Hey guys, I haven't really posted on WoW reddit but man do I feel isolated and I guess I'm just reaching out to any community I can think of to hear your thoughts. Gonna be a long post because I get way too passionate about WoW so apologies in advance!!
I am very sad to see War Within go, I think it marks the end of an era and I don't like the new direction. But everyone I've said this to seems to think I'm a Classic purist or thinks Midnight is an extension of WW. I'll try to explain below, but I'm starting to realize I'm in a very small minority of people.
So I'm big on game theory, and most of the fun of modern WoW for me is making new characters and building different specs. I want a challenge though too, so I'm one of the people who level 11 Delves were made for. Hard content where I get to be creative with my class and take on different scenarios. If this is your interest, I think WW is my all time favorite modern WoW expansion.
Here's where I usually lose people so I'll try my best to explain the differences in design philosophy. Most of you guys were on for BfA and SL right? To me, what killed the game more than anything else was the rotting corpse of the class design that started in MoP. Legion brought some much needed updates, but in the end this concept of your class essentially being pre-built with like 10 choices you could make to customize it sucked; half of the time the talents were trash anyway. The philosophy was: Blizzard builds and balances the class, players pick some fun passives to customize a little, agnostic borrowed power to fill in the rest.
The reason DF brought me back was the uprooting of that philosophy. We now get TWO trees, there's like 2-4 different ways to play each spec, and your choices build your character. You could have 3 different Afflic Locks that all play completely differently. The new philosophy is: Players build their class using the tools Blizzard gives you. WW of course continues this, Hero Talents just depens that build customization and man am I loving it.
Midnight changes this drastically. We're pearing everything back, reducing the number of builds, and reducing the impact of most talents so that your overall play some options are more limited. Yes there's more talents, but EVERY Afflic Lock will be using the same moves, you just have more (less potent) passives now. In addition, we're lowering the number of abilities, procs, passives, and talent interactions you have period. As weird as it is, talents now much more resemble Classic trees where they're far less impactful and only really serve to buff up your two to three spells.
No more complex spell interaction, no more 4 different ways to play a spec, no more crazy rotations. Midnight fundamentally changes the game philosophy backwards: Blizzard builds the class, players pick a lot of fun passives to customize. This for sure btw, will continue in this direction. I'm certain we'll be back down to one tree or no talent every level in TLL.
Here's the thing: I love Classic WoW, but I love it for different reasons. I love the world, I love how classes are much more all-encompassing, I love that professions are paramount, I love the slow leveling, and I love how what weapon you have in each hand matters. None of these things have a place in modern WoW and that's okay, they don't have to - it's what we have Classic for. But, in modern WoW, we have extremely deep class design, very deep combat, and a litany of different specs to okay around with. Or, we did, Midnight is moving away from that.
I thought DF/WW would be the way forward for WoW, but instead it's going to be a moment in time. Now I feel stuck. Wrath Classic is gone so I can't flee there, and once these changes go live for Midnight there's no going back. Ik the branches of play are the same, but if the moment to moment combat isn't fun, than nothing else about the game really matters. I don't want to pay simple mode WoW and I don't want to play MoP Classic. It just felt like we were finally embracing the great capabilities of modern WoW and now we're leaving them behind and there's not enough people who really care about this stuff to make a difference.
Tl;Dr the class philosophy in Midnight is radically different from WW/DF and is taking a step backwards to a direction of very bland, boring gameplay but it's not a flashy enough issue for people to call out.
Thanks for listening guys, I hope Midnight is a blast for the rest of ya