft's doomed future was when the first "one time only" event occurred. This was the opening of the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj. It wasn't until after the thrill of the event passed that I wondered to myself, "How will new players experience this?" Then I realized, they won't. The zone will just be open for them. No scepter quest, no war effort, no epic battle, no ringing of the gong. It's just... open.
A year later the first WoW expansion occurred, The Burning Crusade. One thing I took special note of was the level cap increase. At the ripe age of 28, I was old enough to realize that a level cap increase might have a drastic effect on what was currently considered "End Game Content".
This fear was confirmed, after launch, when the numbers of players running dungeons like Onyxia's Cave, Blackrock Spire, and Scholomance were suddenly reduced to practically zero. Even my own guild shifted completely, no longer running the old raids and focusing solely on leveling in Outland.
This damage, however, would go even further...
I remember it like it was yesterday. I had stayed up all night and gone to the store early to get my copy of The Burning Crusade. I had even booked time off work, two days, so I could play it completely uninterrupted. I fired up WoW and excitedly watched the cutscene for the new expansion. Then, my character selection screen.
I logged into my Level 60 priest, which was clad in a full set Vestment of Faith gear. It had taken months of grinding Nexxramas to acquire it, and I was proud as hell of the accomplishment. I had my Atiesh Greatstaff in my hand too as I rushed off to the Dark Portal. I remember charging through the initial quests in Outlands, the thrill of a new zone! It wasn't long before I had worked my way through the initial quests and arrived around level 63 or 64. Then it happened...
From a freshly killed NPC a green item dropped, a pair of pants. I sat there looking at my screen... Looking at the stats... I couldn't believe what I was seeing... It was almost a perfect lateral upgrade to my Leggings of Faith. I mean, how do you prepare for that?
Obviously I went into this expansion knowing that my current armor would be outclassed by the epics found in the new level 70 dungeons. I was ready for that. But for this?
After months and months of grinding Naxxramas epics?
Here I was, standing out in the open fields of some far off broken land, holding a GREEN item with stats practically identical to my Leggings of Faith... I'm not gonna lie; I finished off my current quest, headed to the nearest inn, and logged out. My heart just wasn't in it anymore.
I can't remember exactly how long it was, but I wouldn't return to WoW for almost a year. The only thing that brought me back was a friend who wanted to play, but never had.
I logged in, seeing my former Priest still in his Faith gear, and clicked "New Character". This wasn't the first alternate character I made, but it felt different this time because I knew this alternate character would be the one to replace my "Main".
On and on my friend and I played, even though The Burning Crusade expansion. That said, there were several clear differences this time;
- I was playing solely alongside my friend.
- I had no interest in joining a guild or doing raids.
- I had no goals other than questing and leveling.
It was clear that this game, at least for me, had turned from an MMO to a simple co-op game. By this time Wrath of the Lich King had been announced, which would bring yet another level cap increase. They were going up to 80 now.
Having experienced the loss over my Faith gear, I had no intention on grinding Burning Crusade raids to get a full set of epics again. There was no point. This also meant, at least to me, that there was no point in joining a guild either.
Once WotLK launched, my fears were confirmed. I saw the same exodus happen from Outland that happened to the old level 60 raids. Suddenly all the players were focused on Northrend, or starting up new Death Knight characters in the Eastern Kingdoms. It was another expansion making all the raids from the previous expansions meaningless. The only real reason to run through them was for the story.
This went on and on until we were finally at a level cap of 120, with the seventh expansion for Wow, Battle for Azeroth. By this time the game had become a shadow of it's former glory. You had level 100's running the old classic 40-man raids, solo, just for the fun of it. Old lands like Northrend, Outland, and even Pandaria were practically empty of players by this time. Nobody, other than people who were starting fresh characters, spent any time in those lands.
Around this time Blizzard, itself, started to see what it had been doing. It saw how unsustainable the constant level cap increase was. The grind from level 1 to level 120 was just too much, and their attempt to fix it by increasing XP gains simply led to people skipping large chunks of content.
When they announced Shadowlands, and told everyone they were "squishing" the level cap back down to 60, there was a collective sigh of relief. I remember my friend saying, "Finally we'll get to do the old dungeons again!"... I felt differently. To me, this announcement was a hail marry play to try to fix how badly they broke the WoW experience, and I knew it couldn't fix everything they'd broken.
From day one, World of Warcraft was an experience designed to be linear. You moved through the story as you moved through the zones. Level cap increases started the breaking of that linear experience. What used to be max-level raids, which held a lot of lore content, were no longer required to be completed. You just progressed to the next expansion when you had enough experience (the level) to do so.
When the Cataclysm happened, that linear story was completely wiped out.
You started to lose lore, the connection to the world, that only existing players had experienced. One such experience that comes to mind is The Deadmines. Unless you played through the original Deadmines you have absolutely no attachment to the woman you fight at the end of the new Deadmines.
I mean, she's just the daughter of a pirate who was previously defeated. Who cares? You don't have that same background buildup that you had with Edwin VanCleef. This leaves the dungeon seeming to be a shadow of it's former glory. In fact, when my friend first played through it, having never played through the original Deadmines, he didn't feel any connection to it at all. She was just a boss to defeat. He didn't even remember her name later when I asked him about it.
Of course, when the "level squish" happened, the outcome was pretty predictable. Nothing really changed. They, basically, just divided everything in half. Anything level 120 was now level 50. Anything level 70-80 was now around 40. Anything level 50-60 was now around 30. XP gains were basically halved. In short, it fixed nothing. The problem still existed, they just changed the numbers.
Shadowlands, the "level squish" expansion, also added one more thing to try to fix the situation. This tool was called "Chromie Time". It was designed to allow the player to control what story they wanted to play through. Unfortunately this meant that you were basically playing from level 10 to max through that one expansion. That's right, expansions that were designed to only take 10 levels, such as Outlands, now take you through all 80. Buckle up!
So did this really fix anything? No, it actually made things much MUCH worse. As stated, no matter what expansion you selected, by the time you got through it, you were at level 80. This is the limit of Chromie Time, and when you get kicked back to the present day. Soooooo.... how do you follow the entire story through all 9 expansions when your character basically maxes out at the end of every expansion? Blizzard's answer? 9 different characters!
Oh, what's that? You can lock your experience at level 69 so you never breach level 70 which starts the questline that pushes you back out of Chromie Time?... Ok, so if I pay 10 gold to a dude in Stormwind (or Orgrimmar) I can lock out my XP so I never level above 69. That's great! I can experience the whole story as one character!
Yes... I can hit level 69 before the first expansion, and then do the next 8 expansion without gaining ANY levels. That sounds like SO MUCH FUN!!! Then I can pay another 10 gold, unlock my experience, and play through the remaining 3 expansions to get up to level... 100? Weren't we here before, Blizzard???
Sorry, I know the sarcasm is just dripping off your monitor by now. Anyway...
We now have this 12th expansion coming called "The Last Titan", throwing us back to the triple-digit level cap of 100. This is supposed to be the biggest baddie that we've ever experienced before. It's supposed to be the storyline to end all storylines. We've got all of time and space to play with, since Chromie has shown us that time is meaningless. Heck, even a leak from Blizzard has even said it's going to wrap up with us having to basically kill Azeroth in order to restore her.
To me, this makes sense. One of the most popular moves that Blizzard made was to bring back "Classic" World of Warcraft. This was a hugely popular request by the community, and today accounts for, arguably, one third of the WoW subscribers Blizzard relies on. In addition, it's brought Warcraft a ton of fanfare via an an entire new category of Twitch streamers.
The only problem with the Classic servers is that you now have a split community that more than doubles your server usage. One subscription gets you access to all World of Warcraft realms, both the 3 Classic and 1 Retail versions. From a business standpoint, this isn't really a good thing. Instead of having 1 game experience to maintain, you now have 4.
I could picture the conference rooms, full of employees, with one question on the table. "How do we get our players all back to playing the same game?"
Mind you, I think the die is cast on that already. You're never going to get Classic players away from Classic. That said, you COULD drive retail players back to a Classic experience with the launch of a completely new World of Warcraft II.
Let's face it. The engine that's running World of Warcraft has existed and evolved for over 22 years. It still has limitations that newer MMO's don't have. If they wanted to do a clean rebuild, now would be the best time to do it.
I mean, when we look at the history of Video Games, specifically MMO's, this has already been done very successfully.
- We've had an Everquest II.
- We've had a Guild Wars II and now III.
- We've had an Asheron's Call II.
If Blizzard really wants to go there? If Blizzard really wants to pull a full story reset? Why not make a completely new game, with a rewritten engine, that will allow them to take that step into the next level of MMO experience? That wouldn't be WoW 2.0
That would be World of Warcraft II
