Just amazed that somehow it was only just "this" expansion that made some people quit. Granted I've been on and off with the game since the end of TBC because of the same old shit. Took a 6+ year time away from it from during Cata to end of Legion. I stopped logging in now too but I didn't see anything in the current game that was any worse overall than some of the other dumb stuff they've had going on in other times I came back briefly. It just gets tiresome eventually and when you have other shit going on no reason to keep devoting time to the game.
Maybe a lot of people just finally hit their breaking point at once.
Cata and WOD were a lot the same. I played through the initial scenarios, got the reputations, played through the first raids in LFR. BFA I haven't even bothered with LFR and there is significantly less content or objectives to get through. In Cata you had an almost weekly progression of phased dailies that took 3 months to cap out (after which I also quit). In WOD you had a shit ton of things you could do with your garrison (at least for a few months, after which I also quit).
I came in late for Mists, but by that time there was just the right amount of things to keep me busy. For several months and SoO is still one of the better raids to date, especially after they added the mythic version.
BfA is literally the bare bones of an expansion. The Warfront progression and reputations are done in 60 or less days, islands are pointless, actual Warfronts are 20 minutes once every month... So you're down to a weekly m+ key and a raid, both of which are obnoxious in their gear allowance or their playability. Then even crafting is time gated behind running shit you don't need for a currency you might not even get when you scrap an item... They squeezed everything out of virtually everything, when they should have been expanding/improving on everything that came before. That's the whole idea behind "expansion", it should expand the experience, not reduce, minimize or make everything inconsequential.
Legion, minus legendaries was damn near perfect, even with the other dumb shit like Khadfag. World quests were done right, they fucked that up with the rewards and density in BfA. Every area felt cohesive and part of the whole, in BfA every area feels entirely disjointed. Even the mission board was essentially perfected from the original in WOD to something that's damn near pointless in BfA. Artifact weapons had a progression that initially sucked for alts, but at least every point felt meaningful or impacted your power in some way - power progression was tangible. The artifact necklace level? After the initial Azerite traits that themselves don't feel very impactful, an additional 2 ilvl to the neck offers zero encouragement. I feel zero impact when I go from a 340 to a 375 piece other than possibly losing a defensive artifact trait, or sacrificing the outter ring trait that is supposedly 300dps better...
Azerite traits could have been done so much better where you unlock them from a list and you can change or switch between them. Higher level raids should introduce new traits, and you can freely swap them out. Being locked to a piece of gear is fucking trash worse than legendary traits. They clearly didn't learn from the artifact relic trait system, which was really just fluff on top of a plethora of other systems, that has been relegated into primary gear pieces. And fuck, that shit is doubly awful.
They could have literally kept the same Legion shit in place and released new areas and I'd be happy as fuck. Instead they fuck up the GCD, talents, and fail miserably balancing the feel of classes without their artifact weapon ability.
8.1 isn't going to fix any of this. It's just going to increase the number of times I can pull on the rng lever doing the same, limited bullshit.
