Blizzard honestly. Unless something changed drastically within the last 5-8ish years since I last played, Blizzard makes games that create toxic players at their base. They allow things like DPS meters. They allow their mechanics to be beaten by sheer brute strength instead of actually doing the fight correctly. Their mechanics often have very confusing visual designs (see Thunder King and stand in this lighting but not that lighting). Honestly, this is just off the top of my head, trying to not scratch at some traumatic memories. This isn't even getting into the sex scandels cosby suit stuff, and the fact that Ghostcrawler was a big part of the base game and went to be the lead developer of the most toxic gaming communities of all time (League of Legends).

To my understanding from my family who still play, it's kind of a soulless husk of itself, and that's really saying something. Anyone who actually cared about the creation game left around the time of the great rat jumping ship era, right before the sex scandal was revealed. It's main focus is to try and get as much money out of you as possible while giving less for its sub.

Don't even get me started on the lore. I heard what they did to Sylvanus, like, someone should be smacked for that alone and that's not mentioning all the other things. Like, the lore was never good; I say that as someone who was obsessed with it, but fucking hell. If it's going to be slop, at least let it be fun slop.

For clarity, I started WoW when I was very young. And played all the way from BC to 7.3. I had the Time Lost Proto Drake (which will always be my big fish story). They finally crossed a line with a patch, something to do about gatekeeping content for no reason a second time. I told myself, I would stop playing if they did it again, and I did.

Should I play the beta? I have access to it, but I also feel like I'd like to be surprised on day 1; then again playing the beta can be a unique experience that can't be replicated (probably); I'm personally waiting to log in minute 1 on release day and roll my undead rogue (or maybe paladin as they've now fixed tanking for them!).