For me it's Diablo II. Granted I've played my fair share of D2 since launch, and also recently on a private server with a comrade from hexbear, but I still feel like years later the game didn't grab me as much as D1 did.
Granted I don't hate D2, but for a game that I keep coming back to, D1 takes the prize.
I'm glad I never got into competitive PvP or hardcore raiding since I had lots of fun as an enh shammy. Sure, the only time I was actually a force to be reckoned with was wielding a Corpsemaker in Level 20-29 Warsong Gulch, but goddamn those Windfury proc multicrits were satisfying. Also Spirit Wolves are cute. When I did some casual raiding I would occasionally get grumbles about my DPS, but whatever, that was never why I played the game. It was just a way to have fun with my buddies...once they quit, there was nothing keeping me there. Glad I got out before they jumped the shark.
My issue is when fun pve powers were nerfed because of pvp crap I didn't care for in the first place.
That's why FFXIV has entirely different action bars and rotations for each class in pvp: to avoid that.
I used to love using a huge two handed hammer with Windfury, sometimes even oneshotting people in battlegrounds (yes, I pvp'd but only there because arenas were stunlock meta-hells) until forced skill tree railroading required lava lash offhand mechanics.
The hubris was so cringe and oh boy once the Blizzard shit really hit the fan later, could not overlook that. Online friends had the energy to pester me for a year to come play the dragon expansion or whatever, but as a lass it all just became a huge 🤢.
Shadowlands was utterly banal slop, especially compared to at-the-same-time FFXIV's Shadowbringers which is still arguably the best overall expansion that game ever received.
I always found the "hot corrupted and maybe crazy waifu" cliches from Blizzard, such as Sylvanas, to be lowkey misogynistic (don't get me started about Kerrigan especially in Starcraft 2) and the female characters in FFXIV were so much better.
Agreed. And the visceral hate for Sylvanas that was very clear at least in the gamer dudes I was around was also always very sus.
I did try to play in Shadowlands for a bit. What an utter bore it was.
I didn't hate Sylvanas as much as I wished she was written better and wasn't just presented as yet another "corrupted" victim with "corrupted" victim motivations.
Especially funny since in the original Warcraft 3 campaign she gets killed and revived as a ghost-like Banshee. Then in the expansion for the game she plays a bigger role in the story, so naturally the devs decided they had to retcon her to be a "sexy" undead elf after all. They were so close to accidentally having a non-sexualised female main character lol
I hate that too.
Kerrigan, for a time, almost worked as a "corrupted but willingly owning it" villain in Starcraft Brood War, but nooooooo it's time for DudeBro McManPain to rescue his waifu, ignoring his promise to put a bullet in her at the end of Brood War in the process.