I was a top 1000 in the world player in WOL as a Zerg Player and even got to Mid-Masters as random all with mostly macro play and solid mechanics. I played BW as well, who doesn't remember the days of trivia bots, social clans, and incredibly fun custom games.
I am speaking to you today because I was one of those players who never bought HOTS and moved onto other games towards the end of WOL. I am giving blizzard a guide on how to bring back a player like me for LOTV.
The reason's I stopped playing are many but here is a small list of the biggest issues that kept that left me frustrated with the state of the game.
Games that center around deathball play even at the highest level. Who doesn't remember the PvZ moment where the entire 30 minutes were gambled on an archon toilet, or a some sort of positioning error that should have been punished but simply ended the game because your units evaporated to a 200/200 deathball.
-unit pathing behavior, collision radius, ect -balance centered around aoe -overkill/relatively high dps of units mechanics
Battle.net has the social atmosphere of a morgue. Custom game changes and clan support made the problem worse.
-UI issues as well as lack of customization of clan and chat channels, friend and clan discover features, ect
-you can only view popular games rather than finding a fun custom you like. This ruins the very organic process of new custom games becoming popular or being able to discover and old custom and play it with random people.
Game mechanics limited micro due to overkill and dps of death-balls. Making the game less interesting to play and watch.
DPS, Aoe centered balance, New HOTS ground holding units were supposed to break deathballs but actually exacerbated the problem by messing with the strategy of base trading, and led to 2 hours standstills.
The fundamental economy changes from BW to sc2
-http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/legacy-of-the-void/482775-a-treatise-on-the-economy-of-scii
-gold bases, mules, and supply relation of works to different workers gave a very uncomfortable feel to the economy of different races.
Lack of moving shot and micro limiting mechanics from unit design, left a very rock paper scissor feel that has destroyed countless RTS's.
-lack of terrain strategy, high ground advantage and miss chance, it's almost a crime for positioning and terrain decisions not be a more fundamental part of the gameplay. There is more depth here but it was never really explored.
-http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/starcraft-2/433944-depth-of-micro
-There was an extensive TL post a few years ago about this issue of why broodwar was so fun and successful included vulture mines, dragoon pathing, moving shot, carrier leash radius ect
-Units that are hard countered should be able to turn into soft counters via good micro
Overall balance approach wildly skewed towards creating a statistical 50% win-rate while ignoring the actual entertainment of watching and playing a game.
-Gameplay is what keeps players coming back, investing in E-sports, and grows the playerbase, not statistical balance. Statistical balance should be the second priority of balance.
Catering to low level players had the opposite effect. Low level players look up to pro's and high level players for entertainment value. (top down approach, not bottom up)
-Focus on gameplay first and tweak the numbers for the 50% win-rate once the game has a better feel.
-Make multiple play-styles and unit combos effective and interesting for each race
-cheese, mechanics victory, overwhelming economy,
In addition, all these problems bleed into one another because starcraft is a complex system.
Race Specific Issues
Zerg -Supply changes to hydralisk and roaches cause zerg to lose its swarm feel, and fundamentally made the race less unique and fun to play. Zerg was limited to the same supply cap, but with less cost effective units leading to the awkward way to play via re-maxing, which shouldn't have had as much emphasis as it did in sc2. The deathball effect didn't help with this either.
Protoss -Lack of a effective harasser and warpgate, warpgates, warpgates. Jesus christ make warpgates be a descision not a core part of the race, all strategy games are based on defenders advantage and warpgates distort this to absurdity, PvP in Wol anyone.
Terran -Probably the most well designed race of sc2, but one of the races punished the most by the fundamental game design issues like deathballs and especially economy changes.
Blizzard, if you want players like me and I know many more other than myself, you need to fix or at least put some effort into these issues the community has been frustrated with for years.