WoW jumped the shark 2-3 expansions ago but now that Kotick is gone, it’s been coming back. The devs are actually allowed to work on things they and the players want.
I was a hater but I actually love the current expansion and am looking forward to this. They stole skyriding from Guild Wars and we’ve been asking them to keep going - a ground mount upgrade to make it worthwhile over flying sounds awesome to me.
Yeah it’s not flawless by any means but they have been receptive to fan “demands” and are being uncharacteristically transparent about it. Like making everything cross-faction is a huge project and they were upfront about the initial jankiness and the inevitable slow rollout. Right now the only things that haven’t been made cross-faction/realm are LFG/LFR and mail.
You can really feel that Kotick is gone and that the devs are actually excited to work on stuff. It’s very telling that so many old players who swore it off are back for TWW and loving it - including my friend who quit for FF14.
My only real gripes with the game are with the engine and I imagine they’re a lot harder to fix…but I would be smitten if shit like trees and awnings would stop blocking my camera in dungeons. And if ground effects didn’t clip into the terrain.