WOTLK without rose-tinted shades

[hablix]

Burning Crusade was my favorite expansion, the most fun I ever had in WoW, in fact it was peak videogame for me period. But even I can separate that from the fact that Legion is a higher quality expansion in every respect. All I can do is roll my eyes when the "hurr durr Wrath so much better" refrain gets repeated for the umpteenth million time, despite how far this game has come since then, particularly with Legion.

[Lethora]

Wrath had the best overall story and the best raids.
the best raids.
the best raids.

No. Just no. It had Ulduar which is indeed one the best raids, and it had ICC that was decent.
The rest of Wrath raid content is a complete disgrace.
All other expansions had better raids.
Mists had the best raids since there was variety of scenery in every tier, and quality encounters. It had challenging and unique bosses. Throne of Thunders is arguably the best raid Blizzard ever made.

[porgig]

In a row? You must be forgetting ToC has to fit in between two of those.

Like the guy below you said. "Who started it?" was ToC.

I still remember the good ol times like it was yesterday. Guy was right at the start, easy for anyone to just talk to him and start the event. Gate closes and everyone is trapped, wipe ensues. People running back in ghost form, drops you right back into the boss fight, gate still closed, no escape... fire usually under your feet right at the door. Raid spends about an hour trying to figure out who's doing it since it can easily be done in a second while everyone is running passed him. People blaming others randomly, getting innocent people kicked. Finally find the guy that's doing it? Remove him, no problem... until you realize it's more than one person.

ICC was beautiful too. Raid kills Marrowgar, portal right in front of Deathwhisper's room. Some sneaky person teleports back without anyone noticing, buff disappears, nobody notices. Engage H Deathwhisper, wipe ensues. Usually easy for the pugs, wonder what's going on? "Alright, who turned off the buff?" People begin realizing the 1 boss save, rage ensues. Alternatively: continuation pug reforming in trade, everyone gets invited, zone in, accept save, buff disappears again, repeat.

Bonus round: Guild selling 0-light and Mimiron's Head, sure no problem invite these fine individuals they look rich enough. Summon to Yog's room, someone teleports up, watch as keepers 1 by 1 appear to help you with your run.

[Mormolyce]

No. Just no. It had Ulduar which is indeed one the best raids, and it had ICC that was decent.
The rest of Wrath raid content is a complete disgrace.
All other expansions had better raids.
Mists had the best raids since there was variety of scenery in every tier, and quality encounters. It had challenging and unique bosses. Throne of Thunders is arguably the best raid Blizzard ever made.

All subjective of course. Personally I think Wrath had the best overall, not that MoP's weren't also great. Actually the most fun I ever had raiding was in Cata, especially the first tier :P

I loved MoP, and it'd probably be my favourite expansion overall if I weren't so attached to the storyline in Wrath.

- - - Updated - - -

ICC was beautiful too. Raid kills Marrowgar, portal right in front of Deathwhisper's room. Some sneaky person teleports back without anyone noticing, buff disappears, nobody notices. Engage H Deathwhisper, wipe ensues. Usually easy for the pugs, wonder what's going on? "Alright, who turned off the buff?" People begin realizing the 1 boss save, rage ensues. Alternatively: continuation pug reforming in trade, everyone gets invited, zone in, accept save, buff disappears again, repeat.

Ah, memories. Horrible, horrible memories.

The one-use-only lockout system was without a doubt the worst part of Wrath.

- - - Updated - - -

You know OP, something I found is that theme will determine the success of the expansion in the player's eyes. Now granted, WoD was just plain rough no arguing that. Though when you look at communities and their responses to their "favorite" MMO Wrath and BC are almost always on top, Cata hangs in the middle, and MoP near the bottom. Which is really strange, because MoP was a fantastic expansion for so many reasons. It was the theme, people just couldn't enjoy it until 5.3 where things started to turn towards the inner workings of the Horde.

I think MoP has been scoring higher on polls lately, now that the "current expansion blues" have worn off.

WoD of course is heavily affected by those at the moment.

[FearDarkness]

I think people that say WotLK was the best expansion are those who started playing at 3.3.5 patch.

For those who say that PvP was good - go and watch youtube videos about DKs in pre Ulduar patch. Find some statistics about 2v2 glad comps and count how many DKs/Hpalas were there. Blizzard removed some arena rewards from 2v2 bracket not without a reason. There was a joke that people got glad title without even knowing what gladiator means and you know that there is a little bit of truth in every joke.

You know why people actually hate TotC?

1) Bosses were released 1 per week. Normal bosses were extreamly easy and you couldn't do hc before you kill Anub normal. Very interesting 4 weeks.
2) You could go 10 and 25 verison on same lockout. Which means? Very very interesting 4 weeks.
3) The loot was different in 10 and 25 version. So you HAD to do both.
4) And then you finally unlock hc and do the same instance 4 times a week. You already hate beasts and Jaraxxus.

And ICC was basicly the same. You got 1 wing per week.

[Priya-tan]

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

This. Objectively, I know that Wrath wasn't the best expansion, but it was absolutely my "golden years" of raiding. It was when I made the most progression, learned the most, made a ton of great friends, had a ton of fun... but I was in college then and I just can't put the same amount of time into the game as I did back then. But I had SO much fun.

[squee666]

Dont folrget even if you had flying in wrath Base speed was 60% slow AF

[ShiyoKozuki]

WOTLK is when WOW went completely downhill. Insane catch up mechanics so early in the expansion(which caused play the patch not the expansion of invalidating all content not the current tier), multiple raid difficulties that are in a menu and not an optional way to make bosses harder(ulduar hm's were perfect), cross-server LFG being added; on top of that we had almost no reason to leave Dalaran besides dailies, "bring the player not the class" bullshit that ruined classes until Legion and heroics were piss easy AOE fests with no challenge.

WOTLK is when it all went wrong, and hilariously, the first expansion GC worked on.

GC is why wow has been garbage for so long. Legion is the first expansion trying to get away from his stupid horrible ideas.

WOTLK was garbage. Saying it's the best WOW has ever been is some stupid zerg hivemind movement started on forums. TBC had the best raid structure, the best class designs(bring a hybrid to buff people not to do as much dps as a pure) and best atmosphere.

WOTLK was where everything bad about current WOW started. WOTLK is what killed the MMO genre over over a decade now. WOTLK is the worst thing to happen to not only WOW, but this entire genre.

- - - Updated - - -

It's interesting reading all of the love for WotLK in hindsight, when back at the time it was extremely controversial. So, so many of my friends and guildies lost their love for the game in the WotLK era, with many of them who had been hardcore players since Molten Core quitting our raids to go play LOTRO or Aion or Rift or whatever was the new FOTM MMO coming out (all of which subsequently died, of course, but most of those people never came back to us).

However, Wrath was the beginning of the true age of accessibility in WoW, with an incredible amount of QoL improvements, easy zergable dungeons, casual raiding content and nerfed levelling experience. This, along with the obscene marketing push that Blizzard had going during this expansion, brought in just as many new and fresh players as oldschool Vanilla/TBC players who were leaving. The population on a graph for WotLK looks to be pretty much a straight line... but Wrath has the biggest influx of new players in any expansion, and simultaneously one of the biggest losses of older players, which kept things looking very stable... but in truth, there was a lot of churn for sure.

I'm sure people from that time remember the "Wrathbaby" term. Now the Wrathbabies have grown up, and they're the old fogeys talking about how things were better back in their day

Makes me feel proper old.

Yeah all my friends quit during wrath and I did as well. Some came back with me for CAT but it was so bad that we all quit in 2 months.

[Faroth]

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?).

Someone probably brought this up already, but...

Crystalsong was supposed to be the location of the Argent Tournament. The problem was having Dalaran loaded with Crystalsong, plus everything for the Argent Tournament, was found to cause problems. Add in an expectation of putting everyone in the two biggest hubs, from both factions, all in one zone and it was going to be a recipe for crashes.

Hence, Argent Tournament got moved up to the northern tip where it now sits.

[Lumineus]

When asked though why people didn't like MoP, it wasn't Monks were the new huntards, a lack of content after launch, poorly constructed raids, poor story development, a lack of features, poor class balancing, or anything like that. It was two things, "kung fu pandas" and SoO lasting a year. The first one is purely subjective and it's understandable that people wouldn't like an expansion where they didn't like the theme. The second was just a blunder on Blizzard's fault and it shouldn't have happened.

Well, for me the reason I didn't like MoP was the excessive gating of literally EVERYTHING. Valor gear gated behind daily rep. Rep gated behind another rep. Rep progress gated by how much you can earn per day -- a sin that was repeated with Tanaan and again in Legion! Gated guild rep with gated guild levels to access gated QoL features. Reward systems gutted across the board. Catch-up dungeons fully replaced by LFR, which was then slashed and burned in WoD. Blizzard thinks Mythic dungeons can fill this role with no matchmaking. Kek.

[gibbie99]

Well, I honestly think it was the best, big (massive) changes since TBC; raids were accessible from day 1, united thread (Arthas), fairly easy leveling, flight was available at 77 for the first toon then shortly after you can purchase that tome that unlocks it on alts. The dungeons were quick and easy (my favorite part), the raids by and large were very enjoyable. You just have to look at the numbers, there is a reason millions came on board with WOTLK and left for cataclysm. Cata was interesting, and I do like the zone refreshes, but the story was so disjointed, especially the questing. Then panda land, there really wasn't much of a story at all. I think WOD was pretty good overall, just way too long. We all got bored a year ago. I'm not really that optimistic about legion being good, since they did away with the concept of a bunch of raids and good dungeons. You really have to admit WoW has fallen in that regard every expac being worse than before. Oh well.

[Deleted]

Even w/o glasses is still most epic Expansion compared to ones who comes after that

[nekobaka]

Players farmed the previous raid tier without squabble the exception of Ulduar due to gear catch up making it irrelevant. Even last few months of expansion still had ToC PuGs. Come Cata and players gave Blizzard the finger for trying to do such.

[Majestic12]

Wrath started the road to casualness and class homogenization that we have today. There is a reason why people were labeled as "Wrath kiddies" and it is because they only ever knew welfare epics.