I don't play anymore but i keep an eye on wow because it is just interesting.
The content they make and the solutions they create for old problems, sometimes the marginal gain almost doesn't make sense.
They solve old problems, but they create new ones. Which, even if the new state is more desirable, how much more desirable is it? And what other possibilities didn't come to pass b/c of it?
For example: the old talent trees had the major qualities of illusion of choice and hybridism. Hybrids opened up a weird and cool space that was difficult wrt balance and mechanics. It became very evident that hybrid-space would become unmanageable if talent trees kept getting deeper. If hybridism is not on the table, you are left with just the illusion of choice, which... you can probably do better than that.
The new system is probably one of the better outcomes. However, the new system really reified that all classes must have three different specs within a 5% performance relation and that a spec ought to have a standard amount of filling in terms of procs, ability rotation and so on.
Which... why did that have to happen? Frost mages for example, seem very convoluted to me. They have a proc that uses a spell that was introduced to have a role under conditions that are long since obsolete, they have those little icicles, the have the elemental to keep tabs on, that orb and cooldowns etc.
This seems burdened and over-designed to me. How much specific enjoyment derives from this complexity? It is not great under the premise that you are making an accessible game (age, skill, familiarity and everything) that ought to be easy to return to. But also just in terms of what it adds to the game, at what point does the effect of increased engagement peter off?
In MC and BWL I would cast 2.5 second frostybolts, de-curse and maybe AP+trinket. The new gameplay is many times more complex but not many times more engaging (to an equal extent).
In TBC, the T5 set for mages made arcane viable if you had a particular metagem (it had a proc comparable to the ability that gives you quick missiles today). You would fish for procs with as many stacks of arcane blast as possible and then dump them or something, I forget. Anyway, more complicated, more fun than a single button for sure.
So maybe it is not super controversial to say that complexity can be engaging but has some sort of plateau or we would not be able to tear ourselves away from modern rotations if we tried.
Maybe another option could have been to go the way of GW1 and deckbuilding games, have a limited action bar. Maybe a frost mage would be OK with just half the stuff they have now? Maybe have fewer but more salient mechanics.
Maybe do it in such a way as to open up the path for hybrids and 3+ (less elaborate) specs to a class. Maybe be okay with some of them being better for pvp. Here also lies a way to something like monks by way of shamans or priests (disc's weird melee history), demon hunters as hybrid lock/rogue, dark rangers, melee beastmasters (Rexxar!!!). A deckbuilding style is potentially quite modular and is better at balancing itself with meta in pvp.
Instead, when blizzard introduces a new class now, the paradigm is that there will be three specs, balance and art for the rest of wow.
Idk that I think that particular idea is better and for sure, it would have trouble meshing with the rest of the game, because it does not stem from the same set of sensibilities. And this is probably the important point: The game is not randomly like this.
My impression is that the the designers of wow have a very well established order of priorities and whatever it looks like, it produces the outcome that their decisions tend towards the short term and towards the pragmatic.
They are concerned with how to make this fun expansion now, from the state of the game as it is now.
Like, can we try to have feature X as cornerstone of this expansion? Rather than, what are the long term economic effects of the Garrison?
What cool leveling zones can we make and what do we fill them with? Rather than, what will traffic look like in this zone over time, how much gameplay does our effort yield over time?
How can we make this raid look cool and fun now? Rather than how can we make class abilities relevant while respecting "bring the player not the class" and how will the rate of gearing impact the social networks on a given server?
Maybe they totally have the answers to these second questions and know that "Oh actually it turns out that doesn't matter much" or "It matters a little but not to such an extent that we are going to design around it".
Maybe they do not (extremely likely they do, they can be smart and still just not make the same judgments, a kind of pragmatism is v/ evident in Blizzard's work).
On the one hand it seems very easy to get into their decision loop. Almost all content they have ever produced is obsolete. The paradigm is flawed but not so flawed that it is worth the risk of trying to change in a big way, to try to find a new way to be a game. Extrapolate from there, this kind of pragmatism.
They make bold decisions about trade skills and the gold economy because they are unsentimental about not being a sandbox and letting go of that heritage, that stuff is just not something they are trying to do.
Even with the big talent tree change, they basically stuck to their guns. Specializations are an identity thing without huge differences, though some talents are quite bold.
The game produces fewer and fewer outlier effects that can have weird or overpowered interactions and when they occur, they are predicated on a context where it is okay for stuff to be weird. Recently symbiosis or the stuff in Ashran. Earlier, the weird stun trinket in Vanilla, pets that deal shadow damage, to some extent even stuff like old Windfury and Vampiric Touch in TBC. They sometimes try to recapture that feeling but with the edges sanded down, it is quite tame. This is very intentional. It is probably one of the good ways to make a big game and it makes for some of the least compelling mathematics.
On the other hand. Blizzard has frequently been on record stating that their design process is very iterative and they have a reputation of releasing polished products.
Making a lot of iterations of a thing, you come to a point where you are over-designing, if the next iteration is only a marginal improvement. This is not pragmatic.
Blizzard is also very concerned with art and has a bit of a mythos about samwise. Fantastic resource to have. Also something it is possible to be too precious about.
For example, Blizzard is quite willing to create art that will only be relevant to a single expansion or even a quite small part of an expansion. The economics of this often stumps me. This is like... a little self-indulgent.
This is sometimes coupled with an unwillingness to reuse content that can go from benign to overly self-editing. Like, "we can make a cool-ok thing but we'd rather not make anything at all if it doesn't amaze everyone". This is dangerous for skilled individuals, something e.g programs for gifted children work quite hard to really drive home.
Idk how well that translates to larger groups tho but it is something I think about.
Anyway, this is not pragmatic at all and it appears to be something wow struggles with.
But then again, there's transmog and the billion mounts are a thing. Old or clashing work was at least partitioned by expansions before. I honestly can't imagine this wasn't divisive at all to push through. That is like the opposite of self-indulgent wrt the artists of wow holding on to a cohesive artistic vision. ¯\(ツ)/¯
Maybe it is just true that MMOs are seasonal now. Maybe that is the most salient factor in the sub-drop. But that doesn't really account for how this came to be, if wow had a part in this, and if so what that part was.
Which I think it probably did and it has a ton to do with the the how the decisions that shape wow are made.
I do not envy them. I would do so much worse. A tiny, tiny fraction of all wowzers even set foot in the original Naxx and that was an enormous problem. It poses the question why you are even making the game. It is a benevolent and wise decision to try to come to grips with that, try to make a game for those who play it.
You know, question the sandbox and the idea of shared misery as content. That seems super important, in as much as these things can be. But maybe/probably the paradigm wow has settled into is a one of the major causes for the sub-drop. Also the lore in WoD r u kidding me?