It is horrible that a gaming company can have so much control over what software is developed and run on its platform.
Instead of simply making the game more fun so that less people will be forced into cheating it, they are now punishing developers and treating them like criminals.
Honorbuddy is not to blame for the massive losses of subs after the end of Wrath. Blizzard simply messed up the game too much because they thought they can make it both appealing to the masses and appealing to old timers and geeks, people with radically different and incompatible tastes and of course, in the end, they failed and alienated everyone, as was logical to happen.
Here are just some of the deficiencies of WoW, as it is.
-Poor community. People in LFR and LFD get in ass first. Tools meant to protect groups from mean, rude, non-participating members were abused to remove people in need of gear, new players who were learning, or free slots for someone's friend to get invited in place of someone else, or for pure trolling and quick ironing of disagreements between members through removal of anyone with a different opinion or need of gear from a boss others would rather skip because they already have the same or better gear. Measures to limit this were rolled out to slow, too late and often are still inadequate to protect people from abuse. Results were that many simply opted to move on to games where such things were either non-existent or rare.
-Overrated gold value. Gold was needed for everything, and was hard to acquire, often forcing people to make tough choices between doing what they actually signed for, like raiding, PVP and so on or spending days just running in circles in areas, competing with other unfortunate souls for nodes, getting bored to death. Nobody signs for a game to get bored to death. That's why people started automating the boring, repetitive part, so when they get home they can have more time for the real fun.
-Broken Battleground system. Battlegrounds have always rewarded people with grinding and farming skills instead of people with real PVP skills, as besting other players in combat is one thing, and farming enough honor for your entry-level PVP gear is another. Players farming each other in the middle is a very common practice because of this. People entering Battlegrounds need to know only two things to get geared fast and move on - where to be, and when to be there, while staying alive for as long as possible to maximize their honor gains. This makes hiding in the corner and avoiding combat rewarding, basically stimulating people to piggyback their teams and count on the next guy to do the killing for them. Some may argue that random Battlegrounds don't really matter, but they deliver a very important experience for everyone who is not part of a strong RBG or Arena team or of a strong PVP guild, which are hard to find and hard to get in, and then come all the logistical problems involved with such degrees of dedication.
-Broken Raiding experience. Real raids are still only for people from strong, well-organized raiding guilds and still require too much dedication for the average, middle class working person who just wants to chill out and have fun. Also, the rarity of such guilds and the limited slots they have are a massive problem for those 90% for whom there is simply no room there. Nobody objects that Heroic Raiding, Realm First and World First achievements should require massive dedication and should be an elitist thing, but when 90% of the player base can't see a real raid, something is horribly broken. What are these people supposed to do ? Hang in Goldshire and duel each other all day ?
-Broken Arena experience. Right now people form and disband arena teams every week, just so they can farm. Why not make a Team Finder where people can select what classes they are looking for to play with, and then the game would put them together in a group, let them use built-in voice communication so they can coordinate without the complexity of setting up Ventrilo or other third-party software if they like their Arena partners and get along with them, they make them permanently part of their team. Team forming, recruitment, management and logistics will become much more accessible and appealing to the masses. Sometimes finding people you get along with, or who are on the same page as you are, or who just meet your requirements can be a daunting task and x-realm teams, where people get assistance in finding each other would add so much to the arena experience for the average player, who right now signs up for one thing and gets another forced down his throat.
-Poor comms. Right now, the game gives people only text. They have to set up Vent or Skype or any other third-party app if they want better coordination, which this game actually requires of its players, but provides no means for them to achieve out of the box.
-Poor Single Player replay value. Blizzard claim this is strictly a team-focused game, but significant portions of it still rely on Single Player mode, namely the leveling process, which becomes more daunting and more boring the more characters you want to level up, so people end up with a rather unpleasant choice - put up with massive amounts of boredom and repetitive XP grinding or never experience the full diversity and beauty of the game at top level, because the obvious choice for many players is to stick with their single toon all their lives rather than have to go again through the same experience again for every toon they want to have. Many will simply choose to automate this in the absence of a better alternative, skipping the boring part and returning for the fun part at top level. This leads to poor understanding between players, as nobody understands the mechanics of the other's class and role, and god protect those, who get too nerfed to be viable, because often they don't have a spare toon to hop on while their Main gets fixed.
Fixing all of these would require changes, and the old players will be the first to object, but Blizzard need to make a choice, and make it firmly - do they want to keep pleasing a small, voicy group of old timers and geeks, or do they want to produce a product, which will please the masses and give them waves of new subs. They have been trying since Wrath to do both of these, and the results have always been the same - they have only managed to piss off both groups.