Quote Originally Posted by SDaemon View Post
Only way I'd go back to WoW is if they got rid of the insane AP grind. Artifact weapons and the AP grind really put me off WoW and the only saving grace was playing with my friends there, who eventually quit and then so did I.
To me the AP grind is actually very close to being a great thing. Ideally, something like that should give limitless time to do something that contributes to your character, but at a massively tapering rate so that casuals can have very nearly the same outputs. My issue with it was its effect on alts, which has never been handled even-handedly, even if it saw massive improvements in patch 7.25. Research should have been at least largely and automatically account-wide from the beginning, and spending on one spec's artifact should have reduced costs on the others'. Had it all just been handled more consistently and formulaicly, rather than seeing arbitrary fix-up changes every few patches, I'd have actually been quite happy with the Artifact system.

I'd actually tossed around similar ideas with friends concerning a Legend/Prestige system, partly categorical, partly general, partly job-based, partly discipline-wide, that has no actual gates or caps but just tapers the relative gains made in order to keep the maximum passive outputs of any given players of various durations of play or varying play efficiency close enough generally and for the contents they're participating in.

Oddly enough, 1.x already had this, in a way, save that it didn't allow you to use time played to increase the efficiency floor, making it unfair for players playing at extended rates but with interest in only one job—e.g. in maximal output or vertical gearing. It was called the fatigue system. Again, a system ruined by one aspect of oversight, which otherwise got more right than wrong, given the selling points of the game.