Since vanilla gameplay (original content) much in the World has changed. Original content focused primarily on leveling, and much less on end-game content. But what all has changed? It would be impossible for me to list everything, but here are a few primary alterations.
The first, and most obvious change, is that the level cap has increased from 60 to 90 in four expansions. The Burning Crusade expansion increased the level cap from 60 to 70, Wrath of the Lich King increased it to 80, Cataclysm increased it to 85 and Mists of Pandaria increased it to 90. With each expansion came new zones, new classes, and new races.
But more came with each expansion than levels and zones. The game play has been effected dramatically. As stated before, the vanilla gameplay focused on leveling. Getting a character to max level was a challenge and a true adventure. You would get quests, complete quests, turn them in, rinse and repeat. The average time to get a character from level 1 to 60 was approximately 4-5 days of gameplay (over 80 hours). This could take anywhere from a couple of months for a casual player, to an entire year. Now, the casual player can get from 1-90 in 3-5 days of gameplay. So how can it take anywhere near the same amount of time when there are 30 more levels to ascend? The answer is simple: Blizzard made leveling 20-60 faster with Burning Crusade, and then faster still for levels 1-70 with Wrath of the Lich King. By reducing the amount of experience needed to "ding" (level up), it rushed players through the questing zones and into end-game experience.
But questing was not as easy as it is now. Your quest log would give you a general area to go to to complete the quest, and it was up to your own powers of observation to complete said quests. If you wanted to make things easier, you could download addons or even before that, check thottbot for coordinates and maps detailing the quests. In both instances, you still relied on other players to complete the quests. But Thanks to the newest expansions, much of the player interaction was diminished. Now zones are highlighted to go to. You can look at your map and see exactly where to find the items of quest. Elite monsters for quests became easier to fight, so you don't have to group up to bring down a particularly hard foe.
Getting a mount used to be something you worked for. Not only did you have to get to level 40 for your first mount, and rely on your classes speed boost (ie travel form for druids or aspect of the cheetah for hunters) until then, the fastest mounts were achieved by spending a lot of gold after reaching level 60. Now you get a 60% speed increase mount at level 20, a 100% speed mount at level 40, flying mounts at level 60 and faster flying mounts at level 70.
But wait, there's more! In vanilla gameplay, if you really wanted better gear, either while leveling or at max level, you had to find friends or groups of people to take on dungeons and raids. These groups could take hours to form, and the result was forming bonds with many other players. You had healers, tanks, and dps on your friends list. I actually kept a list of the friends I made with their role next to their names. Now, thanks you click a button that says "que for dungeon" or "que for raid" and you're placed smack dab in the middle of a group, ready to go. It even sorts out the amount of healers and tanks you'll need. While this certainly makes leveling, gearing, and playing a lot simpler, the cost is losing connection with people. Any patch that adds a button in place of player interaction is a sad replacement indeed.
Even the very nature of classes has changed. Shamans are no longer tanks, stealthing with your rogue no longer reduces your speed, hunters can tame rare beasts, mages are more over powered than ever.
All these changes should attract more players, right? If Blizzard did their job, the changes should reel in more players, after all. But after the release of cataclysm, which resulted in a new talent organization and class specialization, introduced LFR (Looking for Raid), and much more, over 1/3 of the players left World of Warcraft. The amount of players dropped from 12 milllion to 9 million. But hey, that's still 9 million people. But that is a LOT of people to leave. If you ordered a pizza and 1/3 of it was gone, you would think that's a lot. If you had $100 and $30 went missing, you would say that's a lot. If your salary dropped by 1/3, you would say that's a lot. 3 MILLION people, were so upset about Cataclysm, they left Azeroth behind. So for those of you who say that introducing "pandas" in Mists of Pandaria ruined the game, for those of you who say that it was the latest expansion that ruined the game, just look at the numbers. It was the Cataclysm expansion that ruined the game for 3 MILLION people.
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