WOTLK without rose-tinted shades

[Deleted]

@pingasman82

Cata heroics were great fun! When they nerfed them and the raids I quit the game for the longest time. The guild I was in lost a huge chunk of people and almost disbanded.

[Deleted]

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?).

This is where you've revealed some sort of grudge. The reason Crystalsong is mostly unused is because it has Dalaran floating over it, and with everyone being in Dalaran and a large amount of people below it, it would be unbearably laggy. Notice how Dalaran floats over the sea at the Broken Isles.

[endur]

That's wrong, flying was mandatory for questing in the high level areas and was available from 77. You could buy the tomb of cold weather flying to allow new toons to fly starting from 68.

Sorry. This is incorrect. Yes, I know they made it this way during Wrath expansion (not sure which patch). But at the start of Wrath, you had to be higher than level 77 to start flying and the tome wasn't available until much later.

I don't recall what level exactly, whether it was 78-80, but I know for a fact that it was not 77.

[mickybrighteyes]

wait... stormpeaks and icecrown have the same aesthetics?

sure if you're only basing it on THERE'S SNOW!!! <.<

[Ezyah]

Ulduar Best Raid - Mop as a whole best xpac

[Lime]

According to TC - "If you think WotLK was the best, you're wrong. Only my opinion is allowed!".

Wrath was still my favorite expansion, mainly for it bringing that WC3 chapter to a close (or as close as WoW ever gets to that). The Vrykul/Kvaldir lore, seeing Icecrown, DK starter experience, and some of the zone stories were phenomenal to me, especially Dragonblight, Sholazar, Grizzly Hills, Zul'drak, Icecrown, and Storm Peaks.

And Yogg came out of nowhere? Wtf? Sure, if you were blind and ignored that many hints at him through the zones. It's mention in GH that something deep in the earth corrupted the world tree that was there. It's mentioned throughout Icecrown when they begin to explain what Saronite is and all of the "whispers". Then you have Storm Peaks, where you find out the some Watchers have gone missing and they drop heavy lore-bombs about the old gods and their curse of flesh.

I'm actually a bit mindblown that you think they just dropped Yogg in northrend for a content patch...

[mickybrighteyes]

According to TC - "If you think WotLK was the best, you're wrong. Only my opinion is allowed!".

Wrath was still my favorite expansion, mainly for it bringing that WC3 chapter to a close (or as close as WoW ever gets to that). The Vrykul/Kvaldir lore, seeing Icecrown, DK starter experience, and some of the zone stories were phenomenal to me, especially Dragonblight, Sholazar, Grizzly Hills, Zul'drak, Icecrown, and Storm Peaks.

And Yogg came out of nowhere? Wtf? Sure, if you were blind and ignored that many hints at him through the zones. It's mention in GH that something deep in the earth corrupted the world tree that was there. It's mentioned throughout Icecrown when they begin to explain what Saronite is and all of the "whispers". Then you have Storm Peaks, where you find out the some Watchers have gone missing and they drop heavy lore-bombs about the old gods and their curse of flesh.

I'm actually a bit mindblown that you think they just dropped Yogg in northrend for a content patch...

nvm the part where they said grizzly hills wasn't tied to the main story <.<

[Ripitgood]

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.

1) I willing to concede here, Blizz coming out of Burning Crusade was just now figuring out how to tell a story aside form the Main Objective of the over all xpac well, had a few hic-ups. However Grizzly Hills is really the only true failure, the others did ok if not well.

2) If you compared most "top-level" well anything the aesthetics are very similar, Big bad meanies, stuff for us to kill, gather, save, etc. The only real difference is the Art Style and place on the virtual timeline. You're grasping

3) I agree here, Crystalsong was amazing looking, why it had no content is beyond me.

4) He wasn't squeezed out of "nowhere". It is known or rather theorized that under each landmass there is a prison for an Old God (After the land was torn asunder in the first war). Ulduar and Yogg is likely the best Dungeon/Boss Blizzard has EVER done. You can clearly disagree here, but 98% of the Community doesn't.

5) Darkness and Danger still exist in zones where you can fly, in the "Story" type version. Yes, Flying over the mob is far simpler than skirting it's aggro radius, or just going full HAM running through it and hoping I don't get dismounted. I agree in terms of not giving us Flying so quickly it does take away from the "Feel" of different areas. However, it doesn't make them bad. Not sure what you went for here

6) All Expansions are pretty predictable, "We save Azeroth" So whatever new threat we get, we're suppose to ya know SAVE IT. Stop the bad guy, get the girl (we don't) and go back to our every day lives (Yea right). This is a silly point. Also, Wrathgate was a HUGE plot twist. It arguably set the stage for a lot of different Forsaken actions.

Overall, It's fine to not love LK. Really, it's ok. But making a snide passive-aggresive post about an Expac that is really only faulted for it's extreme case of ICC due to a serious error on Blizz's content moving train. It broke a LOT of walls in terms of MMO-Gaming. It also showed us what WoW SHOULD be. And it was great, but it's over, and now it's just a nostalgia trip for most of us. So don't take that from us.

PS - BURNING CRUSADE WAS ACTUALLY THEIR BEST XPAC, BUT MOST PEOPLE DON'T LIKE TOUGH STUFF!

[Poppincaps]

An objective claim is a statement about a factual matter-one that can be proved true or false, not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice; based on facts; unbiased.

To use it in a sentence:
"It is an objective fact that Mists of Pandaria was an overall higher quality expansion than Wrath of the Lich King."

Means exactly what I thought it meant. I played in Wrath, I played in Pandaria, and I never look through nostalgia glasses. Pandaria was better. Not by much, but enough to be noticeable.

Oh so you know what it means, you just believe your opinion is fact. That's even worse.

[mickybrighteyes]

also crystalsong had nothing in it because of dalaran being directly above it.

I think it was to prevent something like what happened in ORG and IF near the entrances due to the AH's being exclusively located in those cities for a faction.

[Puri]

Sorry. This is incorrect. Yes, I know they made it this way during Wrath expansion (not sure which patch). But at the start of Wrath, you had to be higher than level 77 to start flying and the tome wasn't available until much later.

I don't recall what level exactly, whether it was 78-80, but I know for a fact that it was not 77.

No, that's not true. Just to quote a blue from wotlk beta:

Cold-Weather flying not required to level up at higher levels
This is not true. You are not required to have Cold Weather Flying to complete leveling in the 77-80 zones. If you do not have Cold Weather Flying, you will get a "loaner mount" that will permit you to complete leveling in the zones.

So that obviously implies that you can have Cold Weather Flying from 77 on.

[Cronovey]

Cataclysm remains the worst, worse than WoD, in that it was deeply UN-FUN on pretty much every level. Leveling was dire, the daily quests were far too numerous and unrewarding and just plain annoying, the zones were godawful, it wrecked up the old world (literally) in a bunch of ways, many of them deeply un-fun and reflective of a particularly lame and stupid mode of storytelling (which MoP and WoD moved away from), the dungeons were painful and irksome (totally doable - just not fun!), the raids were shoddy, and the tone of the ENTIRE EXPANSION was dubious at best. It proved that, for me, you can definitely overuse the Old Gods, very easily. The zones were also awful. I happily fly around WotLK and enjoy the scenery, but if never saw Twilight Highlands, Uldum or Mount Hyjal (Cata version) ever again, I would be fine with that.

I actually preferred their model of daily questing quite a bit, because then they didn't feel like an absolute requirement to do. In Mists, your dailies were a chore that basically HAD to be done, and even in Tanaan Jungle you were putting yourself at a disadvantage if you didn't get the reusable augment rune. Wrath and Cata dailies were the last time I actually enjoyed doing dailies, because they were just something to do and not a mandatory happening.

As for the zones being awful, that's really just personal opinion, similar to the OP's opinions about Wrath. The raiding in Cataclysm was actually excellent until the abomination known as Dragon Soul; Bastion of Twilight brought an awesome and well known villain forward with Cho'gall and had Sinestra which was important to the storyline of the expansion, even if not a super well known character. Blackwing Descent probably needed a better explanation from a lore standpoint as to how Nefarian came back, but the raid fights were excellent fights in general. The only part of tier 11 content that really wasn't great was Al'akir, and only because it seemed super pointless to go kill him in general. Firelands was a nicely done zone overall, with some interesting boss fights and mechanics. While Rhyolith was annoying, it was an interesting fight from a mechanical standpoint, as were Beth'tilac and Alysrazor. Ragnaros coming back was a neat little nostalgia tickle for Molten Core raiders as well.

Opinions and all that jazz, I suppose.

[mickybrighteyes]

as for flyiong in northrend... YES flight was available at about 77 or whatever level was the expected start for icecrown/stormpeaks as those zones were NOT designed to be traveled on the ground alone.

edit:

for proof... just look around the zones and try to find the walking paths from various areas. there are some not many.

[gutnbrg]

there was basically no questing in crystalsong bc dalaran used up too much resources.

[Casterbridge]

1) Meh your opinion overall, I enjoyed the opening areas of WOLTK, don't get me wrong I enjoyed the Cata ones as well, but those areas had little tid bits that still connected well with the main story while having their own little story, and the music in most of those areas is still for me some of the best.

2) No clue what you are talking about here, they seemed quite different to me.

3) Could agree here that there could have been more done in this area, not sure I would agree it's the most beautiful, but it was pleasant and yeah more could have been done in this area.

4) Er old god hints where hidden throughout the expansion, he certainly wasn't just squeezed in.

5) Those zones where designed with flying in mind, and worked well within the plot line, so not sure what the complaint is, I mean yeah I guess they could have made flying unavailable for the player, but it was suppose to be a progression of the campaign so.

6) I have no clue what you are trying to say here, all expansions are predictable in the same exact way, I've never seen any so called Plot Twist in WoW that made me go, wow didn't see that coming, and we always kill/defeat the big bad. As for the Wrathgate, that did lead to the setting up for Bolvar becoming the new Lich King.

WOLTK for me was great expansion, the setting, the story, the music, could things have been done better in some areas? Sure, but overall I enjoyed most of it more than Cata or MOP (neither of which I hated) and certainly more than BC and WOD.

[Deleted]

@pingasman82

Cata heroics were great fun! When they nerfed them and the raids I quit the game for the longest time. The guild I was in lost a huge chunk of people and almost disbanded.

I thought they were fun too I quit in Cata as well, due to the mediocre and easy content plus most of my friends quitting as well. Firelands was fun though!

[Profyrion]

My only gripe with Wrath was the entire Argent Tournament content tier. It was garbage. The gear looked like garbage and models were recycled HEAVILY between classes. Jousting sucked (still sucks!). And the arena-themed raid was very uninspired garbage. I hated that whole patch. Have I said garbage enough? Garbage.

To this day you still can't run that raid - even if you WANTED TO - until you've completed some portion of the tournament outside. How does that make sense?

I liked pretty much everything else about the expansion, especially the flying at 77. That's exactly how Blizzard should handle flying in every expansion. Ulduar and Icecrown Citadel are still two of the best raids ever created.

[purebalance]

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.

Spoken as someone who literally snoozed through WotLK then. I mean 90% of what you said he was untrue or inaccurate.

[Deleted]

I pretty much wrote out the same reply as everyone else before reading what other people have said

[purebalance]

My only gripe with Wrath was the entire Argent Tournament content tier. It was garbage. The gear looked like garbage and models were recycled HEAVILY between classes. Jousting sucked (still sucks!). And the arena-themed raid was very uninspired garbage. I hated that whole patch. Have I said garbage enough? Garbage.

To this day you still can't run that raid - even if you WANTED TO - until you've completed some portion of the tournament outside. How does that make sense?

I liked pretty much everything else about the expansion, especially the flying at 77. That's exactly how Blizzard should handle flying in every expansion. Ulduar and Icecrown Citadel are still two of the best raids ever created.

Ummmm as far as I recall this is also completely untrue. The raid had nothing to do with the tournament in terms of player progression. Hell I don't even think the dungeon does. Also the jousting was fine, it just sucked if you were bad at the game.