We have to find a way to reverse this. Souls games are huge, so gritty gamers still exist. We need a new MMORPG that's so good it will make players to stick around through the inconveniences so they can realize how much those inconveniences actually help the experience feel more fulfilling. I'm tired to death of all these easy games with no consequences. If the world isn't dangerous I get bored. What's the point of going into a deep dark dungeon if there's no danger involved? It's not a dungeon at that point, it's just a free loot cave. Thankfully in Classic I can play on a PvP server, so the sense of danger will at least be alive and well in the open world.
Dungeons look really simple. I'm not sure if it's the patch or something else, but monsters seem to be dying incredibly easily. When I watch boss HP in Classic beta dungeon videos it just gets chunked off too easily, and I remember bosses hitting a bit harder. The sense of danger and respect for dungeons and bosses was definitely a thing in early WoW. WC, Deadmines, etc were much harder than they appear in the beta. People keep saying it's because players were shitty back then, but I don't think that's entirely accurate. A lot of us came from EQ and were basically trying to min-max our abilities and gear right out the gate. Even running the dungeons for the 20th time on an alt, the bosses seemed rougher. Maybe I just dreamed it, or maybe the guy who said they made encounters easier during an AQ era patch and we're getting that version with 1.12 is correct. Maybe it's because all the class changes have already been done and we're getting the strongest versions of our class. Maybe it's a mix of all of those.
I hope I'm not let down by how easy things have become, though. I want Classic because I don't want my hand held through everything. I don't want to be able to solo everything. I think a lot of people feel the same way. Hardship fosters community and lasting friendships, and in games that hardship has to be manufactured and properly implemented. If EQ had been easy, it would have completely ruined the game. Dark nights, danger around every corner, the bitch of a leveling process, faction that really mattered, travel that really felt like travel, seeing a war with the epic glowing weapons for the first time... I remember all of this the most vividly. So many adventures. Meeting someone in the world truly felt like something amazing. I've been waiting for a game to get this right ever since like most of us have. To think that the MMORPG community is going in the complete opposite direction likely explains why the MMORPG genre is largely considered to be failing.