And your contribution is exactly what again? "You're a casual! You're opinion on raiding doesn't count!"
Well, let me tell you, I was a 'hardcore' raider. I believe the only guild to down Heroic Lich King before me on my server was Blood Legion. I played on Illidan and raided hardcore since mid BC.
The introduction of more gear, for more players is a better thing unless you are of the mindset that you are special because you started raiding earlier than other players and have the gear from that to access the newest content. That is a moronic mentality and is a bad business model.
Blizzard isn't going to spend lots of money creating content only a select few are going to access. They've already stated their biggest failures were what some of the 'elites' claiming were the best. That doesn't mean I didn't like the content (case in point, I thought Ulduar was one of their best raids and that fact it was hard didn't bother me).
They saw the problem that forcing you in a tiered progression segments the players more than "welfare epics" does. Nobody is going to go back and do Naxx, to gear for Ulduar, to gear for ToC, to do ICC. That is a retarded model.
People who cry about welfare epics and raid nerfs; most of the time, don't have Heroic gear and don't have achievements of pre nerf boss kills. They just like to believe they are the elite, when in fact, they are the exact type of player Blizzard is catering to.
I think Soccerman06's opinion is the only I'd take into consideration, because he was (not sure if he still is) in Blood Legion, so I know he has the end game to back up any talk.
You were in Raiding Rainbows? That was a very good guild.
Once again I've done casual and I've done hardcore. I've said above that I don't care if you want to play the game to go fishing. However if all you do is fish and are commenting on raiding mechanics then I'm going to dismiss your opinion. I don't mean you but generally speaking.
Lets review what I have said in this thread. These are my opinions.
1. The game engine is old, has only been updated to really improve the look of the water, and the hardware requirements are for 2007 machines. Although catering to a wide audience is great when you consider the other problems the game has it's easy to move along to something else that is modern. I linked a world first kill from the current normal mode tier and lets face it the game looks ancient. I never played for the graphics but I think it's an important consideration when you find yourself closing WOW and opening up another game. It's tough to go back to 2007. They should have a game engine that can support better graphics, modern graphics, for those of us who don't have 7 year old computers.
2. Server depopulation. Worse yet being charged to server and faction change. I don't blame them necessarely for making the default server that you are originally placed on be low pop. I think that's smart business since it spreads out the initial population and probably leads to some income from one server transfer but I do have a serious problem with them not fixing the completely horde dominated servers that exist today. World PVP is all but gone and it's really no fun playing with only your own faction. To me these added fees are really short sighted since I personally saw people simply walk away rather than be faced with either paying more money to move their main but having all their alts elsewhere or paying a kings ransom to move all their characters to a better server.
3. Deflation of gear. I think others have explained this better but gear today is not epic or legendary. It's very easy to aquire and it is quickly replaced. There have been examples already posted but an item such as the Dragonspine Tropy lasted years and into the next expansion. That ended in Wrath and removed some of the epicness from the game. If you acquired the legendary in Ulduar you replaced it in the next instance. That was a huge disappointment. I had BC legendaries and felt genuinely sorry for our Ulduar healers when their legendary was shit the next patch.
4. The disappearance of 25 man guilds. This is complex but 25 man guilds are going extinct on every server my friends play on. Most have zero Alliance guilds. That's ruining the game for them. Equalization of gear and welfare epics demotivate people from putting in the extra effort that 25 mans require. 25 man raids require a lot more effort to organize and I always felt that a differentiation between the raid sizes was appropriate.
5. Server lag and poor latency or disconnects due to ISPs. Look, we all dealt with patch day lag. I'm not complaining about that. I'm complaining about what started in Ulduar and never ended. Basically a permanent lag problem. We were unable to get into Ulduar for a week on our server and by the time ICC came out the lag was so bad that we had to change our raiding schedule. Instances like TOC had a serious problem and every time Icehowl charged we would have 1-3 disconnects. This continued. Bosses that we should have had no problem to kill became incredibly difficult because maybe a tank was the one suddenly disconnecting on a boss for the first time in 4 years or maybe it was the kiter. It was very frustrating and reoccurring. Try doing 1 light in the darkness with your tank disconnecting. A Tribute to Insanity took us an extra month on 25 man because of disconnects each time the bugs came up.
6. The quality of players significantly decreased as experienced players quit and wow no longer had a way to teach players to be good. Starting at 5 mans instances used to be challenging. Suddenly in wrath everything was faceroll and if they had a hint of a challenge players would quit after one wipe. LFG introduced a level of anonymity that wasn't there before which made people rude and took away from the learning process. How did I learn how to tank, dps, heal? I got a group together from my guild, friends, and trade chat. You got to know people in all the other guilds. The high end guilds would then offer to teach you how to kill bosses that you were struggling with in say Black Temple. They would help you get attuned. It was a community. LFG and all these easy 5 mans changed that. Case in point: Do you remember The Oculus? Do you remember how people didn't know how to fly the drakes, how people voted to kick, how people afked, and how nobody had the patience to learn the instance? That's what I didn't like. I missed Baron Runs, BRD, and people taking the time to truly teach and help you clear an instance like Heroic Shattered Halls for your attunement. This loss from the game also affected how friends were made and how recruitment was done. I should also mention that the nerfs are generally pretty quick and so extreme that key mechanics can be bypassed and this is also not helping maintain or improve the quality of the players in the game.
7. All content had to be available to everyone. I understand the developers not wanting to recreate Sunwell. I admit that was a mistake. I doubt most people could kill the trash let alone Kalecogos. It was nuts. I'm fine with everyone seeing all the content. Just not at the same time. It's an entire expansion pack and I don't see the point of creating content that is so easy that even the most inept player can do it. Anyone even partially skilled and in a guild was able to clear a normal mode instance in the first week or two. That's far too fast. The game got boring since the content ran out too quickly and quite frankly it was no fun having to kill normal mode and then the same bosses again on hard mode. I would rather they simply have a progression of bosses thorughout the expansion pack that got harder and harder. I would rather they not nerf them so fast. Karazhan 1.0 was pretty difficult. I farmed the blue dungeon set, got attuned, and worked on clearing it. Was a lot of fun. I then moved on from there. There were guilds killing Illidan when I was in SSC/TK. I kept on progressing though and when Sunwell was released I was killing Sunwell bosses. Today that's not the case. Today each patch makes the previous content null and void since everyone goes to a vendor, or the new welfare instance, gets purples, and then does the new instance. Each patch!
8. Welfare epics. The problem here is that it gave people a false sense of skill. Combined with the ease of 5 mans of course. Plus the ease of 10 man over 25 too but not as much since someone killing hard modes in 10 man is perfectly capable of hard modes in 25. Having to weed through the masses of fully epiced out players who had absolutely no idea how to play the game was no fun. The game is not hard. So I ended up right where we were before with attunements and that is recruiting from other guilds that were killing the same content we were. Of course with the depopulation, death of 25 man guilds, etc we were having to bring in server transfers and thus contribute to more people paying more money to compensate for Blizzard having poor server management. Now they have a welfare legendary too it seems. Everyone and their mother has the cloak. I know it's just a color but why not just keep it simple? Blues from 5 mans. Purples from raiding. Highlight the heroics. Make legendaries difficult to obtain. Of course PvP should have access to epics but these welfare epics from 5 mans and vendors is really lame and giving people a false sense of skill. Skill is far more important than gear. We killed raid bosses in blues on first release. Hell we had people with green trinkets. Practically giving away epics to players who then enter a 5 man instance, bypass the mechanics, and never become a good player is terrible for the game.
9. Game burnout. No easy solution here but having raids on separate lockouts was a killer. Thank god they got rid of that. I hear they either brought it back or are going to. I hope that's not true. Patches that lasted too long was another problem. Now a lot of game burnout is personal choice. I did 5 day raiding for a while and decided that was incredibly unhealthy and toned it down significantly. Regardless the issue of duplicate raids was an issue. Nobody liked having to run both 10 and 25 for gear and nobody liked killing the same bosses on normal and then again on hard mode. Took away from that epicness somehow that existed before when you were progressing from boss to boss to boss.
10. Lastly rude players. I had real life friends who quit the game since anyone new is a "noob", nobody has the patience to teach anyone, and nobody will group with someone who isn't fully decked out in welfare epics for even the most simple 5 mans. The community that existed in Vanilla and BC slowly disappeared in Wrath and by the time Cata came out it was pretty much completely gone.