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Comment by jhgg | Hacker News Reader

That'd be really fun actually. But I'm still having mixed feelings about how dumbed down the game got over the years. The complexity of it during vanilla + the first two expansions really made the game fun for me. But with the homogenization of stats, and removal of lots of skills, the game just isn't fun for me anymore. Then again, I haven't played Warlords. I stopped playing when patch 6.0.2 came out.

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The Blizzcon panel on why they removed/simplified a lot of stuff was great. It is well worth watching if you can find a copy.

Basically they had a lot of abilities that weren't fun, and a bunch of stats that made the game suck. Most people were going to Ask Mr Robot to figure out which piece of gear to put on, and Icy Veins to figure out what button to press when.

They needed to carve out all the old cruft before they can add the new and exciting back in. I was equally cynical when the shattering happened, but after a few content patches was quite happy with the change.

The best way to deal with that is to see a new expansion as a new game altogether. What I enjoyed during Vanilla isn't the same thing I enjoyed in BC, etc. Right now, with Draenor, I'm having fun with Garrison which is a kind of Farmville where you can hire NPCs going on mission for you, have NPCs crafting and gathering for you. I never thought that would be the thing I'd enjoy in the game, and have I read about that pre-release keeping in mind what I enjoyed doing then, I would have questioned Blizzard for including this in the game.

> But with the homogenization of stats, and removal of lots of skills, the game just isn't fun for me anymore.

This is a common gripe but I fail to understand it. I've been playing since BC and I never found it "fun" getting my gear hit-capped, or watching gear drop that wasn't useful for anyone in the raid, or having skills I never used.

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