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  1. #1

    WOTLK without rose-tinted shades

    I realise I'm probably going to get a lot of hate for this, but I'm honestly getting a bit tired of hearing that "WOTLK was the greatest expansion ever ergmagherrrrd" mantra that seems to be prevalent throughout the WoW community (although it still takes second place in the annoyance competition with the "everything but Vanilla sucked because it was too easy" adage). Hence, I thought I'd outline some of the shortcomings of the fabled expansion to remind people that it, too, had many things that sucked bigtime.

    1) Most of the quests in zones like Grizzly Hills, Fjord, Borean, and Sholazar were completely disconnected from the main story, which would have been fine as standalone plot arcs had they not been, for the most part, boring and anticlimactic, not to mention cliche. Just for comparison, every single new zone in Cataclysm, for example, absolutely blew all of Northrend out of the water when it came to plot and aesthetics.

    2) The two top level zones were almost completely identical in aesthetics with very few visual variations throughout. This was consistent with the lore of the zones, but failed to make them any less of an eye-sore after a few months of seeing more of the same every single day.

    3) Crystalsong, arguably the most beautiful zone in the Northrend, had virtually zero content. Now I'm not sure where exactly I saw this, but I read somewhere that it was supposed to be a thriving questing zone like all the others but Blizz decided to cut content before release, possibly due to lack of resources (WOD flashbacks anyone?).

    4) Yogg'saron was squeezed in seemingly out of nowhere, and met a highly unimpressive and unimportant end for something that is apparently the root of (almost) all evil on Azeroth.

    5) Flying was available at lvl 77, allowing players to fly over all of the seemingly looming, menacing threats in Icecrown and Stormpeaks, taking away much of the "darkness" and "danger" behind them.

    6) The entire expansion was pretty predictable, from start to finish, in that we knew we would eventually get to and kill Arthas. No plot twists aside from Wrathgate, which again didn't impact the overall story though.

    Overall, I am not trying to say that WOTLK was a bad expansion by any means, nor that it wasn't *better* than, say, WOD, but when people over-exaggerate and go "oh it was the best thing that ever happened to WOW, everything was 10/10", well, they're wrong. It was, for the most part, fun and new. But it was also a bit monotonous and stale in looks and storytelling.

  2. #2
    General Vezax can kiss the fattest part of my ass.

  3. #3
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Exilian View Post

    6) The entire expansion was pretty predictable, from start to finish, in that we knew we would eventually get to and kill Arthas. No plot twists aside from Wrathgate, which again didn't impact the overall story though.
    THIS is the one reason why WotLK was so awesome (atleast for me). The Lich King was the one enemy that was behind almost everything we did in this expansion. All our work was towards one goal: Kick Arthas' ass!

    Thats why i was so hyped for WoD. I was hoping to kick the ass of all the Warlords, but no.... the Legion fu**** us all and we had to fight side by side with Grommash.

  4. #4
    I had the most fun in game during WotLK and thats why I think its the best expansion.

  5. #5
    1) Didnt care about quest story, aethetically didnt like any Cata zone, liked most of Northrend zones except Borean Tundra, Dragonblight and Zul'Drak (it was supposed to had a raid that got scrapped so that's probably why).
    2) Same applies to every other zone that has a raid.
    3) What's your point? You prefer for the zone to not exist at all?
    4) Probably never raided Ulduar.
    5) Thank god it was available. Northrend was huge.
    6) That's good thing, what's your point?
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  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Laurcus View Post
    General Vezax can kiss the fattest part of my ass.
    LOL I like this and agree with it, very very much.


    In all honesty though, if I look at everything objectively, Id say Mop was the best expansion overall. It had a shitload of content, it had a decent endgame zone, it had really good patch content (5.1 is still my favorite patch to date} and it was just fun overall. I had no issue with pandas being in an expansion, anyone who knew about lore already had an idea that they would come eventually.

    I did have a lot of fun in Wrath though. So, Id say Wrath and Mop are tied for best expansion in WoW.
    Last edited by Taeldorian; 2016-08-23 at 10:43 PM.

  7. #7
    Also wrath had the worst excuse for a tier raid I've ever participated it: Trial of the crusader. That place was shit.
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  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Thunderball View Post
    1) Didnt care about quest story, aethetically didnt like any Cata zone, liked most of Northrend zones except Borean Tundra, Dragonblight and Zul'Drak (it was supposed to had a raid that got scrapped so that's probably why).
    2) Same applies to every other zone that has a raid.
    3) What's your point? You prefer for the zone to not exist at all?
    4) Probably never raided Ulduar.
    5) Thank god it was available. Northrend was huge.
    6) That's good thing, what's your point?
    1) "Didn't care about quest story" is all I needed to hear.
    2) Yes but in other expansions the zones and raids within were significantly different unlike in WOTLK.
    3) I could say the same to people (rightly) complaining about lack of content in WOD. "What's your point, would you rather Blizz didn't release an expansion at all?" But I'll break it down for you: No. I'd rather Blizz made actual content inside a beautiful yet empty zone.
    4) Yes I did.
    5) And it suddenly felt not as huge or dangerous once you got flying.
    6) I guess you like reading the last chapter before reading a book.

  9. #9
    I dont understand this rose tinted glasses concept. i guess one reason why ive enjoyed all of WoW is because i dont have these glasses. I see the good and bad of every expansion and enjoy what i do like about it.

    i loved WOTLK, my fave expansion so far. I hated questing in SB, and Grizzly Hills, and most of Fjord. Some of the rep grinds made me want to die. I liked the quests in Storm Peaks, but didn't like the way it looked. Except for Ulduar.

    I wish they had done more with Crystalsong. I was amazed when i first saw it.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Doomchicken View Post
    Also wrath had the worst excuse for a tier raid I've ever participated it: Trial of the crusader. That place was shit.
    best raid ever. no trash.
    If what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. Then I should be a god by now.

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by Taeldorian View Post
    LOL I like this and agree with it, very very much.


    In all honesty though, if I look at everything objectively, Id say Mop was the best expansion overall. It had a shitload of content, it had a decent endgame zone, it had really good patch content (5.1 is still my favorite patch to date} and it was just fun overall. I had no issue with pandas being in an expansion, anyone who knew about lore already had an idea that they would come eventually.

    I did have a lot of fun in Wrath though. So, Id say Wrath and Mop are tied for best expansion in WoW.
    Agreed. Wrath is my fav for the fun I had but IMO MoP is objectively better. It gets shit on by people for lolpandas, never really heard a decent merit based complaint.
    READ and be less Ignorant.

  11. #11
    Wotlk is tied to the best expansion because blizzard had the most active subs at one time during it. Personally from a raiding standpoint I thought it was an utter failure. Yes ulduar was amazing and yes a few icc fights were amazing...as a whole it was meh. TOC is one of if not the worst raid in the history of this game and most of the first tier was just rehashed content. With that said, I also had some of the most fun I've ever had in wow during wotlk. I haven't quite been able to find a guild like the two I was in during wotlk. In terms of raiding wotlk was mediocre at best, and that's only due to ulduar and some of icc saving the day.

  12. #12
    Merely a Setback Kaleredar's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Exilian View Post
    I realise I'm probably going to get a lot of hate for this, but I'm honestly getting a bit tired of hearing that "WOTLK was the greatest expansion ever ergmagherrrrd" mantra that seems to be prevalent throughout the WoW community (although it still takes second place in the annoyance competition with the "everything but Vanilla sucked because it was too easy" adage). Hence, I thought I'd outline some of the shortcomings of the fabled expansion to remind people that it, too, had many things that sucked bigtime.

    1) Most of the quests in zones like Grizzly Hills, Fjord, Borean, and Sholazar were completely disconnected from the main story, which would have been fine as standalone plot arcs had they not been, for the most part, boring and anticlimactic, not to mention cliche. Just for comparison, every single new zone in Cataclysm, for example, absolutely blew all of Northrend out of the water when it came to plot and aesthetics.
    I disagree. Sholazar featured the titans. Grizzly hills featured the Vrykul, which were agents of the scourge, featured the ice trolls which led into zul'drak, and the iron dwarves, which were agents of Loken who was in turn a servant of Yogg-Saron. Borean tundra featured the scourge heavily as well as dealing with the curse of flesh and blue dragonflight.

    In fact, the storylines in WotLK were all pretty coherent; you were dealing with the scourge, the old gods, or the blue dragonflight. You might not have had single continuous quest chains that took you from one point to the end of a story for every quest, but you see the underlying causation for all of the problems you're dealing with, as well as having some larger quest chains.

    I'd say that's BETTER than just having every plot point wrapped up in a nice little package that hand-holds you throughout the zone.


    Compare that to Cataclysm? Hyjal was an awful zone. It was boring scenery and we did nothing but fight generic fire elementals and faceless twilight cultists... which we then did again in deepholm... and Twilight highlands... Vashj'ir was probably the best looking zone, but its story LITERALLY goes nowhere and ends on a giant cliffhanger that Blizzard hasn't resolved to this day. Cataclysm didn't feel like it was about exploration, it felt like you were going from A to B, with areas only existing to encapsulate some quest objective.

    2) The two top level zones were almost completely identical in aesthetics with very few visual variations throughout. This was consistent with the lore of the zones, but failed to make them any less of an eye-sore after a few months of seeing more of the same every single day.
    Icecrown and Storm peaks were quite different aesthetically.

    3) Crystalsong, arguably the most beautiful zone in the Northrend, had virtually zero content. Now I'm not sure where exactly I saw this, but I read somewhere that it was supposed to be a thriving questing zone like all the others but Blizz decided to cut content before release, possibly due to lack of resources (WOD flashbacks anyone?).
    It was because having a full-fledged quest zone UNDERNEATH an active capital city would have caused lag out the wazoo. Dalaran was already laggy as it was.

    4) Yogg'saron was squeezed in seemingly out of nowhere, and met a highly unimpressive and unimportant end for something that is apparently the root of (almost) all evil on Azeroth.
    What? You see Yogg-saron's influence from the get go in howling fjord in the whispering gorge. Every single quest dealing with the titans in northrend deals with Yogg-saron's corruption in some way, shape or form. They might not tell you WHO yogg-saron is at the start, but that's part of the fun of the character: he was mysterious. Controlling things from the shadows. Much better than having the name "N'zoth" tossed at us every five quests and never actually seeing him.

    5) Flying was available at lvl 77, allowing players to fly over all of the seemingly looming, menacing threats in Icecrown and Stormpeaks, taking away much of the "darkness" and "danger" behind them.
    That's because traversing Storm Peaks and Icecrown was literally impossible without a flying mount, both from the terrain AND the giant carpets of enemies that blanketed the ground (particularly icecrown.) it made the zones feel MASSIVE. Compare that to Kun'lai. For a zone that was based off of the himalayas, it felt tiny.

    6) The entire expansion was pretty predictable, from start to finish, in that we knew we would eventually get to and kill Arthas. No plot twists aside from Wrathgate, which again didn't impact the overall story though.
    We don't need a WHAT A TWIST! moment in every expansion. Everyone was chomping at the bit to take down Arthas. We wanted Arthas to be the main villain. Any other villain in WRATH OF THE LICH KING would have been pretty underwhelming.
    Last edited by Kaleredar; 2016-08-23 at 10:57 PM.
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  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by IIamaKing View Post
    Agreed. Wrath is my fav for the fun I had but IMO MoP is objectively better. It gets shit on by people for lolpandas, never really heard a decent merit based complaint.
    100% agree about mop. The only true downfall of mop to me personally was the exceptionally long time in siege of orgrimmar. Aside from that the content was phenomenal.

  14. #14
    again it depends on what you actually think highligths the expansion and what makes it good/not good

    for me the most important thing is class design, my character is the first thing i care about, if its not fun i couldnt care less if anything around me is good..

    then game design overall.. healing, damage etc. it was just perfect in wrath.. the healthpools etc...

    and all you said is such a subjective opinion anyways..

    and of course you forgot about the level of difficulty etc.


    i actually never really CARED about the amount of content if that content is actually enjoyable...

  15. #15
    Deleted
    It was for many players the best expansion because it was there first and the game was new to most people.
    Yes, expansions change the game around but at its core it is still the same game, and many people get bored after playing the same game for a while.

    Thats why many people quit in cata, even tho the first cata tier was great and the zones were super cool.

    The problem is that there werent as many new players incoming since all the kids started to play mobas.
    Maybe 1 day mmos will be the thing again. But I dont care, wow doesnt need 10 mil subs for me to have fun.

  16. #16
    Each expansion has their downsides and upsides (yes even WoD). But I think the reason why wotlk is seen as the greatest is because there were many more positives than in other expacs.
    Last edited by effs; 2016-08-23 at 11:16 PM.

  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by IIamaKing View Post
    Agreed. Wrath is my fav for the fun I had but IMO MoP is objectively better. It gets shit on by people for lolpandas, never really heard a decent merit based complaint.
    I didn't like mop because you couldn't bring elemental shamans to Heroic 25m Lei Shen. They just couldn't survive the static charge or w/e it was like all the other classes could. Having a group soak one of those was basically killing off that entire group so elemental was just not viable. Which to me is a design flaw. Same with Will of the Emperor on 10m Heroic. I had to go Enhancement just so I could be of use to the raid. In WotLK I was viable for all fights.

  18. #18
    Can we stop with those rose-tinted shades argument. I was there when it happen and it was awesome. If you were not there or if you didn't like it do not make it less awesome. It's not because something is 5-6 years old that it's bad.
    MMO-Champion, once the place to get WoW News, now the home of the haters and their clickbait and doomsaying threads

  19. #19
    i've seen wotlk without any nostalgia, a friend was playing on one of those not-so legitimate servers that was frozen at wotlk.

    it's just as good as i remember it.

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by Julianor View Post
    Thats why many people quit in cata, even tho the first cata tier was great and the zones were super cool.
    I really enjoyed cata. I thought it was well done until the last tier.

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