My grandfather used to call it “telling someone to go to hell and make them like it” – what I am talking about here is what I have come to think of as “the great retcon” by Blizzard.

Retroactive continuity – Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retroactive_continuity

Retroactive continuity, or retcon for short, is a literary device in which established facts in a fictional work are adjusted, ignored, or contradicted by a subsequently published work which breaks continuity with the former.

I logged on for my regular outing in the virtual world only discover the artifact that had been touted throughout the entire first half of the Legion Expansion has had its abilities taken away to ostensibly remove a giant sword thrust into the depths of the ground in what is possibly the most visually disgusting area of all Azeroth, followed by East Plaguelands as a close second.   Mind you I knew something like this was in the works, and I fully expected to have a choice in the matter in order to start the Battle for Azeroth expansion.  Still, logging on to find it gone, along with talent tree skills nerfed back to the last expansion was a bit much for my liking.  It was almost as if I had just read a story that ended “…and then I woke up” (something my writing teacher back in undergraduate days actually cautioned against).

“But you will get a swell medallion that gives you many of the powers back when you start the new expansion” some have said.  Well at this point that is in another five levels and it would have been nice to be asked at that point, even if it was a “pro forma” sort of question.   This is the point I naturally would have balked at being given one of the most powerful weapons in the game, at least lore wise, and then having it pulled out from under me like a magician pulling a tablecloth out from under a table full of dishes.

But this isn’t where the “…go to hell and make them like it” come into play.

Where it begins is when I start to add up the cost for the two of us to play a game that is a bit “long in the tooth” as the expression goes.   Just about $100 for the two of us to buy the expansion, add to that the cost of a game that, unbelievably, still has a subscription and you are talking about $130.00 just to walk in the door and take a look around.

This is the point at which I find myself saying “…usually I get flowers first”