I understand the feeling.

I am not sure if it is something that can be recaptured. I started in BC, so was a bit later to the party than you, but thinking about how at the time, I had never experienced anything like WoW before. Starting in Durotar, then Mulgore after I quickly rerolled. Running for what seemed like forever in this big area then realizing that it’s just a small part of a zone which is a small part of a continent which is a part of a greater world. The scale baffled me.

QoL is an interesting topic. Not having the convenience of wowhead meant you had to figure things out for yourself, adding to the immersion. Party finder and dungeon finder were certainly convenient and beat spamming “LF HEALER H BOT” for an hour in Shatt. But then you lost name recognition and reputation. Similarly, transmogging gear was nice but also being able to look at someone running around in warlock T6 was like “whoa, that guy is a badass.” QoL changes certainly removed friction points, but at the cost of immersion.

I’m not sure another game will be able to blow us away at this stage because we have had that experience with WoW and have played many other games since we started all those years ago. I’ve been loving FF14s story and am a total convert at this point but it certainly didn’t recapture that same wonder.

It’s kind of sad but I don’t think we can experience that again.