After playing a ton of WoW again the last couple days, I'm reminded once more of how much of a blueprint the game left that could have been taken by Bungie when building Destiny- and still potentially could. There are some WoW staples we're finally getting close to, like Transmog, but others like endgame matchmaking still seem like they're never going to happen in Destiny even though again, WoW showed it can be done a decade ago. Destiny's issues go beyond that though to it being a game that forever struggles in who it's trying to serve, as well as when it comes to the topic of accessibility.  I played WoW intensely between 2008 and 2015 and the experience I've had the last two days is all the good and none of the headache... Gathering: no longer run forever around zones praying to find nodes first. Everyone can get them. Killing world enemies: again, it's not a race to tag first. Someone is fighting and you join in? You both can loot. -I'm leveling Engineering and Alchemy. It's still a ton of work that requires either investing gold heavily or using multiple characters/ friends who can provide mats like herbs, ores, leather, cloth, etc., but while there's still the extra work to get the materials, it's not an RNG fight to find them. To break it down into the simplest difference, WoW in 2020 is a game that respects players time. The WoW I played before did anything but, and swinging things back to Destiny, it is a game that too often felt like a job before the intense FOMO was added and is once more under fire and seemingly at yet another crossroads. Who is Destiny for? What is the game trying to be? And why doesn't any direction ever stick? WoW has undergone as many or more changes over the years as any game in history, but none of them changed what the game is at its core. One of the biggest complaints in Destiny right now is that all the old content is left behind, both in never updated vendors, factions, patrols, strikes, story, etc.- which are all things D1 did pretty well with in comparison, and now all the seasonal content goes away. Bungie has always had this really weird idea that Destiny should move away from gear. It happened 3 months into D1 and players hated it then, and yet here we are still with seasonal armors and even Solstice gear becoming moot with each next release. WoW implemented Transmog a decade ago because they found players were so attached to gear, and WoW's gear doesn't have nearly the personal feel of Destiny's, particularly Destiny's weapons which have true unique feel to them and aren't just stat sticks. Certainly there are differences in the games and worlds, but there are way too many striking similarities as well for lessons to not be learned; and in always moving in radically new directions, Bungie is forever having to build backwards to reset missteps. I respect the hell out of the people who work at Bungie and I know the love and Dedication they have for the universe and the community who populate it, and it's always painful seeing the latest community uprising when the beds are too hard or too soft and never just right, but it also says a lot about the decision makers at the top that the game keeps ending up here. Bungie made a phenomenal new IP and world with Destiny and it's all still right there, but at some point the vision needs to be believed in and held true. Community feedback is great. A close Dev/community relationship is ♥️, but community shouldn't be driving massive development and design philosophy shifts every 6 months. None of this is a new discussion either. I've written about these same issues for a long time now as have others on these forums, but it seems like the only feedback that the studio listens to and really is concerned about are the ones that come from dissatisfied influencers or ones that lead to all out forum revolts of toxicity and negativity. I wrote up above about Destiny being a game where the decision makers seem to not want permanence with our gear, but the entire franchise has had just staggering amounts of disposable content, not the least of which was the entirety of the original game, but going beyond that to D2, let's look at all the time/money/resources spent creating content that's gone away or lost any relevance: The Farm The entire original D2 campaign All planet vendors Lost sectors Patrols Adventures Factions Y1&2 expansion campaigns Escalation Protocol Blind Well The Menagerie The Reckoning Updated Old Russia for Thunderlord The Vex Offensive The Corridors of Time And that isn't close to everything. It's insane that a game with as much content as Destiny has, has become a game so Hyper focused on specific Seasonal events or quests, that once those are finished, players are immediately starved for things to do. It's also created a game where everyone who isn't into playing Destiny as a job and grinding their lives away to not miss out before the current hotness goes away so they can "say they were there when", don't have anything of relevance to log in and have fun playing when they get on. The campaigns aren't fully replayable and have never been updated with new rewards or even harder difficulty levels like Halo had. Strikes, vendors, lost sectors and patrols are all the same as the day they released. Banshee, Zavala, Shaxx, etc all have the same gear they did at the end of Y1. Factions never returned. The story is inaccessible without grinding lore... and now once more the players who's feedback has driven this development direction are again not happy and publicly calling out the game/studio, even as they get catered events that push them to the top of the sub charts on twitch. So as I dive back into WoW on a new character and I not only can play the same content (zones, quests, dungeons, etc) that I played a decade ago, but that are still relevant, fun and even better now with the ability to level in any zone now vs being tied to the same progression paths each play through; I look to Destiny's future and I hope that Bungie can find a balance and consistency in it's vision of the game and universe that allows it to build forward more and backward less, because the game stops wasting content, leaves less behind and becomes the living evolving world with something for everyone that D1 was at its best.