Why did you leave Retail?

[LongCat]

My story goes like this. Bought Vanilla in 2006. Played it until TBC came out. Played all the way through TBC, on to LK. Left midway LK. Got tired of the FOMO. Dealing with people online. Quit for a bit. Came back during Cata.... left again. Came back again in MoP. Taught myself to be the best healer. Left. Resubbed in Shadowlands. Hated the drastic changes. To me it was a culture shock and just how different the game had become. I was mainly a pvp'r. Moved to Classic, on Grobbulus, joined the best Rogue only PVP Guild. D.O.R. We terrorized that server. hahah left once I got rank 10 due to burnout of pvp rank grinding.

Over the years, I was always coming back to repacks. Found I enjoyed the offline play far more than online. While these bots in 5.4.8 have their issues, they are the best repack bots I have ever seen. They keep me very entertained in PvP. I have no plans to return to retail. Blizzard as a company is in the toilet. Too many issues with how they treat their staff. Too much corruption in the company. Zero focus on customer service like the good old GM Ticket days.

 

[duke42748]

My story goes like this. Bought Vanilla in 2006. Played it until TBC came out. Played all the way through TBC, on to LK. Left midway LK. Got tired of the FOMO. Dealing with people online. Quit for a bit. Came back during Cata.... left again. Came back again in MoP. Taught myself to be the best healer. Left. Resubbed in Shadowlands. Hated the drastic changes. To me it was a culture shock and just how different the game had become. I was mainly a pvp'r. Moved to Classic, on Grobbulus, joined the best Rogue only PVP Guild. D.O.R. We terrorized that server. hahah left once I got rank 10 due to burnout of pvp rank grinding.

Over the years, I was always coming back to repacks. Found I enjoyed the offline play far more than online. While these bots in 5.4.8 have their issues, they are the best repack bots I have ever seen. They keep me very entertained in PvP. I have no plans to return to retail. Blizzard as a company is in the toilet. Too many issues with how they treat their staff. Too much corruption in the company. Zero focus on customer service best soccer prediction like the good old GM Ticket days.

Yes i see

 

[Perslane]

I subscribed to retail WoW from 2005 until recently, but I quit a few months ago and shifted to private servers. They can be fun, sure, but I quickly realised I was still doing the same things I was doing 20 years ago. I’m not here for nostalgia. I don’t pine for vanilla or the early expansions. If anything, I prefer the newer content, Dragonflight onward, not because the mechanics are any better, but because the graphics are finally passable.

That said, even the latest visuals are still lagging behind what other games offer. Blizzard has stretched their engine about as far as it can go. The War Within looks decent, but unless they invest in a new graphics engine, this is likely the ceiling. You can only polish legacy tech so much before it starts to show its age.

What frustrates me most is the lazy design loop. Every expansion is just a reskin of the last. New continent, new faction, new gimmick, but the underlying formula never changes. It’s all borrowed time mechanics, borrowed power systems, and borrowed patience. Blizzard seems more interested in keeping players on a treadmill than building a living, breathing world.

I’ve mostly been a solo player through the years. I have little interest in grouping, raiding, or running dungeons with others. The community has become too toxic, too impatient. It’s all “rush to the end boss,” rinse and repeat. There’s no room for immersion, no space for exploration. And even when you do explore, what’s left? Quests that feel like they were written for toddlers. No tension, no stakes, no sense of a world at war. Just fetch quests and comic relief.

This is why I finally moved to a private server running The War Within. Not public facing, just me in control as GM. It gives me the freedom to explore the world in the way I want to but also change things to a certain degree. It has renewed my interest in the game and the icing on the cake is I am not paying Blizzard for the privelage!