Seems to be about the best one can hope for nowadays. I came back at 7.3.5(?) or so (tail end of Legion), had an absolute blast again - played a few characters to 120 in BfA and… just sputtered out.
I feel like if you are a true casual – one that plays to get to max level and just see the sights – the best bang for an expansion is to come back at the last content patch and play through. They typically undo the crappy parts (AK grinding) with what is usually considered to be the “leveling alts” patch.
The leveling experience is the best part of WoW, and you can get that when each expansion launches. The real secret to enjoying WoW is to quit after leveling, and not to do the endgame stuff at all.
No Mark that’s the heart of it. At one time I wasn’t a casual. Sigh I miss those days. World Ranked dps. I am older and slower now so I guess it is probably just as well.
Free weekend for all us lapsed WoW players, Thursday thru Sunday.
Thanks for the heads-up.
Weird, I didn’t get an email. I always get an email.
Free weekend is live, in case you forgot :-)
Any reason to check back in? I stopped playing shortly after getting 3 characters to 120 and burning out/getting bored (or both?), and have basically cut myself off from it. I know 8.1.5 came out, but beyond (finally - wtf ) making Kul Tiran’s playable…
Absolutely not. The the only thing of value in WoW, the only thing anyone logs in for, is the Battle for Dazar’alor raid.
8.2 promises a new island, but that’s May-ish.
All my old friends are gone and I would spend weeks to setup addons again so it’s not worth it for me to return.
Now Bal you let me know if things get good. I have a rogue to raid. I will pug.
I logged on long enough yesterday to discover many portals to cities and continents have been removed from Pandaria, Draenor, and Legion content “To make the world larger.” There are some new portals in Orgrimmar (and Stormwind, I assume) to replace at least some of them.
I logged on and played through the intro battle. It was annoying my level 110 didn’t get any XP for it. It was boring stuff. Just pour on DPS on a bunch of targets, over and over, interrupted by cinematic cut-scenes. I don’t even know why they are fighting.
So I switched to a level 108 demon hunter and played it for a bit, gratified that at least I was getting XP.
I see that they are bringing back Wintergrasp. That could be enough to get me to come back. I could see playing the new content to 120 and then enjoying Wintergrasp and other BGs a few times a week.
I’m fairly sure at this point I’ll never play a Blizzard game again.
I think the last Blizzard release I really enjoyed was Burning Crusade. Unfortunately, I think I might be there with you. It’s kind of painful because Blizzard games used to be really special to me. Diablo 1 and 2 and the Warcraft/Starcraft games are some of the highest points in gaming for me, but whatever magic they had just isn’t there anymore (or I’ve capped my resist to it). I tried Battle for Azeroth for a bit but I faded out after a couple weeks.
The only two expansions I didn’t really enjoy were Cata and WoD. If I mained Alliance through WoD I might have enjoyed it better. The horde spikes really got to me after a while.
I enjoy BfA, but WoW for me these days is a complete leisure activity. I don’t raid. I just log on and either do the latest story, or just casually level some alts.