The Decline of World of Warcraft

I almost feel bad writing this up because at the end of the day, World of Warcraft was such a large part of my life. And discussing what the game has become – in my eyes – feels like a personal attack on that part of my life.
When I was 15 years old, my mother pulled me out of 10th grade and told me I had to get a job. Otherwise she, my sister and I would have no home. I couldn’t find a job in Australia at 15, so I started working online as a freelancer.
I’d code, I’d make forum posts, I’d write articles, I’d do SEO. I’d sit at my PC from the moment I woke up ’til the moment I went to bed.
And while I was definitely a hard worker, working for several hour intervals at any given time, I needed an outlet to escape the repetitious, at times abusive cycle I was now in.
That’s where MMOs came in. We were poor. And when I say poor, I mean horrendously poor. We lived in a trailer park for a while, and had to get coupons from local churches to buy food lest we end up on the street.
So having the ability to purchase video games was a luxury we just couldn’t afford. Literally.

I found my way to MMOs like Tales of Pirates, then Perfect World, FlyFF, Fiesta, Florensia – a whole lotta games that started with F for whatever reason.
And over the course of my first few years in the MMO scene, clung to the hope that one day I would get to play this huge subscription-based MMORPG that was, at the time, considered to be the greatest thing that happened to the world since people realized you could add cheese to things.
This lead to me eventually beginning World of Warcraft in 2008, after Wrath of the Lich King launched. I think I got WoW for myself as a birthday and Christmas present combined, given that my birthday falls a week before Christmas.

I was.. 19? I think, at the time. Setting foot in Azeroth for the very first time, before Deathwing got angy and ruined everything was an incredible experience. One that has not – to this day – been rivaled for me.
I’m a basic guy. I started as Human Warrior because I always played Humans in my games. The reason I chose to remain Human though was due to the Every Man for Himself racial that Humans had, acting as a secondary trinket in PvP, providing additional opportunities to trinket out of stuns and other types of CC.
Moving through Elwynn Forest. Seeing the massive city of Stormwind. Getting attacked by my very first Murloc. Ahhh.
Now I’d dedicated time and devotion to games in the past. I spent 2 years playing Tales of Pirates and Perfect World, becoming not only the top Crusader on Phoenix Isle in Tales of Pirates, but one of the top Blademasters on the Sanctuary server in Perfect World.
But this.. this required I pay to play it every month. This required a different type of dedication. I wasn’t going to let the price of the game, and the monthly investment go to waste.
So I played this every day. Every week. Every month. And until last month, I’d had an active subscription. Yes, for over a decade I had an active subscription to World of Warcraft. This wasn’t an addiction. This became a part of my life.
I became a hardcore raider. I did heroic raids. Mythic raids when they became available. I rerolled multiple different characters across various servers to become a part of a several different communities. This is how I socialized, how I made friends.
I played on PvP servers, back before they removed that server type in favor of Warmode. I’d spend hours out in the open-world with friends fighting Horde everywhere we could.
I would break the day down into working in the morning, PvPing in the afternoon as a form of “break,” working into the evening, eating dinner, raiding into the night, then working after everyone went back to bed. I think I’d sleep 4-6 hours per day, if that.
Again, I was dedicated.

I played through every major expansion since Wrath. Cataclysm hit and I thought to myself “this is actually pretty sick, reshaping the world, the new zones.” I hated how they altered how weapon masteries worked in Cataclysm, admittedly.
Mists of Pandaria rolled out and I thought the new zones were gorgeous. The feel was much lighter than previous expansions, and my Arms Warrior main had access to Bloodstorm – the Bloodbath and Bladestorm combo that I abused for 2 years. Or however long it was available.
Warlords of Draenor… wasn’t enjoyed by anyone. But it looked pretty sick.
Legion was a return to form, and brought back one of my favorite characters next to Arthas. Although I began to realize back in Legion, even after everyone claimed the game was saved after years of incompetence, things were different.
I found myself taking breaks lasting months back in Draenor. And interstingly enough, the same thing applied to Legion. The narrative was great – the zones were stunning, the grind really wasn’t. But it just felt.. different. I wasn’t quite sure what it was that FELT different though. Until Battle for Azeroth.

Battle for Azeroth went on to prove several different things for me.
On the one hand, the art team were carrying this game ridiculously hard. Everything about Battle for Azeroth was gorgeous. Boralas. The new zones. Dungeons. You gotta give credit where credit’s due. So kudos art team – you guys are the only reason I even played Shadowlands.
On the other hand, it seems as though the devs have absolutely no idea what they’re doing at this juncture. Or, rather, it’s more evident than ever that the devs probably haven’t had much of an idea with regards to where they want to take WoW, and what they want to do with it for a while now.

The story is an absolute convoluted mess. Well, okay. Let me clarify: The story has been a convoluted mess for a while now. Long before Shadowlands launched. Shadowlands however is just so poorly written with so many half-assed features that it’s more blatantly obvious than ever how bad the game has become.
Although I’ll admit, the story has never really been the focus in WoW. Lore? Sure. Story? That’s always taken backseat to the rest of the game.
The world itself. The dungeons. The well designed, at times incredibly difficult raid content. The PvP. Open-world PvP and instanced PvP alike. Transmog runs. Leveling alts.
There’s so much to WoW – and Shadowlands, or more than that, the last few expansions have repeatedly broken down what I like – what makes WoW, well.. WoW to me.
World Quests? That was a great addition in Legion. World Quests provided incentive to go out into the world and complete a surplus of different quests with other players. It promoted grouping. Team work. Exploration. It carried the potential to provide some great rewards for your time investment.
Open-world PvP? I’ll admit, I do kinda like the Warmode feature. It allows for Mrs Stix and I to engage Horde when we’re feeling feisty, or play it safe when we don’t have much time.
Mythic+ dungeons are just… farming the same couple dungeons for 2 years with monsters that hit progressively harder. They’re stale. We need much, much more variety if we’re ever going to be able to combat that.
I didn’t try the new raid content in Shadowlands. After finishing everything, I just…. couldn’t. I was bored. I was bothered by the fact that the world was so beautiful, but at the same time so void of life. So void of… really anything.
I’ve always loved leveling alts. I’ve always had a Ret Pally, Arms Warrior, Affliction Lock and some type of Hunter leveled as alts. Yet Legion proved to be a challenge to maintain more than a single character at any given time, and it seems like Blizz has continued to ruin the alt leveling experience for us.
I guess I’m happy with how Square handle Final Fantasy XIV, allowing players to level everything on a single character. Sure it can be limiting at times, you’ll always look the same way unless you use a Fantasia. But at the same time, you’ll never find yourself running behind.

When I log into World of Warcraft now – or, when I would log into World of Warcraft just a few months ago, I did so because I felt I had to. It was a job. A chore. It wasn’t because I wanted to.
Nothing about the current WoW experience is what I fell in love with so many years ago, and while I am fully aware – I understand every game, every MMO needs to evolve, needs to adapt, where Final Fantasy XIV has continued to grow, to improve, World of Warcraft has chosen to decline.
To instead make things more cumbersome. More difficult. More frustrating. This happened with ArcheAge Unchained – what was once a thrilling sandbox MMO with endless freedom is now a daily simulator. And unfortunately, that’s more or less how WoW feels to me as well.
And the pandemic hasn’t helped this at all. There’s been a massive content drought for longer than I recall. Players have been grinding the same content in a repetitious cycle with no clear end in sight until recently.
Yet even with the additions being included in the next patch, even with the alterations being made to so many features… it isn’t going to change the fact that this game just feels – just is – different.

The developers that had genuine passion for this game are gone. What’s left are a group of talented artists who make gorgeous environments. Talented voice actors that bring their respective characters to life.
And then the rest are people that have clearly never played WoW before in their life, or just don’t care for the game in any capacity. All they see are dollar signs. They’re short-sighted and know this is a cash cow, and want to milk this for as long as they can until they make a World of Warcraft 2 like Overwatch 2, or a mobile game spinoff.

But that’s just me. I dunno, maybe I just outgrew World of Warcraft. But it’s just.. not what it was. It’s changed. And not for the better.