WoW XIX: This is my Artifact. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

[Icewraith]

In my case it's more because:

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when powerful lore figures "die" I tend to just roll my eyes these days. It ends up just feeling like Comic Book Death instead. Vol'jin and Varian will be back as soon as they can retcon it.

Also, Ysera's death was just ridiculous. She wasn't nobly sacrificing herself, or taking on impossible odds or a truly badass foe. She just flapped into view like a turkey for the slaughter and sucked at dodging.

Lore figures generally only come back if they get defeated in boss fights. Even then, I don't see Arthas around anywhere, do you? Varian got blown to smithereens, I'm pretty sure he's GONE.

[Psyren]

Lore figures generally only come back if they get defeated in boss fights. Even then, I don't see Arthas around anywhere, do you? Varian got blown to smithereens, I'm pretty sure he's GONE.

Feh, don't get me started - Arthas as a character hasn't existed since Warcraft 3. The Lich King that made it to WoW was a generic growly Sauron who was quickly replaced by yet another generic growly Sauron, albeit one that is at least neutral-ish (until the next Northrend expansion anyway.)

[Haruspex_Pariah]

Spoiler: Re: Impact of Character Death

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I believe the keys are player involvement and writing, not power level. We get to interact with Runas and Rhea as part of those respective quests. Runas becomes withered before our very eyes. We see Rhea killed by Deathwing, and later find out she even sacrificed her own egg as a decoy. Alexston as well, though in a more low-key manner since he's just hanging around the garrison doing architect things. His lines mostly revolve around the super exciting idea of building more buildings. But you also get clues that there's something between him and Thorn. And then he asks you to help him pick flowers. Personally not something I'd ask my garrison commander to help with, but hey we'll roll with it. Then he dies while you're distracted by a garrison invasion, trying to protect Thorn. From that point on Thorn remains in worgen form, and I believe the flower you helped him pick is on the table as well. Every time I go back to the garrison I see and remember. It's just...the little things.

[The Glyphstone]

Which major lore figures have come back, out of curiosity? I mean this whole thing started with Ragnaros, but he was only banished until we went to his home and killed him for good there. Pretty much everyone in lore, from Old Gods down, appear to stay dead in the lore once they're officially killed, with the exception of demons who again explicitly can't 'die' outside of the Nether and Sylvanus who has her Val'kyr council taking falls for her. The one exception for a non-elemental/demon returning to life appears to be Illidan, and that's such a major story element that it's taking an entire expansion to play out successfully.

[Psyren]

Gul'dan, Grom, Cenarius, Muradin, Cho'gall, Ragnaros, Anu'barak, Hogger... There was also the rather funny backlash to Kael'thas's head getting ripped off being a "mere setback" as well.

I'm not saying characters don't "stay dead" when killed. But they're not averse to pulling out "oh that character didn't really die, they just got amnesia and laid low for a while" or "yeah that version died but here's one that's identical in nearly every way except even stronger."

It's worse for a character like

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Ysera - her chief personality trait being "mysterious and sleeps a lot." When they're ready for a new Green aspect, they could replace her with just about any dragon, unless they go the more interesting route and make her evil or at least mean (much like the Blue aspect went from evil to good.)

I'm not against the practice, but it doesn't make me exactly get broken up over any of the major characters passing either. Either they come back from a thousand stab wounds, or they get replaced by somebody with the same story function almost immediately.

[The Glyphstone]

I wasn't counting the alt-universe duplicates, since that was the entire theme of that expansion. It was a terrible expansion, but thematically the one-of of 'what if it had been different' with all the alt-universe copies is only a single collective blot on their record. Anu'barak is a reanimated undead, I don't think it's fair to count him. I'll give you Kael'thas, Muradin and Cenarius though, even I'm not sure how Cenarius was 'revived' (probably happened in a novel). Though if we're counting Muradin - heck, let's count Muradin twice since he 'died' once and was petrified once - we probably should also count Bolvar.

Overall, I think you're being way too harsh on Blizzard for this. It's fair to not be engaged in the lore figures, but that's mainly because they just don't really do anything to make us endeared to them in the first place, not that Blizzard uses Comic Book Death tropes with any real frequency. It's the little figures that matter to the player base, because we interact with them directly as part of quests, not just as quest-givers.

[Sian]

In my case it's more because:

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when powerful lore figures "die" I tend to just roll my eyes these days. It ends up just feeling like Comic Book Death instead. Vol'jin and Varian will be back as soon as they can retcon it.

Also, Ysera's death was just ridiculous. She wasn't nobly sacrificing herself, or taking on impossible odds or a truly badass foe. She just flapped into view like a turkey for the slaughter and sucked at dodging.

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Well, in the case of Varian i somehow suscept a plot twist with Gul'dan actually did't kill him but filled him with so much fel corruption (optionally an ongoing process) that he became a de-facto puppet for the Demons (similarly as to how he did to a couple of characters in WoD), and let him be a pen-ultimate boss or something among those lines before we get around killing Gul'dan.

[ryuplaneswalker]

TOTALLY disagree. BRD is the best dungeon they ever made, it's great fun, lots of things to find and know, instead of a hall way to bosses filled with a smattering of trash mobs. BRD feels like a real place. The only dungeon that ever felt close to that level of detail was the original Karazhan.

Yes lots to know..like a boss whoes entire mechanical set is based on dispels! That is great if your class isn't blessed with those!

And a boss that..has one mechanic which is an AOE stun.

And a boss that flees (not to have another phase..just books it at 15% HP) because that isn't one of the worst mechanic in any MMO

Looking through the entire Dungeon Journal I don't see one mechanic that is remotely "challenging" it is just dispels, and it doesn't feel like a real place to me, it feels like a Big empty copy of Ironforge filled with "EVIL!!!! Brand" Dwarve that has no real bearing on anything that actually mattered in the lore. I would take any dungeon except maybe Violet Hold over Blackrock Depths. It is old and that age most definitely shows. There are trash mobs in Normal Mode Legion dungeons that have more difficulty than any of the bosses in Blackrock AND Molten Core.

Edit

When they're ready for a new Green aspect,

Did you miss the part where the Dragon Aspects NO LONGER EXIST as they did. There isn't going to be a new Green Aspect the concept of A Green Aspect went away at the climax of Cataclysm. Dragons are now generally high magic beings that have no special purpose anymore and are sterile. Ysera's death just isn't "The green aspect dying" it was "A member of a finite species going poof"

RE Withered

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I feel at some point, they are going to send you to give him a bit of the fruit of the Ach'andor (spelling is probably mangled on that, stupid elvish names) since it breaks the whole "Meth Head" stuff. I would love to save the guy.

Also Varian and Vol'jin's death were made cheaper by the fact they used it to push the stupid Horde vs Alliance Bullcrap for NO GOOD REASON (For the Alliance, should have been For My Son, or For Azeroth) . This is especially bad with Vol'jin since his death was literally an afterthought that was put in to "even things out" Vol'jin SHOULD reveal that he was hiding the whole time because he shouldn't have been killed in the first place.

[Psyren]

I have no idea how Cenarius came back either. I was just like "bwuh?"

Overall, I think you're being way too harsh on Blizzard for this. It's fair to not be engaged in the lore figures, but that's mainly because they just don't really do anything to make us endeared to them in the first place, not that Blizzard uses Comic Book Death tropes with any real frequency. It's the little figures that matter to the player base, because we interact with them directly as part of quests, not just as quest-givers.

If I'm coming across harsh or angry with them that's not my intent, it's really nothing more than apathy. It's like

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oh look, that one aspect that never really does anything died in a really anticlimactic and disappointing way... is it any wonder that people feel more broken up over Runas' death than that of someone who's even been in Warcraft lore damn near since the beginning?

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Well, in the case of Varian i somehow suscept a plot twist with Gul'dan actually did't kill him but filled him with so much fel corruption (optionally an ongoing process) that he became a de-facto puppet for the Demons (similarly as to how he did to a couple of characters in WoD), and let him be a pen-ultimate boss or something among those lines before we get around killing Gul'dan.

I do in fact fully expect brainwashed-and-crazy/fel-animated Varian in our future.

I wasn't counting the alt-universe duplicates, since that was the entire theme of that expansion. It was a terrible expansion, but thematically the one-of of 'what if it had been different' with all the alt-universe copies is only a single collective blot on their record.

I'm not sure it counts as a what-if when Gul'dan is exactly the same (only stronger) though. Grom they could do some interesting things with, potentially - I could see him joining the Horde proper in the end.

[ryuplaneswalker]

I have no idea how Cenarius came back either. I was just like "bwuh?"

In Cata or in Emerald Nightmare? In cata it is arguable that he is powerful enough to be on par with the Ancients/Wild Gods and all the ones that got killed in The WOTA were revived in the Cata Hyjal Plot.


Edit : Alt Gul'dan is quite a bit more Humble than his MU counterpart, at the end of the Tomb of Sargeras Radio Play he accepts that he legitimately needs the Legion's help against Khadgar and goes all in with them as opposed to MU Gul'dan who..stabbed everyone and everything in the back at a whim.

[Androgeus]

I have no idea how Cenarius came back either. I was just like "bwuh?".

Off the top of my head, he's resurrected in the Molten Front (Firelands dalies) opening story stuff.

[Psyren]

Yes lots to know..like a boss whoes entire mechanical set is based on dispels! That is great if your class isn't blessed with those!

And a boss that..has one mechanic which is an AOE stun.

And a boss that flees (not to have another phase..just books it at 15% HP) because that isn't one of the worst mechanic in any MMO

Looking through the entire Dungeon Journal I don't see one mechanic that is remotely "challenging" it is just dispels, and it doesn't feel like a real place to me, it feels like a Big empty copy of Ironforge filled with "EVIL!!!! Brand" Dwarve that has no real bearing on anything that actually mattered in the lore. I would take any dungeon except maybe Violet Hold over Blackrock Depths. It is old and that age most definitely shows. There are trash mobs in Normal Mode Legion dungeons that have more difficulty than any of the bosses in Blackrock AND Molten Core.

Totally agree. Worse, it's stuck in time - the Dark Irons have rejoined the Council, why the heck do we even care about BRD still? Why is it crammed with elites? What it should be is another quest hub, with maybe the arena as an instance if they want to keep one. That would solve the twin purposes of (a) trimming all the bloat in that dungeon and (b) showing that the world is evolving and changing, like they did with BFD.

Edit : Alt Gul'dan is quite a bit more Humble than his MU counterpart, at the end of the Tomb of Sargeras Radio Play he accepts that he legitimately needs the Legion's help against Khadgar and goes all in with them as opposed to MU Gul'dan who..stabbed everyone and everything in the back at a whim.

I wouldn't call it humility - MU Gul'dan had the entire Horde at his back (who drank Mannoroth's blood), while this one doesn't have either Horde to call on. So it's understandable that MUG would try a different route than "going all in" with a swarm of demons when he has a choice. AUG is still the same person fundamentally, just with less resources (initially) and more desperation.

Did you miss the part where the Dragon Aspects NO LONGER EXIST as they did. There isn't going to be a new Green Aspect the concept of A Green Aspect went away at the climax of Cataclysm. Dragons are now generally high magic beings that have no special purpose anymore and are sterile. Ysera's death just isn't "The green aspect dying" it was "A member of a finite species going poof"

"Flight leader" then. The greens will still need one to follow, Aspect or not.

Also Varian and Vol'jin's death were made cheaper by the fact they used it to push the stupid Horde vs Alliance Bullcrap for NO GOOD REASON (For the Alliance, should have been For My Son, or For Azeroth) . This is especially bad with Vol'jin since his death was literally an afterthought that was put in to "even things out" Vol'jin SHOULD reveal that he was hiding the whole time because he shouldn't have been killed in the first place.

Or the Loa will straight-up give him back. It wouldn't shock me.

[ryuplaneswalker]

I wouldn't call it humility - MU Gul'dan had the entire Horde at his back (who drank Mannoroth's blood), while this one doesn't have either Horde to call on. So it's understandable that MUG would try a different route than "going all in" with a swarm of demons when he has a choice. AUG is still the same person fundamentally, just with less resources (initially) and more desperation.

That is the thing, MUG would -never- go all in with anyone or anything, his entire life was about his own pursuit of power and he used The Horde for that. AUG is legitimately on the side of the Legion. MUG wanted power for the sake of power. The Fight in the Nighthold would be quite different if it were MUG instead of AUG.

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Instead of trying to put Sargeras's spirit in Illidan, MUG would 100% try to absorb Sargeras' power or alter the spell that SargerasDan ended up under his control.

[The_Jackal]

Yes lots to know..like a boss whoes entire mechanical set is based on dispels! That is great if your class isn't blessed with those!

And a boss that..has one mechanic which is an AOE stun.

And a boss that flees (not to have another phase..just books it at 15% HP) because that isn't one of the worst mechanic in any MMO

Totally agree. Worse, it's stuck in time - the Dark Irons have rejoined the Council, why the heck do we even care about BRD still?

I was addressing more the design and layout of the dungeon, distribution of trash, maintaining more of the illusion of place, rather than dealing with the individual boss encounters. Of COURSE those haven't aged well, they've revamped everyone's abilities four times, and culled everyone's abilities to a tiny fraction of what they were. It's not remotely surprising to me that they haven't aged well. As for the 'stuck in time' thing, that's literally every dungeon and raid in the game. You want to go back to Firelands again and slap around Ragnaros again? Then go back to Molten Core where he acts like he's never met you? How many times has Nexus-Prince Shaffar been slain?

My point is that I would like the game and its environment to feel more immersive and less like a theme-park ride. I honestly preferred the days where there was no queue, and you had to get a group together and fight your way through outdoor elite trash just to get to the instance door.

Mythic dungeons are a step in the right direction, imo. You can't queue for it, you actually have to get a group together and go there.

[Spore]

Totally agree. Worse, it's stuck in time - the Dark Irons have rejoined the Council, why the heck do we even care about BRD still? Why is it crammed with elites? What it should be is another quest hub, with maybe the arena as an instance if they want to keep one. That would solve the twin purposes of (a) trimming all the bloat in that dungeon and (b) showing that the world is evolving and changing, like they did with BFD.

I started in Cata and I would have preferred the old dungeons to stay the same and have a Bronze Dragon Flight thingie slapped onto them - if anything at all. I am curious how people played that back in the days and I would have used any chance to revisit that.

That is the thing, MUG would -never- go all in with anyone or anything, his entire life was about his own pursuit of power and he used The Horde for that.

Gul'dan was first introduced to many in the WC 3 expansion as the greedy warlock who died when searching for power in the Tomb of Sargeras. I went in with a few soldiers but he went himself. (Also remember he is a Warlock so he fuels his spells and powers partly by life force. If he wishes, even his own.)

Mythic dungeons are a step in the right direction, imo. You can't queue for it, you actually have to get a group together and go there.

I actually do not like the fact you have to go to the Mythic dungeon. At least not in the current form. This is no lengthy journey, it is a 2 minute trip forcefully riding through mobs until they reset. Yay for abusing game mechanics.

[The Glyphstone]

It's been implicitly confirmed that Vol'jin is going to re-appear in some form later on, one of the designers commented that 'his story wasn't done yet'. Probably not outright resurrection, seeing as how he's mortal and the only outright resurrections go to immortals/extraplanar beings, but Ghost Vol'jin hanging around and harassing Sylvanas would be hilarious.

Varian I think is dead for good though. He didn't just get corrupted, we sort of watched him explode. 'Fel-Crazed Varian' isn't on the list of bosses in the Nighthold, where we will be dispatching Gul'Dan for real this time, so I doubt he's going to come back brainwashed and crazy at any point. And Blizzard isn't going to have a twist like that be relegated to a miniboss trash mob.

[Psyren]

I was addressing more the design and layout of the dungeon, distribution of trash, maintaining more of the illusion of place, rather than dealing with the individual boss encounters. Of COURSE those haven't aged well, they've revamped everyone's abilities four times, and culled everyone's abilities to a tiny fraction of what they were. It's not remotely surprising to me that they haven't aged well. As for the 'stuck in time' thing, that's literally every dungeon and raid in the game. You want to go back to Firelands again and slap around Ragnaros again? Then go back to Molten Core where he acts like he's never met you? How many times has Nexus-Prince Shaffar been slain?

Plenty of other old dungeons that were about specific historical threats have been given modernized facelifts, both mechanics-wise and lorewise. Scarlet Monastery got updated. Deadmines, Shadowfang Keep and Blackfathom Deeps got updated. Scholomance got updated. Razorfen Kraul and Downs got updated. Freaking Ragefire Chasm and Stockade got updated, which to me was the biggest waste of resources they could have possibly spent given how generic those two are, but whatevs, we got it.

We even have a template for this; Maraudon and Dire Maul used to be sprawling vanilla endgame clusterfudges too. They got broken into separate wings that are each accessible separately via the LFD, or you can hike over there manually if that experience is so important to you. For Maraudon in particular, if you want to you can queue for one section and just power through the whole thing in one long go, but if you don't then you can queue for its parts separately and be placed in the instance accordingly. Why didn't BRD get the same treatment?

My point is that I would like the game and its environment to feel more immersive and less like a theme-park ride. I honestly preferred the days where there was no queue, and you had to get a group together and fight your way through outdoor elite trash just to get to the instance door.

Mythic dungeons are a step in the right direction, imo. You can't queue for it, you actually have to get a group together and go there.

You're missing a glaring problem with your suggestion. If you had to do that (manually form a group and travel to the instance) for every difficulty, not just Mythic, then how in blazes are you supposed to be able to practice the instance so that you can handle Mythic? The convenience of queueing gives you a lot of attempts to practice against the mechanics in a low-stress environment, not to mention more shots at the gear you need to actually survive Mythic.

Also, to me, having BRD be a full-on city is even less immersive than it being a "theme park ride" dungeon. You want to tell me 5 schlubs walk into an entire city full of hostile Dark Irons, wreck their arena, free all their slaves, trash their bar, loot their vault, assassinate multiple officials including their king, and just waltz back out unscathed? Even if you subscribe to the theory that only one strike team canonically did all that, how does that even begin to make sense? Compare to something like Sunken Temple or Zul'farrak - there's a cult in these ruins, they're doing a bad ritual but there aren't many of them doing it, send in a strike force to disrupt it and take down whatever they've managed to summon while it's in its infancy. Much more sensible. BRD if anything should be a raid, and even then it strains disbelief.

It's been implicitly confirmed that Vol'jin is going to re-appear in some form later on, one of the designers commented that 'his story wasn't done yet'. Probably not outright resurrection, seeing as how he's mortal and the only outright resurrections go to immortals/extraplanar beings, but Ghost Vol'jin hanging around and harassing Sylvanas would be hilarious.

I'm shocked

Not complaining though, I agree with ryu that Vol'jin should have never died in the first place.

[The Glyphstone]

In other news, you do some weird things in this game without realizing it sometimes. I was just out hunting Fledgling Kingfeathers for my falcosaur hatchling, who spawn in one specific area and share a spawn with Fledgling Olivebacks. So whenever I saw an Oliveback eating up a spawn slot that could have a Kingfeather, I killed it. Only after I finished did I realize I've spent the last hour shooting down baby birds with lightning bolts while hunting another type of baby bird.

Now I'm off to electrocute bunny rabbits in hopes of finding three raccoons.

[Sian]

'Fel-Crazed Varian' isn't on the list of bosses in the Nighthold, where we will be dispatching Gul'Dan for real this time, so I doubt he's going to come back brainwashed and crazy at any point. And Blizzard isn't going to have a twist like that be relegated to a miniboss trash mob.

Do we actually know that Gul'Dan is killed and not just forced to flee with a bag of spilling? And I'm not thinking miniboss trash, but outright preceding boss somewhere

...

That said, have people seen the PTR changes?

I really like what they do to my legendary and my class/spec :)

Prydaz's Equip is changed to a 'flat' Gain 30% Absorb every 30 sec, instead of their 'don't take damage for 5 sec and you get 15%', While Vengeance in general is buffed (Although Last Resort takes a significant hit, changing the CD from 3 to 8 minutes, and Fel Devestation is shunted to 110 instead of Nether Bond which is compeltely tossed)

[The Glyphstone]

Until Nighthold goes into testing, we can't be sure, but I expect Gul'Dan to die for real instead of running away yet again. The bosses of Nighthold are Skorpyron, Trilliax, Chronomatic Anomaly, Krosus, Tichondrius, Gul'Dan, Star Auger Etraeus, Spellblade Auriel, High Botanist Tel'arn, and Grand Magistrix Elisande. Gul'dan might be the final boss of the raid, but I'd be utterly amazed if he got some sort of miraculous escape. His part in the story is over for the most part, except the bit where we murder him and loot his spare change.

[otakuryoga]

Dibs on what's in his pockets!

[The_Jackal]

You're missing a glaring problem with your suggestion. If you had to do that (manually form a group and travel to the instance) for every difficulty, not just Mythic, then how in blazes are you supposed to be able to practice the instance so that you can handle Mythic? The convenience of queueing gives you a lot of attempts to practice against the mechanics in a low-stress environment, not to mention more shots at the gear you need to actually survive Mythic.

Your assertion that I'm missing anything is contingent on the notion that difficulty isn't something that you can tune, or that inducement to repetition is something we should encourage from the game designers. Before dungeon queues were introduced in Wrath of the Lich King, people organized groups and ran dungeons the old fashioned way, and I am utterly convinced that was needed was not an anonymous matchmaking service, but a 'group finder' style bulletin board service which matched people with compatible goals.

My point is that making the game more "convenient" for players is, in many ways, a no-op. All it does is reinforce the notion that you're on a treadmill, increasing the rate at which you can repeat the same operation. Queued Heroics are pretty much another step in the leveling process now. Once you hit the level cap, a half a weeks worth of heroic queues will put you at the ilvl cap necessary to hit mythics, at which point you get the sublime pleasure of doing it all over again for slightly better loot. And now there's mythic plus, where you'll do it again with a timer, for yet slightly better loot. How many new ways does Blizzard need to innovate on ways to serve us the same sandwich over again?

[Antonok]

Until Nighthold goes into testing, we can't be sure, but I expect Gul'Dan to die for real instead of running away yet again. The bosses of Nighthold are Skorpyron, Trilliax, Chronomatic Anomaly, Krosus, Tichondrius, Gul'Dan, Star Auger Etraeus, Spellblade Auriel, High Botanist Tel'arn, and Grand Magistrix Elisande. Gul'dan might be the final boss of the raid, but I'd be utterly amazed if he got some sort of miraculous escape. His part in the story is over for the most part, except the bit where we murder him and loot his spare change.

WARNING! Major Nighthold Spoilers ahead, so watch at your own risk.

and if its not real, someone did a stupidly good job on it.

[Icewraith]

M co-tank is just not getting the hang of Odyn's spear. So the whole raid is doing the first two phases of the fight perfectly, and then we get to 55% and then boom.

[Psyren]

Your assertion that I'm missing anything is contingent on the notion that difficulty isn't something that you can tune, or that inducement to repetition is something we should encourage from the game designers. Before dungeon queues were introduced in Wrath of the Lich King, people organized groups and ran dungeons the old fashioned way, and I am utterly convinced that was needed was not an anonymous matchmaking service, but a 'group finder' style bulletin board service which matched people with compatible goals.

My point is that making the game more "convenient" for players is, in many ways, a no-op. All it does is reinforce the notion that you're on a treadmill, increasing the rate at which you can repeat the same operation. Queued Heroics are pretty much another step in the leveling process now. Once you hit the level cap, a half a weeks worth of heroic queues will put you at the ilvl cap necessary to hit mythics, at which point you get the sublime pleasure of doing it all over again for slightly better loot. And now there's mythic plus, where you'll do it again with a timer, for yet slightly better loot. How many new ways does Blizzard need to innovate on ways to serve us the same sandwich over again?

I think the source of your disconnect is a fundamental disagreement with one of the game's core engagements, and with its primary audience.

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For games like WoW and Diablo, abnegation is a core engagement - the same itch we scratch when we rewatch a favorite old movie/tv show episode, or reread an old book. It's a way to unwind after a stressful day with a simple to-do list that you can pursue at your own pace. Do some dailies, run some dungeons, complete this season journey etc. In that respect, the repetitive nature of the endgame is not inherently bad - something can be enjoyable even if it is familiar or routine; Diablo 2 and its Baal/Countess runs proved that definitively, and those had even less variation than D3 and WoW do. Then the loot slot machine is there to give you a long-term goal and not have it be a total treadmill.

Putting an artificial delay (i.e. manual group assembly) on players who just want to pull the lever on that slot machine is not adding any engagement, only frustration, as people spend half their playtime window in a given night spamming Trade. Now, a queue does mean that a minority of players with more time on their hands will burn through the content faster, but I think that's a small sacrifice to ensure the convenience of the majority. Even with all these tools to help us, I'd wager a majority take a long time to get to Mythic raiding or Mythic+ dungeons.

Hand in hand with this phenomenon go the changes to WoW's primary audience - back during WoW's peak (BC/Wrath), console gaming was ascendant and the PC had few alternatives; now there are many, many other games (including many other CRPGs) vying for our time. In addition to that, a big chunk of the playerbase were teenagers or college students with lots more free time to waste on things like manual queuing and lengthy attunements.

Now, the core audience of the game has aged, and most of us have become stressed-out adults who turn to Azeroth to forget about our mortgages, insurance premiums and student loan payments for a while; we also have less free time to play between long hours, other games or sources of entertainment (e.g. Netflix) and friends/family/children vying for our attention. WoW thus had to evolve into a game where you can log on for 15-30 minutes and make meaningful progress, because if you could not, there was just no justifying that $15 fee.

TL;DR: An endgame comprised of routine activities is not inherently bad, and letting people queue for that activity more quickly helps the middle and lower end of the playerbase, who greatly outnumber the top end that might get bored more quickly. Going back to gating that behind needing to spam trade for a group first harms the game overall far more than it helps.

[Icewraith]

I think the source of your disconnect is a fundamental disagreement with one of the game's core engagements, and with its primary audience.

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For games like WoW and Diablo, abnegation is a core engagement - the same itch we scratch when we rewatch a favorite old movie/tv show episode, or reread an old book. It's a way to unwind after a stressful day with a simple to-do list that you can pursue at your own pace. Do some dailies, run some dungeons, complete this season journey etc. In that respect, the repetitive nature of the endgame is not inherently bad - something can be enjoyable even if it is familiar or routine; Diablo 2 and its Baal/Countess runs proved that definitively, and those had even less variation than D3 and WoW do. Then the loot slot machine is there to give you a long-term goal and not have it be a total treadmill.

Putting an artificial delay (i.e. manual group assembly) on players who just want to pull the lever on that slot machine is not adding any engagement, only frustration, as people spend half their playtime window in a given night spamming Trade. Now, a queue does mean that a minority of players with more time on their hands will burn through the content faster, but I think that's a small sacrifice to ensure the convenience of the majority. Even with all these tools to help us, I'd wager a majority take a long time to get to Mythic raiding or Mythic+ dungeons.

Hand in hand with this phenomenon go the changes to WoW's primary audience - back during WoW's peak (BC/Wrath), console gaming was ascendant and the PC had few alternatives; now there are many, many other games (including many other CRPGs) vying for our time. In addition to that, a big chunk of the playerbase were teenagers or college students with lots more free time to waste on things like manual queuing and lengthy attunements.

Now, the core audience of the game has aged, and most of us have become stressed-out adults who turn to Azeroth to forget about our mortgages, insurance premiums and student loan payments for a while; we also have less free time to play between long hours, other games or sources of entertainment (e.g. Netflix) and friends/family/children vying for our attention. WoW thus had to evolve into a game where you can log on for 15-30 minutes and make meaningful progress, because if you could not, there was just no justifying that $15 fee.

TL;DR: An endgame comprised of routine activities is not inherently bad, and letting people queue for that activity more quickly helps the middle and lower end of the playerbase, who greatly outnumber the top end that might get bored more quickly. Going back to gating that behind needing to spam trade for a group first harms the game overall far more than it helps.

Even then, the stuff you can queue for is hardly endgame. I haven't been in a queue in WEEKS.

[Togath]

Are there any addons that limit the number of animated characters on screen at once? I keep crashing/lagging massively when I enter areas filled with 50-200 players plus npcs on top.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

Are there any addons that limit the number of animated characters on screen at once? I keep crashing/lagging massively when I enter areas filled with 50-200 players plus npcs on top.

Nope. Addons aren't allowed to interface with the actual models at all, to my knowledge.

[Spore]

It's been implicitly confirmed that Vol'jin is going to re-appear in some form later on, one of the designers commented that 'his story wasn't done yet'. Probably not outright resurrection, seeing as how he's mortal and the only outright resurrections go to immortals/extraplanar beings, but Ghost Vol'jin hanging around and harassing Sylvanas would be hilarious.

I feel like you - as the player - just have to remove the fel corruption from his immortal soul and then he can grant his guidance as some sort of Loa spirit. Maybe a short journey to convince any Troll tribes left on the Broken Isles to join the Horde in their fight against Gul'dan? (the Alliance could have a mirrored event with Anduin convincing part of the Nightborne to aid them in the upcoming battle)

[Psyren]

Even then, the stuff you can queue for is hardly endgame. I haven't been in a queue in WEEKS.

True, I was using a very broad definition of "endgame" there ("stuff to do at 110," basically) but the fact remains that being able to queue for even the sub-Mythic stuff is useful to learn the fights, to to gear up, to practice your class and talents etc. And that's before we get to the rewards for queuing like AP, bloods, timewalking stuff etc.

Forcing all of that to be manual would be detrimental.