So basically you do useless garrison crap and tourist mode raiding and find it weird you don't enjoy the game? What exactly did you do in WOTLK?
If you want to enjoy this game you need to either do serious raiding or serious PvP WITH friends, which has pretty much always been the case tbh.
Also no clue what you people are talking about with this game being grindy... there hasn't ever been this little effort required to do proper raiding, pvp or anything in WoW.
Let's compare WoD to WotLK. Obviously, these are my thoughts/feelings/opinions on why I found the game unappealing, so I'm not saying everyone feels the same way.
PvP Zones - Wintergrasp was crazy fun. It really seemed like you were in a battle for something. Waiting a few hours for the game to start and BAM, you're either running around trying to destroy/defend towers/walls, capture factories to make siege vehicles. The team with the fewer players received a buff, which really balanced it out. It had nothing to do with how often a faction was winning/losing. Not only did you have currency rewards for winning, but you also unlocked the opportunity to do a raid. It felt rewarding to actually claim victory. Now, Ashran. Extremely boring concept with a tug-of-war feel. Start at the center, and push your way to your opponents boss and kill them. No strategic points to capture. The only thing that draws people away from the road are events that pop up every so often. Both teams go and kill each other. Winning team gets credit for 1 out of the 4 event wins needed for the weekly quest. After that, back to the road, push/get pushed, go to the event, rinse and repeat. Unless you're in a premade group, you'll lose 95% of the time. Guess what happens if your team is getting wrecked? You don't get ANY compensation for being there unless you're winning. Wintergrasp rewarded you for just participating. Hands down, Wintergrasp crushes Ashran.
Talent Trees - WotLk had 3 different trees filled with talents to select from, allowing you to build whatever crazy composition you can think of. In WoD? Every 15 levels or so, you get to pick one of three talents, ending up with what...7? I forget. Regardless, not even remotely comparable. The game, overall, is being dumbed down to appeal to the brain dead masses.
Professions - WotLK gave you reason to do a profession. Not only did you get awesome buffs, but you could really rake in profit from selling your services. Gems, enchants, pots, etc, etc. Materials were worth something then, so both gathering and crafting professions were rewarding. In WoD? Essentially no reason to even level a profession. Materials are essentially worthless, no one really needs crafting services, and there's virtually no perks to leveling them.
Lore/Raiding/Dungeons - To me, I didn't enjoy the WoD lore, or the raids. It's basically just a revamped version of BC. Archimonde? Already killed him. Burning Legion/Iron Horde crap? Already experienced it in BC. Oh look, I get to quest in Nagrand again. Few new areas, obviously, but when it comes down to it...it's a slightly modified BC. WotLK? Completely unique from any other expansion. I started back in 2009, and the first toon I leveled was a paladin, and then moved to a DK main. The first raid I ever experienced was Naxx, followed by EoE/OS, Ulduar, TotC, and finally ICC. These experiences blew my mind. Getting into a raid, first of all, took time actually forming one. You're either in a guild, or you had to PuG with people on YOUR server via trade chat recruiting. It really felt like you were putting a team of champions together to battle evil. Same thing with dungeons. You can argue that the group finder feature just makes things easier, but to me, it doesn't have the same appeal as forming a group. The raids themselves had unique strategies, and everything was fresh. By the time WoD was released, basically every mechanic had already been used in one way or another. Most of the boss fights, both in dungeons and in raids, are just rehashed versions of older fights. Obviously, heroic/mystic difficulty (Whatever it is now) still takes a lot of skill I'd imagine, but beating a harder version of the same fight really doesn't do it for me. The actual EXPERIENCE is what interests me, not the difficulty.
Honestly, I could keep going, but don't want to spend more time stating why I think WoD was a complete waste of time. The game just feels like a grind, and nothing more. Grind rep, grind dailies, grind apexis, grind garrison missions/shipyard, grind raids once a week for your legendary ring (Which is much more tedious and lengthy than it's MoP counterpart, by the way). Once all of that is done, I found myself either just sitting in my garrison which, by the way, basically shuts you off from the outside world, aside from general/trade chat, or botting dungeons for gold. Very little player interaction, aside from joining a group to finish my daily Tanaan grind.
