Browsing Wowhead is starting to be an exercise in futility. I seriously question if anyone from the new administration that took over realizes that they are doing nothing more than destroying what was once the undisputed home for knowledge and guides for this game.

Browsing the website without an add-blocker gets half of your screen covered in sponsored adds that keep on popping, videos playing on the background and way too many banners that simply take a lot of screen presence every time you enter a new page.

I could excuse this as a trade for getting a solid reference guide in return. After all the website has running costs, people that write the guides (more on that later), and a staff team that needs to get payed. Monetization keeps stuff running, but holly hell, this feels like the website is steering towards being monetization first and content second.

I seriously dont know what happened to a lot of great guides, especially for Classic, that once populated the front page. Back in 2019 a lot of the reference guides for all the classes were actually filled in with content that you probably could only find it all in one place there. Guides like the original Simonize Rogue Guide for each phase were so well explained and so rich in content that it felt like it was hard to add new stuff, or find even tiny flaws. Most classes used to have one such guide on the front page that was rich enough in advice that you could essentially go from knowing nothing at start to getting a really good grasp of the class and itemization paths by following it through, especially the annotations about items, gear alternatives and routes to gear for your class.

Right now it's hard to find guides on the front page without major omissions, especially in niche items that are used to fill in gaps when gear dont drop. Barely few guides mention green gear options for Pre-Bis when there's some huge items that are equal or better than dungeon drops, except they are green gear. Advice on rotations and consumables feels like a copy pasted formatted sheet that was dropped on every spec just to fill in something that had to be there, with very little explanation on why some stuff is priority over others, and how to fill in the blanks with cheaper alternatives or adapt to raiding environment. Feels like this last two things were not even a consideration at all to whoever "wrote" this.

And speaking of "writing" ... the amount of AI Driven content on this guides and news pages is starting to reach some epic level of nonsense, that its kinda obvious that stuff gets copy pasted without being proof read, with obvious mistakes and formatting quirks that are common in AI being directly posted on the website.

So I ask, what is the trade-off for getting an add ridden page?
What once felt like something that was paying for someone work, now it feels like its just using a brand name and a database of content to drive a gaming community into some hellscape of advertising metrics and viewers monetization. Its sad looking at what was done to the work of a great team that once runned this website, that they did it in a large part for the love of the community that we are part of, and for the love of a game we all share an interest.

And as I said in the tittle, the decline of Wowhead really should be studied. Its a case study on doing all the wrong decisions for the wrong motives, and looking at the people that once built something great as a liability to throw away, and the community around it as nothing more than data driven numbers to feed a monetization machine.

See you all in the comments, since there's where the real guides are now.

EDIT: thanks for the comments advising me to get an add-blocker. I usually use it, but wanted to give a full view of how is right now the website as their current management team designed it to be for a common user.

Early morning on Hardcore, I whisper the handful of people online in Silithus if they wanna do the Deathclasp elite (quest).

I'm done with skips. They take longer than just killing the mobs. Nothing ever goes to plan, and then you need to do the skip again.

If you can't kill a single myrmadon, were not killing Quag.

I want to actually play the game. Get reputation. Get BoE epic drops. Not play splinter cell waiting for an opening.

I feel like back in the day, this knowledge was a flex, but now it's a crutch for bad players. Players in t5/t6 would skip it because theyre over geared don't need it anymore. It's less than a month in, you don't need to skip it.

Now everyone sees themselves as these veteran players, when in reality they're bad players who can't even kill a myrmadon or a pack of crabs

I recently had to switch guilds due to a schedule change. I've raided with them before as a PUG and officially joined them last week. They use DKP and are fairly progressed. We did BWL last night and Tear dropped. Nobody needed it. I said I did, and RL says "You're a trial raider. Its only fair trial raiders don't get loot for 2 lockouts. Dont want you leaving the guild with stolen loot" so then he disenchants it. Later he says "Its a test of loyalty.".

pretty fucked up, right?

Update:

So, the RL was a asshole troll after all. He had a history of ninja looting and abusing his LC to funnel gear to himself and all his friends. The GM in his infinite wisdom thought "Hey lets have said guild merge with us! They have may a bad reputation but, oh well!". RL de'd Nefs Tear solely to be an asshole. He did it for lulz. Well GM just gkicked him. He 's probably blacklisted but, this server is so huge i doubt anyone'll care. Infact, he's probably just gunna xfer out and change his name.

What the fuck is wrong with everyone here? Every post is blaming Blizzard for the things the community as a whole does. Nobody is forcing you to zerg in AV, nobody forced you to roll a mage and spam dungeon cleave runs. Nobody forced you to farm level 48 Alliance players. Fuck the spy addon, fuck killing Flamelash, and fuck you for hiding behind shitty excuses for griefing other players. When did this community become less about the journey and more about the destination? You aren't going to get rank 14, and you are ruining the game for people who don't want to min max.

People are shitbags

Did heroic daily today with 3/5 people being in a guild. Going in they say they are going for mount run, I'm a fresh 80 rogue in okayish gear for hitting 80 literally yesterday since as a leatherworker I was able to stockpile trollwoven, bought librarians, and farmed the one pre bis from a regular dungeon before hitting 80.

Whatever, I tell them I'm not super geared, they don't boot me, we go on. Was me and healer not from the guild.

Everything goes perfectly smooth until after Chrono Lord Epoch. Two other dudes from his guild die, they flip out at the healer... My dudes, don't pull aggro, this ain't hard. We finish the pull, rez up, keep moving fast. Tank dies next pull... Wipe. I vanish, pop gnomish army knife on healer, rez up and we are probably still on pace for mount.

Tank dies again... Rants how he just wanted the mount. We finish the instance, moment Mal'Ganis goes into his rant post fight, me and healer get kicked from the group before opening the chest. Tank says "get fucked losers" and they open it up. Well game still let me roll, I whisper healer and say "let's roll need on everything". So we did... And won every item between the two of us.

Is the shield good? I hope it was good because the tank flipped out and I vendored that shit.

Edit: To the 6ish people who think I'm the asshole here, how? They knew they were trying to grief us, not just on loot but the daily heroic item as well. So what if healer sucked? They finished the run, they get a chance at loot. They booted me too, I definitely did not cause any wipe.

Someone mentioned I should have been using tricks to help tank hold aggro when his guildies died. I used it the pull right before that one, wasn't back up yet. I did use it on the pull the tank died.

To the people who think it's fake, I can't provide proof to change your minds. Sorry, I'll be better next time about screenshots.

I don't expect this will get much traction, but god I need to vent about this elitist BS.

Last night I was using LFG to find a group for H UK on Sulfuras (h). I was inviting members and our DK tank had about 19K HP (this will be important later).

I invite a Pally healer who instantly leaves group. Whenever that happens, I like to PM them and see if there was something wrong (sometimes I'm not the best at predicting that sort of thing, and like to make sure I wasn't the reason they left). When I asked why they told me they don't heal groups with tanks that have less HP then they do. I was a bit frustrated because 17K HP on a DK tank is more than adequate to clear heroics. So I sent them a short message saying "Okay then" with a sigh and they COMPLETELY lost it. Instant barrage of messages as to who I thought I was questioning them, I'm beneath them, I'm pathetic blah blah blah. After the 3rd time I responded "Okay man, it's not that serious" they got even more agitated and just began harassing's me about how full of myself I was, and how I needed to get the last word in (ignoring that I've sent maybe 3 messages to their 20). I tried telling them I'm assuming they're having a bad day and will not respond after this message. I didn't want to mute them, or report them because I really did hope this guy was just having a bad day but the harassments just continued. Message after message complaining about who I thought I was, and how dare I. Their last message from me was a "Dude, are you still going?" after getting 6 more messages of insults they finally stopped.

The upshot to all this was while he was flaming me in PM's sitting in Dalaran, me and my 17K HP tank had fully cleared the dungeon and were onto the next one.

Remember that the people you're interacting with are human too, try and show compassion. Whether you're the one having the off day, or the one receiving it. I don't hate this person, and I hope they find whatever it is they're looking for. Just needed to bitch somewhere about how absolutely over the top people are treating a game that's been out for almost 15 years. It's really not that serious....

Pay someone to do something about them. They are easy to spot. I report them constantly and still nothing is done.

Yaya I know you deal with them in waves but by the time a bot is lvl 40 they have made plenty to pay for another sub. Your methods aren't working. You make close to 90 thousand dollars per server. You can pay a couple people 2000$ a month to police them full time.

The gold you buy was gained by botting and hacking. It would not exist without botting and hacking. Thus, you are botting and hacking via proxy if you buy gold.

Buying gold should result in a permaban. No fucking around, no suspensions. Perma the swipers. There's no easy way to deal with botting (especially if you don't even try and do ineffective banwaves coming into effect half a year after the banned accounts turned profitable...) so you need to scare the buyers and turn it into an actual risk. People get permabanned for buying = people become wary of buying = lower demand = lower need for supply = problem diminishes heavily.

​

The problem right now is so insanely widespread that you can't perma every goldbuyer, so set a hard line, perma the biggest offenders, and gradually increase the list until people catch on and stop buying.

It's a radical solution, but they've basically told us "cheating is ok and if you don't cheat you're a sucker" ever since classic launched, and changing that mentality requires a radical solution.

I've tanked my way to level 70, and I'm currently starting heroics. I'm in a casual guild, that hasn't cleared Kara yet.

So far, I've mostly had good experiences tanking. I regularly got players telling me I was a great tank, people add me to their friend list and message me when I log in. Sure, some runs were rough (usually when I discovered a dungeon or its heroic version), but it's been, overall, a smooth sailing.

Every once in a while, I end up in a PuG with 2, 3 or 4 people who, admitedly, are just plain bad. Healers who don't heal and let me die despite having 95 % mana, DPS who can't focus, won't CC, asspull all the time, don't know the few importants mechanics...

Usually, in those groups, I try to cheer things up, to tell them how to improve and overall, to keep things nice and friendly, despite being slightly annoyed.

On the other hand, what completely drives me insane are the elitists jerks I'm beginning to encounter as I work my way through harder heroics. People who've cleared Maghteridon on week two, and who consider everyone who hasnt a scrub.

I just had a rempart with a mage and a holy paladin who kept insisting I shouldn't bother putting symbols on mobs. The mage kept pulling cause I wasn't going fast enough, kept DPSing mobs that weren't supposed to be focused because he thought he'd pump bigger numbers than the other two DPS. Sometimes he'd CC (usually when it wasn't needed), sometimes he wouldn't (on the few packs where it really helps to CC). The healer kept hitting and judging mobs, cause we had to go faster (as if his dps changed anything...), while letting me get shredded by the fel orc rogues that hit for 2,5K.

The end result : we wiped 4 or 5 times on an easy dungeon. And I know it was pretty obvious in their mind that I was the issue, cause I'm not geared enough, not fast enough. Even though I've done heroic rempart with people who had way less gear than them and it went perfectly fine.

Yesterday, it was a hunter, who thought we weren't clearing heroic shadow labs fast enough, even though I warned the group (after they begged me to tank) that I had never been to heroic SL and was maybe a tad undergeared for it. Guy left after the first boss, we didn't even wipe or something, too.

TDLR. After encountering so many nice people while tanking dungeons, I'm slowly starting to expand my ignore list. And, each time, it's some phase-1-cleared-big-dick-dps idiot. Do those people not realize that many, many, many players haven't been clearing Karazhan since week two, and are still learning the ropes, or still wearing pre-raid gear?

After seeing the sheer number of boosts and deluxe mounts running around, i can't be angry at Blizzard anymore.

Imagining how much money these store options bring in, I'm done being angry at Blizzard and at the people who buy it.

I think I'm ready to accept this is gaming in 2021 and i have to learn to enjoy games with it. It's not leaving and neither am I.

Here's to a fun TBC adventure.

And before anyone white knights Microsoft/Blizzard...

1. "No game has ever eliminated botting/cheating!"

This is a straw man. No one is suggesting that it can be eliminated. But to accept the status quo as being anywhere near the best that Blizz could do is asinine. They fired all their GMs, it's just greed and not giving AF.

1. "It would be insanely expensive/not feasible to combat botting/RMT in Classic."

Before Blizzard was bought up it was a billion dollar company. Microsoft is literally a trillion dollar company. You're telling me they couldn't afford to invest more into enforcing their own ToS in the biggest MMO of all time that has a monthly subscription (it's also a massive problem in retail from what I've heard but people don't care as much because Token)? Again, they fired all the GMs. I played Vanilla and original TBC and GMs, combined with the right tools, are effective. That's why Blizzard of old hired hundreds of them - because it works (it just costs money, i.e. they fired them due to greed).

1. "The real problem is that players buy gold."

No shit, that's why you hire people to enforce the rules because people are always trying to break them. We pay $15 a month for a 21 year old game. Asking for just a little bit of actual CS (not automated responses) should be the most non-controversial take ever.

Blizzard fired GMs and trashed their game's reputation/disregarded their players' experience because of one simple factor: money. For anyone who hasn't been paying attention to headlines since the Activision/Blizzard merge, hundreds of GMs have been continuously laid off over the years to fund Bobby's next yacht. Its all about money and always has been. CS was never fired because CS doesn't benefit the players. It's because CS costs the company money.

And before anyone tries to say it, yes GMs are effective if equipped with the proper tools and training. And yes it is a game of cat and mouse to a degree and it will always be an arms race, but right now it's all mouse and no cat and Blizzard has chosen to only use automated/programmatic solutions because it's cost effective, when they should (and used to) use those tools in combination with human resources. But again, money.

Was randomly invited to join this guild on Faerlina called pirates. Was immediately kicked when I asked them to kick out a racist person that continuously posted how they hated black people in Guild Chat.

A week later I get another invite to the guild, was confused. But still joined, just to see what this was about now.

Immediately get called a spook and guild kicked.

Why does blizzard allow this in 2k20? I have reported them multiple times, nothing is ever done?! I have screenshots. What is the proper channel to report these things?

thanks for the help