I can't agree enough with this. WoW back in the day was a little wild west, you could go to Wowhead or was it Thottbot (?) for information but it wasn't great. You could really explore and forge your own path. I rejoined for WoW Classic and to be honest playing without all my old friends was just quite sad.
I had the same experience with CoD Warzone. It took off during Covid and I could play with a bunch of mates and people could run different loadouts and strategies. By the time Warzone 2 came out, everything is, like you said, optimized and little room for error.
I honestly think streamers have ruined games with progression. There's too much drive to be at the top and too little focus on just enjoying the game.
You’re free to join any guild full of noobs and just ignore guides and material that you deem too optimized for you.
I’m the exact opposite from you, always rushing to the end game content and competing on the leaderboards. I dislike nothing more than updates that dismiss serious end game players because the noobs (99% of the player base in all honesty) dictate the difficulty and rewards of the content.
I had the same experience with CoD Warzone. It took off during Covid and I could play with a bunch of mates and people could run different loadouts and strategies. By the time Warzone 2 came out, everything is, like you said, optimized and little room for error.
I honestly think streamers have ruined games with progression. There's too much drive to be at the top and too little focus on just enjoying the game.