I feel like WotLK was the sweet spot

[RH92]

And I'm just here, sitting, laughing my ass off remembering the old days. Yeah, you probably remember them too, when Wrath Of The Lich King was current content and was called the worst expansion set ever.

You people just want to complain.

Yeah, true... But I think it is because of every expansion is appealing a different kind of player and maybe WotLK managed to appeal to the biggest mass. Only the so called "Hardcore elitists" complained about WotLK. The thing I never really understand is what was all the fuss about the TBC. Only thing I enjoyed about it was world PvP on Isle of Quel'danas. And I started playing WoW in S2.

HOWEVER, in my opinion WotLK had the best balance between Casual and Hardcore. And I honestly think that second or third PvP season in WotLK was the most balanced one ever, almost every spec was viable. Never was a PvE player, but I liked the accessibility of it. Storywise it still felt like a Warcraft not a mix of references.

Trough the WotLK the only thing I complained a lot about was the f*cking Mage Armor (And about Mages overall, who were claiming they deserve to be OP after TBC, lol) with me being an Affliction Warlock. And I really liked more the "bursty" PvP... Enjoyed the overpowered Destruction from time to time and as Affliction I could even kill healers (Unlike in the Cataclysm, where one HoT outhealed my 3 DoTs)...

If they would continue along the lines of WotLK maybe I would still playing it...

[Celista]

Oh and I loved the Hardmode mechanics for Ulduar, but T9 was the start of the Heroic Mode that I find really bad.

Maybe this is why T9 gets such a bad rep on the forums...I agree that Ulduar's approach at hardmodes was the better approach though.

ToC/ToGC wasn't that bad. T9 had no trash so that instantly puts it in my top 5 of wow raids because 9 times out of 10 I'd rather shoot myself in the eye than clear trash in WoW.

[yjmark]

Unlimited mana for healers spamming 1-2 spells, DPS rotation consiting 3-4 buttons in rigid order, Shadowmourne teams cutting through everything, Raid constantly nerfed to the ground with not so fancy bosses except LK.

Wasnt really sweet spot. MoP>>>>>>>WotLK. Its just nostalgia ;P

Well, it's pretty obvious that people want things to be simpler, and not more complex. WotLK was the simplest that WoW ever was. Cata and MoP have difficulty levels that far exceed WotLK, and people resent it. Lots of folks want the easy content that WotLK really embraced.

[Statix]

8.5 million people everyone with different toughts. its no point on having a winning team going if only a few enjoyed

Well, I think the 4 million people that left the game are a good indication that WoW is heading in the wrong direction. Let it be clear that WoW has lost a third (33%!) of it's playerbase since WotLK. That's insane.

Wrath of the Lich King was the sweet spot. Everything was as it was supposed to be. The game was easy to learn, but hard to master. You actually had to put some time into it. Not just mindlessly doing the same thing over and over again. There were a lot of dungeons and raids had more than 10 bosses in them. Talents were still awesome.

Not to say Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria haven't brought some really interesting features, but I could live without those if that meant returning to WotLK style WoW.

[Deleted]

Lich king on 10man HC was " hard " for puggers to complete. They had a challenge to do so and a different titlte.

On the other hand , 25m HC Lk was ALOT harder and required alot more teamwork to complete, yet even with the 25% buff people still failed and were still progressing.

Yogg-Saron 0 keepers up was also hard, still in icc gear some guilds had trouble with it. No i am not talking about your Paragon or Ensidia guild who / facepalmed through content.

Yes wotlk was awesome.

[Deamon002]

I disagree. It's not that simple.

WotLK introduced a lot of improvements over TBC, true. But it also introduced a lot of the rot that drove me away for most of Cata. Specifically, the notion that 'everyone should get to see all the content', which quickly turned into 'handouts for everyone, doesn't matter how bad you are' and the dumbing down of content. As for raiding, Ulduar was great, ICC was decent (on its own merits anyway, it was left as the top-tier raid for far too long), the rest was varying degrees of crap, especially RS and the Cardboard Colosseum.

[Kouhi]

Only thing best about Wrath was the questing experience. Lich King always showing up made me feel like my hero was actually an important part of the story, and not just a side note to major characters. From a casual stand point, the experiences of the world and the questing matter the most in my opinion, and WotLK best captured that.

[Deleted]

Well, I think the 4 million people that left the game are a good indication that WoW is heading in the wrong direction. Let it be clear that WoW has lost a third (33%!) of it's playerbase since WotLK. That's insane.

Wrath of the Lich King was the sweet spot. Everything was as it was supposed to be. The game was easy to learn, but hard to master. You actually had to put some time into it. Not just mindlessly doing the same thing over and over again. There were a lot of dungeons and raids had more than 10 bosses in them. Talents were still awesome.

Not to say Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria haven't brought some really interesting features, but I could live without those if that meant returning to WotLK style WoW.

Sorry this is a bullshit argument.

Unless you have a time machine and access to an alternative reality you can't 100% tell me for a fact that the subs would be at say at 6 million now if they did or did not implement feature x or feature y.

I am sick to death of people using sub numbers to try and say "I MUST BE RIGHT BECAUSE SUBS ARE LOWER".

If you think feature x or feature y are the only thing that affects sub numbers you are deluded.

Is WoW in decline, yes it is 100% can you pinpoint that on feature x or feature y no you can not.

[Vurdah]

Yep.

2 expansions for a single game is very, very big.

After that the game had been out for around 6/7 years.

People get tired.

People need to accept that.

LOL! I love the "WOW is old" line. COD is old and they crank out a new one every year that is the same polished turd and people still rush to the stores to buy it. Face facts, Blizzard dropped the ball with Cata and that's all there is to it. So yeah id say that Wrath was the best xpac they put out with BC at a very close second.

[Deleted]

Only thing best about Wrath was the questing experience. Lich King always showing up made me feel like my hero was actually an important part of the story, and not just a side note to major characters. From a casual stand point, the experiences of the world and the questing matter the most in my opinion, and WotLK best captured that.

Oh yeah that part was great. In pretty much every zone Arthas would show up, tell you how lucky you are to be left breathing because he needs you to become even stronger before he has use of you. Didn't make him seem ridiculous at all, oh no. Not even to the point that Blizzard themselves pointed it out and promised that they wouldn't do the same with Deathwing.

If anything, this only reminds me of Mal'Ganis, and how disappointing it was not to see him in ICC.

[Baracuda]

And I'm just here, sitting, laughing my ass off remembering the old days. Yeah, you probably remember them too, when Wrath Of The Lich King was current content and was called the worst expansion set ever.

You people just want to complain.

This man speaks the truth. So much hate and Cata was going to fix it

[Osmeric]

You're almost completely correct, OP. Wrath did have some thing that needed to be tweaked, but the move away from it put the game into deep, shark-infested water from which it has yet to escape.

[Celista]

Oh yeah that part was great. In pretty much every zone Arthas would show up, tell you how lucky you are to be left breathing because he needs you to become even stronger before he has use of you. Didn't make him seem ridiculous at all, oh no. Not even to the point that Blizzard themselves pointed it out and promised that they wouldn't do the same with Deathwing.

If anything, this only reminds me of Mal'Ganis, and how disappointing it was not to see him in ICC.

This was better than half of the playerbase saying, "who the hell is Deathwing?" and then having no direct buildup to Deathwing via questing or dungeons in 81-85 content. Arthas was handled pretty well imo...a sizeable percentage of the playerbase doesn't bother to read the quest text let alone the outside lore, but you still need to get them involved in the story somehow. At least with Wrath, people knew who the Lich King was, and were emotionally invested in killing Arthas (as they were with Illidan).

[Doktor Faustus]

Wotlk was fun up till the death of Ulduar and the boring grind of ICC.

Yes, recycled content at the start, but not many had seen Naxx so I guess that was ok.

[tankbug]

Almost everything was great in WOTLK.
Death knights, Northrend, scourge, Arthas, the music, dungeon finder, and unlike that facist "pure class only" BC doctrine, every class was welcome in raids.

[Deleted]

This was better than half of the playerbase saying, "who the hell is Deathwing?" and then having no direct buildup to Deathwing via questing or dungeons in 81-85 content. Arthas was handled pretty well imo...a sizeable percentage of the playerbase doesn't bother to read the quest text let alone the outside lore, but you still need to get them involved in the story somehow. At least with Wrath, people knew who the Lich King was, and were emotionally invested in killing Arthas (as they were with Illidan).

I think it had more to do with people not being interested in Deathwing in general. I know I wasn't, even though I read the quests, and read up a little bit about Deathwing himself, I still found him boring. Arthas on the other hand, plenty of people recognized him from WC3, he was already loved even before WoW so him having a whole expansion built around him he didn't even need to show up while questing to be well known.

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of the main villian making entrances outside of the raid, it's just that Arthas went overboard with it. If it had happened once and the other times you saw him he wasn't directly dealing with you, that would have been much better. But as it turned out, he shows himself again and again and again to the point that I just wanted to puke, thinking "not again!" whenever he made an entrance...

Deathwing could have been done much better, true, but I still think most people didn't know much about him because they didn't find him interesting, not because he didn't make enough entrances. He flew around attacking all the zones with people running after him in hopes to be burned alive for an achievement for crying out loud...

[Deleted]

This was better than half of the playerbase saying, "who the hell is Deathwing?" and then having no direct buildup to Deathwing via questing or dungeons in 81-85 content. Arthas was handled pretty well imo...a sizeable percentage of the playerbase doesn't bother to read the quest text let alone the outside lore, but you still need to get them involved in the story somehow. At least with Wrath, people knew who the Lich King was, and were emotionally invested in killing Arthas (as they were with Illidan).

Although Illidan was less encountered during TBC than Deathwing. The TBC trailer had more effect than anything else.
And not encountering Deathwing personally makes sense. He is a freaking badass Dragon, former Aspect of Earth and bringer of the Cataclysm. If you see what he has done to Azeroth, what chance do you think you have.

[yjmark]

This was better than half of the playerbase saying, "who the hell is Deathwing?" and then having no direct buildup to Deathwing via questing or dungeons in 81-85 content. Arthas was handled pretty well imo...a sizeable percentage of the playerbase doesn't bother to read the quest text let alone the outside lore, but you still need to get them involved in the story somehow. At least with Wrath, people knew who the Lich King was, and were emotionally invested in killing Arthas (as they were with Illidan).

There was quite a bit of build up to Deathwing if you actually read the quest text. People stopped reading, then wondered why.

Illidan, however, had much less quest involvement though. Very few people even knew who he was in TBC. Only the WC III players really knew.

IMHO - Arthas was handled poorly in WoW. He was an icon because of WCIII, so he already had a string following (including myself). But the constant "I'm popping in every once in a while to tell you....I'll get you later" was overdone and made him lame. In fact, Arthas appearing all the time was one of the major complaints in WotLk. As always, Blizzard swings the pendulum too hard to address player concerns, and that is why Deathwing seemed so "missing".

That's my opinion anyway.

[Statix]

Sorry this is a bullshit argument.

Unless you have a time machine and access to an alternative reality you can't 100% tell me for a fact that the subs would be at say at 6 million now if they did or did not implement feature x or feature y.

I am sick to death of people using sub numbers to try and say "I MUST BE RIGHT BECAUSE SUBS ARE LOWER".

If you think feature x or feature y are the only thing that affects sub numbers you are deluded.

Is WoW in decline, yes it is 100% can you pinpoint that on feature x or feature y no you can not.

It doesn't matter what caused it. It's obvious that WotLK was doing something right while Cataclysm and MoP are not.

Is it because WoW is getting old? No. Look at EVE online. That game just had its 10 year anniversary and reached its highest subscription level to date of 500k. It's not anywhere near the numbers of WoW, but still, it's older than yet has an increasing number of players.

[tankbug]

There was quite a bit of build up to Deathwing if you actually read the quest text. People stopped reading, then wondered why.

Illidan, however, had much less quest involvement though. Very few people even knew who he was in TBC. Only the WC III players really knew.

IMHO - Arthas was handled poorly in WoW. He was an icon because of WCIII, so he already had a string following (including myself). But the constant "I'm popping in every once in a while to tell you....I'll get you later" was overdone and made him lame. In fact, Arthas appearing all the time was one of the major complaints in WotLk. As always, Blizzard swings the pendulum too hard to address player concerns, and that is why Deathwing seemed so "missing".

That's my opinion anyway.

Arthas was handled better than Illidan at least. He never did anything else than die on top of the temple. I don't mind seeing Arthas actually getting involved in the invasion that threatens his existence. He doesn't need to follow you around on every quest, but he shouldn't just sitting on his throne, waiting for death. If we get this "main super villain" next expansion, I hope he does some random counterattacks with his army.

I'd also like to see our NPCs leading some skirmishes now and then, which you can choose to follow. It's rather strange that there always is a fixed front of perfect balance.