WOTLK without rose-tinted shades

[Cronovey]

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.

I just can't ignore this. Did you actually read what you typed here?

Let's try your definition again:

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.

How exactly can you prove to me, true or false, that one was better than the other without it being influenced by your personal opinion?

Prove to me from a completely objective standpoint how an apple tastes better than an orange.

It's not something that is possible, because it is literally 100% based on personal preference, as is your rating of which expansion is better. I can say that I "objectively" think that Warlords of Draenor is the best expansion because it had great cutscenes in it. Does that mean that everyone has to think it's better now, and that it's the best expansion just because I "objectively" said so?

That's not how it works. When you use that word, think of it like this:

"Looking at it objectively, the 1080p television has better picture quality than the 720p television and is superior."

This is something that can be backed up by hard facts; the more pixels per inch, etc make it a more detailed picture and this cannot be disputed because it is based on fact.

[Enthralled]

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.

The thing with Cataclysm leveling though, both in the old world and Cata zones, is that everything was put relentlessly on-rails, killing all sense of exploration and feel of a living world that Northrend has in spades. That is what all those many little sub-plots do, at least for me: they increase the replayability of the expansion as a whole. I still haven't done every quest in Northrend. I kind of like it that way.

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.

What, Icecrown and Storm Peaks? I suppose that's a personal issue with you. We were playing in an expansion set in an arctic environment after all. And they made those two zones as different from each other as they could; Icecrown was Scourge-infested while Storm Peaks was Titan-themed.

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?).

I know you've already been disavowed of this notion by now so all I am going to say is please do your research before posting nonsense. Such a silly thing to add to this list.

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.

Gripes about questing in Grizzly Hills and the overall aesthetic of Storm Peaks; then thinks that Yogg was squeezed in out of nowhere. Literally what? You didn't quest in Grizzly Hills or SP, guy, if you think Yogg was squeezed in out of nowhere.

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.

From a player's perspective, since the developers made the zones to be quested through on flying mounts, this is fine. I know that the WoW team now regrets this, so I have no further comment on the matter. Those zones are fine as is.

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.

Wrathgate impacted the story in the long term and I'd argue it remains one of the most dramatic moments in the game, ever. Personal anecdote: I started WotLK later on, but I didn't read any spoilers at all concerning that quest chain. I just played through it (as Horde), following directions to the end until I was left standing there among flames, screams and chaos with Alexstrasza below me. It was amazing. Looking back, that all seems quaint compared to the technology now. But it was so cool at the time.

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.

I guess I do not disagree that it was not a 10/10. Blizzard has never made a total 10/10 game ever IMO; I am not that much of a fangirl to say such a thing. But also IMO, Wrath really did a lot of things close to perfect, and of course these are the things that I find important, such as making an world that is alive and interesting and a place you want to be in. They did this through beautiful zones and a huge amount of stories and quests, leading into some of the best dungeons and raids ever (yes I like the dungeons too although mechanically they aren't on the level of Cata's.)

In hindsight, Wrath's big drawback was, of course, its lack of endgame beside raiding, heroic spamming and a few dailies like the AT, etc. Blizzard was still figuring all that out -- but it was a hugely popular expansion and people didn't seem to mind that much. I certainly didn't. I just did laps around Dal while waiting in queue, or did elaborate platforming jumps to get on top of lamp poles. (Looking forward to doing that again in Legion tbh.)

[Thelin]

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.

Yeah.. WoD sucked.

[Malacrass]

Wow I can't believe people bitch about the Argent Tournament.

Alright, jousting wasn't for everyone, the dailies were annoying.

But the raid itself was perfectly fine, with great music, great atmosphere and a different approach to raiding in general. No trash, just bosses. Meant as a filler till ICC, even lorewise it was meant as a filler for ICC. A perfect fit.

But even if you hated the raid with a passion, it definitely beats.... having NOTHING to do. Unless you prefer selfie patches over an actual raid with unique mechanics and loot.

[Thelin]

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.

I mean the expansion was called "Wrath of the Lich King" what did you expect?

[fwc577]

Also wrath had the worst excuse for a tier raid I've ever participated it: Trial of the crusader. That place was shit.

Don't forget the scores of raiding guilds that TotC killed! It came out too early. A lot of guilds were still mid Ulduar and having to go and change and start from complete scratch in a brand new zone while the other zone was left half done absolutely killed a lot of guilds.

I was in two different guilds on two characters that I raided with during that period of time and both died along with many guilds on the server and eventually the server I played on died.

[Sencha]

Agree with point 5)

[Eurhetemec]

3) Multiple raid difficulties in general. Raids are raids; this whole LFR/normal/heroic/mythic nonsense of added mechanics and nonsensical complexity to fights was only added because of the additional raid difficulties that were introduced in Wrath originally. Look at Archimonde right now: in LFR and normal, there's no Wrought Chaos at all. In heroic, it's there but in a small, non-obtrusive form. Then you get to mythic, where it looks like the fucking Death Star fired at Draenor every time it goes off. All this stems from the heroic mode being introduced in Wrath, instead of leaving raids at a single level of difficulty.

4) The expectation that everyone should be able to do everything. This is something that was for the most part introduced in Wrath, and then iterated upon every expansion since then with the addition of LFR and such. Originally, until the content had been out for very long period of time there was no PUG'ing it, and even then PUG groups were generally limited to the smaller 10/20 man raids of Karazhan/ZA for BC and ZG for vanilla. The fact that something that was insanely difficult in a previous expansion (Naxxramas, where I only ever killed a single boss and never got to SEE another before 70) was suddenly something that I could grab a bunch of randoms and do in its new iteration was utterly depressing. Suddenly raiding was something everyone should be able to do, and heroic dungeons were something for everyone to do despite the previous difficulty of them (Shadow Labs, Shattered Halls, etc). This was also the introduction of world bosses dropping tier pieces as well with the Vault of Archavon, continuing with the addition of Emalon, Koralon, and Toravon. This carried over into future expansions as well with Baradin Hold bosses and on into Mists with Sha of Anger, Nalak, and the Celestials and was finally shut down in Warlords of Draenor.

I liked your post overall and some good criticism in there (I don't agree with people who say LFD ruined WoW - had they not done it, pretty sure WoW would be deader than it is now by quite some margin - but it's imperfect for sure and the current implementation of Mythic dungeons is messy and inconsistent, but that's another thread).

I did want to pull out these two points you made though. The issue here is that they contradict each other - if you have raids that have only one difficulty, that difficulty must necessarily be significantly lower than if you have multiple difficulty settings. Why? Because otherwise you can't justify the development costs, because this is a business, not a charity to help hardcore raiders get their fix. When what was it, 1% of players saw the inside of Naxx and Sunwell (something like that), Blizzard balked, and rightly so. Huge development costs, significant harm to WoW's growth and profit (in Europe WoW's population actually dropped for the first time ever during the original Naxx era - in the US it plateau when it should have continued growing) because people un'sub'd, and when casuals and non-hardcore raiders are un-sub-ing, that matters a lot more than the 1% of raiders who actually did the content.

But even the raiders were quitting - I remember Naxx well - I was in a progression guild back then, we had server firsts with both AQs, nearly did with BWL (leader vanished for a couple of days then mysteriously reappeared but delayed us enough...), and had the firsts on some of the bosses in Naxx (on our server, not world or anything), but we'd lost so many people to the boredom of the Naxx era that we had to merge with another guild, which turned out to be full shit-talkers and general wankers, and whilst we did succeed, it ruined that guild and the losses from Naxx boredom were compounded by basic cultural incompatibility (we were mostly late-20s or even early-30s or 40s types, level-headed, polite-ish, open-minded and rules-following - they were almost all late teens and early 20s, full of drama queen dudes and ragers and virgin misogynists and they always make exceptions to every rule - but that's another thread!).

Point is, raids that hard aren't viable as stand-alones.

So you have a choice:

1) Easier raids.

or

2) Difficulty levels/modifiers.

Easier raids might have been better for WoW in the long run - by "easier" I mean "Ulduar non-hardmode but not overgeared" is about the difficulty you're shooting for. That would have kept the community together and so on.

But WoW's management were very worried that if some other game was proclaimed as "harder than WoW", it would steal their raiders, and the community would follow. This never happened of course, probably could never have happened, in retrospect (I saw tons of guilds "quit WoW" to raid some other game - they were always back very shortly, in a worse condition than when they left, because some minority of players either preferred the new game or decided they hated both!). So they went with harder difficulty settings, and have continued down that path.

If they hadn't, we'd definitely still be hearing massive "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAA WOW IS TOO EZ!" weeping though. I mean, god, we do anyway, but there'd be even more.

- - - Updated - - -

Wow I can't believe people bitch about the Argent Tournament.

Alright, jousting wasn't for everyone, the dailies were annoying.

But the raid itself was perfectly fine, with great music, great atmosphere and a different approach to raiding in general. No trash, just bosses. Meant as a filler till ICC, even lorewise it was meant as a filler for ICC. A perfect fit.

But even if you hated the raid with a passion, it definitely beats.... having NOTHING to do. Unless you prefer selfie patches over an actual raid with unique mechanics and loot.

Hear, hear, frankly. ToC/TotGC/TTIP/TTFN/TGIF may not have been amazing, and the whole "fight in one room" deal was hilariously cheap, but it had some charm and did give us something to do. Then again, Violet Hold is easily my favourite dungeon ever and I am MEGA PUMPED about it coming back for Legion, so what do I know, eh?

[Mr. Smith]

The music, Ulduar, and ICC and its 5-mans were the only parts of Wrath that were a plus for me.

Everything else about it ranged from "Just passable" to "Actively killing my long-term interest in the game".

[MasterHamster]

And then again reading the forums, both MMOC and official during WotLK you'd think WoW was already dead due to all the 'casualization'
God the first months after release, the complaints about the first tier being a bunch of rehashes that was almost insultingly easy, cleared less than 72h from release by people in Sunwell gear.

ToC killing off Ulduar too quickly
The gating of ICC
Poor joke that was Ruby Sanctum.
Welfare gear from 5mans and VoA, etc etc

And my personal favorite, how Arthas was this dude who just appeared out of nowhere now and then to point his sword at you and say "Next time...!" over and over.

Then came of course the turning point that was inevitable, but as I've said before, sub numbers make people retarded, and WoW subs started to even out and plateau, signaling the imminent death of WoW at the hands of the casuals that had ruined raiding, and such blasphemy as any gear better than dungeon rares outside of raids. Farming 5mans for a shitty version of tier armor, raiding dead etc.

But of course, as the cyclical seasons pass, so does whether an expansion is absolute shite [current], or 'actually it was quite alright, wasn't it' [one-two expansions ago]

[Ciddy]

One thing I didn't like about BC is how Illidan made no appearances until we actually encountered him in Black Temple. He did a generic "COME AND FACE ME IF YOU DARE" zone yell once we got done with Shadowmoon Valley questing, and that was it. In Wrath of the Lich King, Arthas was constantly mocking us or otherwise in our faces nearly every step of the way from 70-80. He made his presence known, and I liked that. I don't see how it was a problem that we knew we'd eventually kill (or at least encounter) Arthas.

[munkeyinorbit]

...

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.

Crystalsong did not have any content taking away from it. The big argent tournament was suppose to go there but Blizzard realized there was massive lag in Dalaran. They decided to move it to its current location so it wasn't a lagfest. You can tell because one of the daily quest requires you to go all over the map. It makes more sense if the tournament was in Crystalsong . NO CONTENT WAS CUT.

Yogg was not squeezes in. He was planned before you even (well not you in particular cause bads didn't raid back then) killed KJ in Sunwell. Saronite being Yoggs blood was known at release. That links to Ulduar which leads to Yogg.

This flying "argument" is full of shit. There is no more danger on the ground than in the air. In a lot of zones, it is more dangerous in the air than on the ground. You are more likely to get killed by a flying elite dragon than you are of mobs on the ground. BTW, if you didn't like flying, why do you use it.

Expac was so predictable? We didn't even kill the LK. At the release of that 3.4 patch, it was leaked that LK wasn't killed, but with the title of the expac, you would assume that you would get to kill the LK.

• Tier 7 was predictable because they told us a year out we were going to Naxx. Then they jumped 3D onto us. That was a surprise.
• Tier 8 was predictable in the sense that there had to be another raid, but then they busted out hard modes on us. That was a surprise. Especially with the ramp up of difficulty.
• Tier 9 was out of nowhere. That patch was suppose to be all about the new PVP BG. Then they snuck Tier 9 in by surprise. Sure it ended up being terrible, but when announced, it was big news.
• Tier 10 itself was not a surprise, but the ending was.

You are not wrong in that it was not a 10/10 expac. Just because something is popular doesn't mean it is the best. It is officially the 2nd best expac as we all know bc was better. Great balance between vanilla style progression with enough casualisation to allow non-raiders to raid t4, run BGs and run challenging heroic dungeons. It also encouraged PvP with the way that PvP gear was passed down to honor after the season. You just dislike it it for completely invalid reasons. You do not offer an alternative for the "best" expac around so it seems that you just want to jump on the bandwagon to hate what ever is popular. It's not surprising. Kids always want to hate on whatever is popular.

[dd614]

You can't compare Wotlk to MoP and beyond because they were still figuring out what the audience wanted. I liked the pacing of the raids, even though the first tier was awful and a joke. That said, they had made Naxx and hardly anyone saw it because it was so hardcore. They brought it back and made it easy to get the playerbase a feeling of what raiding should be. The encounters were basic but still trained some raiding skills like picking up ads, moving to the right location quickly, managing and dispelling debuffs, being aware of your surroundings, etc. They wanted to demystify raiding and create a new generation of raiders to be ready for Ulduar, which was a masterpiece.

[Leih]

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.

As much as I can agree with the original post that the tournament was shit, you're quite right in that there is no restriction on entering the raid and never was. If you create a fresh character today you can enter immediately as soon as you hit level 80 without anything else needed.

[wariofan1]

Wrath did a few things well: The Scourge theme was something that a lot of us had highly anticipated and in that respect it did not dissapoint, its story might have been bad but it took huge leaps in its actual storytelling methods, and Ulduar remains probably the best raid the game has ever seen and I do disagree with your point about it as there was a lot of buildup for it.

Everything else did not work out very well though.

The story was a huge mess and only gets worse every time I think about it as I find more and more problems with it, particularly with the story elements introduced in the ICC patch. Arthas himself was also a huge dissapointment and a pretty bad villain who didn't accomplish anything over the course of the expansion other than getting beaten up several times, somehow people fail to realize this though as they apparently don't care what Arthas does as long as he just appears as many times as possible throughout the expansion. Wrath could really have used a moment like The Broken Shore where we actually lose.

The gameplay was also a huge issue as it deviated a lot from the previous expansions and made the community feel entitled. Heroic dungeons were incredibly easy and basically boiled down to only using your AoE spells, and on top of that they were more rewarding than ever. No longer did the game feature raids that only the best of the best could get into either, instead the only challenges to be found in the game came in the form of heroic versions of specific bosses. Suddenly everybody was running around in full tier gear without having done much to get it, when Blizzard later tried to up the difficulty in Cataclysm they were met by a huge backlash because Wrath had gotten everyone used to the game being so easy which resulted in Cata's content getting nerfed and ultimately ruined. The quality of the dungeons and raids can also be questioned with the mere four months of Ulduar being the only standout experience in the two years Wrath lasted.

A lot of the new things Wrath introduced or did also set a very bad example and would later create a lot of problems in future expansions. LFG and cross-realm dungeon were a big reason why the community of the game has dwindled over the years, no longer did people have a reason to care about decency and just wanted everything to go as fast as possible. Wrath also put daily quests on the map for good, they existed in TBC but weren't nearly as important, in Wrath and forward they became an excuse for not including actually engaging content instead. Wrath was also the first expansion to rehash content, rehashing an entire raid tier no less, and while not a lot of people got to see Naxx while it was current content most people who had read up on it knew everything about it already and a lot of people also did it for fun in TBC. It was also the first time in the game where I truly felt that there was very little reason to go out into the world, once I had gotten what I needed from dailies I did not leave Dalaran for anything other than raid nights.

There's a pretty good reason that Wrath wasn't liked by many when it was current, it's only long after it ended that people suddenly began worshipping it which I think says a lot. It's lucky that WoD was as bad as it is, because otherwise it's comfortably the worst expansion the game has seen. I do want to note that this is of course all in my opinion, some might not take issue with some of the points I made, but in my opinion Wrath did a lot of long-term damage to the game that it still hasn't recovered from.

[Thelin]

These are my ratings for each expansion (Includes vanilla):

Vanilla- 5/10

TBC: 5.5/10

WoTLK: 6.5/10

Cata: 3/10

MoP: 9.5/10

WoD: 3.5/10

Legion: ?/10 (It's too soon to make a final rating as of yet).

Lol, MoP a 9.5 but TBC a 5.5? Dafaq

[Roiids]

I've played since Vanilla, favorite so far was really Vanilla, because people actually had BLUES on and not all EPICS/Legendaries and still felt that they had a geared player. Only the top 5-10% of players in the MC/BWL era of raiding even had epics.

Ever since they started making everyone get epics it really took away the feel of when you got that one epic finally.

TBC was my second favorite, mainly for the storyline and also because it still wasnt just easy mode zerg like everything since WOTLK has been. Dungeons were actually difficult, there was some gating which i enjoyed because not every scrub just walked into all the content right off.

Every since WOTLK they made the game EZ mode.

[Sinyc]

I realise I'm probably going to get a lot of hate for this

Yes, yes you are. Because your "hot takes" suck.

You can't tell me that not being able to fly in WoD made the zones more fun or threatening. You just ride past any aggro'd mob. Come on, that's one of your arguments?

[Deleted]

snip

Every since WOTLK they made the game EZ mode.

cause vanilla content was so hard compared to todays raids..

[Ciddy]

You can't tell me that not being able to fly in WoD made the zones more fun or threatening. You just ride past any aggro'd mob. Come on, that's one of your arguments?

Yeah, I know there are people on both sides of the argument about flight, but I thought it worked just fine the way it was before WoD came along. You either got to level cap or close to it, paid a gold fee, and could fly.

If flight really needs to be gated behind something...I'd say just gate it behind Loremaster and Explorer, then charge gold on top of that. By the time you've done those things, you've seen all the current content and aren't "skipping" anything. When/if content patches come out and release new zones, you can fly in those zones once you've done Loremaster/Explorer for them.

Flying certainly didn't make ICC or Storm Peaks feel smaller or less threatening to me. None of the zones in WoD (when we were stuck to the ground) came anywhere close to those two.