The beginning of the end of WoW? No. Just the beginning of the end of what made it good.
Then Cataclysm came out. Don't get me wrong, outside of the lapse in content at the end, I wasn't a big Cata hater. I actually liked it, at first. I felt the heroic dungeons, and the first tier of content were great! And then Firelands happened. And then Deathwing happened. And then...well, nothing happened.
But, suddenly, a glimmer. Mists on the horizon. I went to the Blizzcon when it was announced. Listened to Ghostcrawler describe the new talent system. I felt like they had a handle on what they wanted to do.
In short, they didn't.
Before I get too critical, let me address what they did right with Mists of Panderia.
The questing. I felt like Cata did a great job making questing fun, and Mists largely took it a step further. Getting from 85 to 90 was pretty fun.
Outdoor bosses. Yep, never was in a good enough guild to do those back in my vanilla days. Was glad to see this come back.
And, that's really about it.
Now, what they didn't get right.
Dailies. The Vanilla days are gone. Some of us did them. Some that did them, romanticize them. Either way, dailies, up till this expansion, were voluntary. In Mists, despite what devs and community managers and loyalist fans say, were mandatory. There is a whole tier of gear between the heroic dungeons, and the 1st raids, and the only way to get them, is through dailies. So, if you hated dailies before, well, you get to hate them something fierce now.
LFR and CRZ I'm gonna tie these two together, because they put the final nail in the coffin of community in this game. These two features kill community and immersion. CRZ was a cost saving measure Blizzard could use to merge players in zones without having to merge actual servers, bringing the worst of both. At best, you could join a group for quests that have been designed to be done alone. At worst, you were griefed, killed, and harrased by players who had no accountability. LFR added to the problem, because suddenly, no one had to be accountable for their mistakes, their behavior, their gameplay, or their role.
Did I mention dailies?
Simplification of talent trees. Talent trees, while not entirely useful, were a mark of progress in a game. The simplification of them, was a solution looking for a problem. I dont think anybody cared about the uselessness of talent trees, before Blizzard first simplified them in Cata, killing the potential for hybrid builds. So, after creating the problem of uselessness, they solved the problem by making them more useless. Some people had fun, changing their talents per encounter, picking the best one or two things for a particular encounter. Honestly, I never saw the need, and just kinda motored through all the content in one. Not very fun, enriching...actually, the worst skil tree system I have yet to see implimented in any widely played game, exists in WoW right now.
Simplification of Combat I had 8 85's at the end of Cata. Not one of them felt more fun to play in Mists. Not one. I remember when I used to play other MMo's for a week or two, I'd come back to WoW, and the first thing I'd notice, was how smooth and simply engaging the combat was. Now, I've played two MMo's since, that I played before this expansion, and those MMO's combat, which has not been changed, suddenly feel BETTER than WoW. Less impact of haste, forced talents that affected mobility, made all of my characters feel slower, with less tools at their disposal. The same thing happened in Cata, but far worse this time around. Combat felt Vanilla slow, which 8 years ago, was fine. Not so fine now.
Raid content. Not bad, at first. The implimentation of LFR took away some of ease of Regular raids, by creating another tier, but we adjusted. Some new mechanics introduced, most of them what I would call "dirt" mechanics, mechanics learned for one fight only, and never seen before, that until learned, causes wipes. While some fights were genuinely fun, they were rare, and most wrapped fights in gimmicks in an attempt to be new, but lack any sort of meaning or true engagement. Fighting Deathwing's fingernails might have been a cool idea in a room, and while there is plenty going on in that fight, it's hardly epic feeling, engaging, or captivating as an encounter. Most of the Panderia fights, feel like that. Overthought, overworked, and undersold.
And dailies.
I can't speak for the last 4 months of this game, since I've left. Maybe there's been some amazing turnaround that I'm unaware of. Maybe I'm overly critical of the content I was given, and the things I felt they took away. Honestly, I don't care. The current development team, responsible for the last two expansions, has taken the game from it's height, to it's lowest point since Vanilla. They have, incidentally, regressed much of the combat back to that standard as well. They've systematically killed community, and encouraged time wasting gameplay in the form of mini games and dailies, neither of which encourage getting to know other people.
This game will go on for a good while yet. But, the best of it is gone, and with the track record of the current development team over the last two expansions, it will continue to change, but not improve, until most everyone who played will hit a moment where they realize that they game they loved, and what they loved about it, is no longer there.
They'll only wonder when it went away.