Two reasons. First is
Metahuman. It's a tool by Epic Games that was initially made for UE. It can import models but also comes with pre-mades and a roided out Bethesda-like character editor. The problem is that it works just like a bethesda character creator, it interpolates between two different extreme models models using sliders. I played around with it and the extremes are less extreme that in oblivion, despite this being profesional creative software and not a video game from 2006. Here's some screenshots form the official documentation, you'll have to trust me that the other options aren't much better.
Thank you! I've always know that it was mostly about cost cutting. If you have a project and you need time to develop models from the ground up, that's time and money that could be spend elsewhere (like coke and hookers for the investors). If they had modeled Ana de Arms back in the day, I'm pretty sure we would all be aving Latina fatigue in 2026. I know that some people latched on to it for empowerment/go woke-gobroke narratives but those are bottom feeders; development costs will always be the root cause of product enshittification.
My take: Retail World of Warcraft in 2026 is a perfectly good MMO experience (gay centaurs aside).
I just came back from hitting 3400 RIO and I actually liked the mythic + season. Key resilience made is so I wasn't too afraid of bricking my key or other's. Talking to people about dungeon mechanics helped filter the retards from the group. Vote to abandon helped with smooth transitions from one broken key to a succesful one. The gearing method introduced in DF Season 2 is still the smartest way to tackle gear progression and not feel mazed (running the same fucking dungeon over and over in hopes of a trinket a la BFA and SL). And in the end, gearing matters less compared to mechanics. Big numbers can only take you so far, interrupts, hard CC, weaving pulls (not chain pulling) and knowing the dungeon beats having a 290 ilvl score.
Finally, I'm fucking old, I don't have time to do the grind from scratch when a new season drops - normal; heroic, mythic. You gear up and with enough can do attitude you can start doing the fun parts of the PVE. I realized that the "classic experience" or "the hardcore gamer experience" is just time wasting for the sake of wasting it. My gaming time starts around 10.30 PM after the kids are in bed, my meals are prepped and the kitchen is clean. I'm not playing a game that deliberatly kills my precious free time for "muh immersion".
I didn't mention the story at all because, eh, it's millenial writing 101. There is not 1 but 2 entire quest zones that act as a therapy session mandatory to progress. We need to get that 40 year old boy on a discovery journey (while he is a high ranking general currently at war with devils from a shadow dimension) so he doesn't feel sad.
I've made my peace with lore being shit because it's 2026. I haven't played a single game past 2015 (witcher 3 being the last) because I know what I'm buying and I just don't want to. So as long as I'm not paying attention to the story, I'm ok with it.
Finally, why I made this post? Because Yt recommended me a video that I can only describe as Peak Contrarianism:
To anyone who doesn't want to waste time; tldr - WoW started going to shit in The Burning Crusade and his arguments are: "things got way too convenient with mounts, and more areas and teleport stones"
It just hit me that every single one of these motherfuckers is the same. They are raging against retail blizzard and classic+ and remix and whatnot, not because they hate the game or want the game to be harder, but because they deeply want to go back to 2006. They want the whole world to reset to 2006 so even if you give them exactly what they want (classic) they will not take it at face value because the world has moved on. Most of the people I pugged these months are the same, we're old fucks and Blizz is catering retail to us. This is a death sentence for any game since we are not passing the torch to a younger audience but after almost 25 years of a life service game, how many more years do you want? Imagine a TV show going on for a quarter of a century.
As the saying goes, "No king rules forever". So when retail wow goes, it goes. RIP.