Did TBC ever get any complaints in its time?

[Feel The Power]

I can even remember lots of people crying about how WoW was dead after Warsong Gulch was released, and how it ruined the game. There's always something that ruins the game forever every few months.

[Nakotsu]

im going to say not really other then attunements but they went away fast. But then again I was a paladin tank at the time. I had to attune a guild of 500 people but we were bleeding edge at the time.

[Ellerain]

Also, I'd like to remind you : my original point was that today's class balance is actually not really much better than TBC's one.

You're really misremembering if you think that.

E.g. TBC raid took Enh shaman for one reason only -- drop WF totem in the 3 rogue/1 warr/1 Enh group. Enh was doing 30% less than everyone else but WF totem was boosting the other 4 damage by 30%. Needless to say that if you didnt have a 2nd melee group you never took a second Enh shaman. This was by design. Dev-approved.
Shadowpriests were 50% behind mages (but did restore mana to the healers and thus you wanted exactly 1/healer group).

Another example - ret pallies even after they got their damage buffed didn't get a threat drop ability. That meant that they had to hold back their dps (up to 30% dps loss IIRC) AND a horrible 'don't press any buttons' gameplay. Before they got their damage buffed they were behind by something ridiculous -- like 40% and suffered from insane RNG design.

[MoanaLisa]

The simple fact is that a bitchfest has been happening around the game for 12+ years now. It ebbs slightly and grows worse at times but it's never stopped and I would expect it never will.

[Dhrizzle]

I remember the reaction to Draenei being "space goats" and lolspaceships. I cannot remember exactly, but there was also a complaint about retcons due to the Draenei. I think it had to due with eredar warlocks originally being the ones that corrupted Sargeras and not the other way around (current lore). It's been too long.

Otherwise, I remember people saying that only lifeless nerds sunk time into WoW.

Draenei had two ret-cons. The first was on purpose, and it made the broken/wrekt (like Akama) related to the Eredar by way of what we now know as Draenei. The second was by accident and is exactly like you said, making Sargeras corrupt Eredar when the reverse used to be true.

[FelPlague]

yes
class balance "wtf warlocks press 1 button and top the charts"
horrible attunements "wtf kara"
broken boss encounters
and many other things, one of the majors being daily quests, as they were new, and tons of people hated them
that and all the pallies/shammies complaining their ruined class fantasy as the other faction now had those classes

[Deleted]

As a game itself ? Not many. About balance/dungeons/attunements ? Many, but never on the level you see today (not even remotely close). And i say this as someone who didn't really like TBC. PvP is the only place where you would get tons of complains, and the most important reason for it wasn't because PvP sucked, or because it was imbalanced, blablabla, but because it first introduced the ranked system, and as such, negativity would easilly inflame.

To the point people talking about being burn out, stopping playing, etc ? Nope.

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I can even remember lots of people crying about how WoW was dead after Warsong Gulch was released, and how it ruined the game. There's always something that ruins the game forever every few months.

And rightfully so, it was the beginning on the decline of world PvP, which would receive the final nail on its coffin with the flying mounts.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Lmao, of course it did. As did Classic, as did WOTLK, as has any expansion. It will always be part of it if you go to forums to see complaints about everything in-game from class balance down to how a critter is colored.

[Dhrizzle]

Shadow Labs? Are you sure? Arcatraz & Shattered Halls were a level above in difficulty.

I never had much trouble with Arcatraz. Shadow Labs on the other hand had some really nasty pulls, the shadow priests just before the warlock dude would melt you and had a nasty habit of dispelling CC and the last room with Murmur had those mobs who'd suddenly run out so you'd pull two groups. Then there's the mind-control ogre who frequently got everyone to nuke the healer (time for fun!)

[Anastacy]

It existed; of course people complained about it.

[Lucifuger]

"Thank you, Blizzard..for killing raiding."
-word for word quote from my old guild in BC

Game was dead though. Destroyed.

Hey guys, Age of Conan looks REALLY cool, like way better than WoW. Quitting this game when it comes out, who wants to join me?

[saeros]

As a game itself ? Not many. About balance/dungeons/attunements ? Many, but never on the level you see today (not even remotely close). And i say this as someone who didn't really like TBC. PvP is the only place where you would get tons of complains, and the most important reason for it wasn't because PvP sucked, or because it was imbalanced, blablabla, but because it first introduced the ranked system, and as such, negativity would easilly inflame.

To the point people talking about being burn out, stopping playing, etc ? Nope.

what is missing in this discussion, imho, is that back then most players didn't really care about the game, they were not deep in it, they had no long-lasting guild as now.

now most players are here because they had fun over the years and enjoyed the game as it was.

now people complain more because they simply care more.

people complain about the things that they feel are worse now, and they can use older expansion as a comparison.
while they don't really care about things that were bad.

in tbc/vanilla or even in wotlk most people were new players, which means that they were enjoying the game EVEN with the flaws.
there were tons of things that people didn't like and hated, in fact tons of people have never played wow, tons have never reached the level cap. and so on...
tons of peole found critical flaws before they started to care, so they simply stopped.


does it means tbc was perfect? no, simply people have no reason to talk about the bad aspects of the previous expansions, because if they stayed in the game they liked it.

for example, an aspect that is objectively improved: server stability.
in raid time it was impossible to join the server, you could even have to wait hours in queue.
or do you remember launch days? it was impossible to play.

now, why someone should make a thread and talk about how the server stability is better now and it sucked in tbc? it make no sense.
while, on the other hand, it makes perfectly sense for someone to talk about how a specific feature was better. (not saying that it is always true, btw)

[Echocho]

No planned content obsolescence, insane power creep and content being made irrelevant mid-expac (or even worse later, every tier).

I really miss the days when power creep wasn't an issue. Gear you acquired in SSC/TK weren't completely worthless 3 months later and you slowly got stronger and getting an upgrade actually felt exciting since you didn't replace it every 2 days.

[primalmatter]

I recall class balence being the biggest thing... outside of that i am sure the usual stuff involving pvp.

[Xandrigity]

Attunments and healer/tank poaching for raids.

[Kokolums]

Dont listen to the noobs who say 5 mans were hard in bc. They were actually VERY easy. It just required a brain. You see, back then there was no LFD tool that forced you to pick tank dps heals. You could also make strong hybrids. The noobs would say "oh! 5 man! That means i MUST go tank heals dpsx3! Wow why is this 5 man so hard?????"

The trick was they were all trivial if you went tank heals heals dps dps. But that took a brain. Plus back then you had legit hybrids like shadow priest that could switch between strong dps and off heal.

A HUUUUUUUUUUGE criticism i have with LFD is it locks players into roles. Also modern talents and specs do the same.

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I remember id pick crappy dps like boomkin and ret pallies on PURPOSE and pair them with two heals and a tank and crush 5 mans. That was fun!

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I guess another way of looking at it is bc 5 man pulls did so much damage that the benefit of an offheal vastly outweighed the dps loss. Bit almost nobody noticed and beat their heads against the wall by taking just 1 heals.

[Relapses]

Orcs had tiny fucking shoulderpads for an entire 6 month patch cycle. Can you fucking believe that?!

[Lane]

It received many, yes. From profound hatred of Shadow Labyrinth, to the bizarre and seemingly endless attunement process for Karazhan and other raids, and reputation grinds that truly emphasized the word "grind."

This. Not to mention the rep grinds to get the keys just to be able to do heroics. I still can't stand to set foot in Shadow Labyrinth. The amount of times it had to be run was ridiculous and gods help you if you had set pieces in there.

I personally hated TBC, but not for the reasons above. I hated it for the clunky nature of it. Hunters and Warriors just felt horrible in TBC, to me. I also hated Shattrath, it was so gloomy and depressing. The two end zones were also pretty gloomy and depressing as where most of the dungeons.

I also got pretty bored of fighting Red Orcs , Demons and Blood Elves.

Same. Aside from Nagrand and parts of Terokkar, I found most of the zones visually unappealing. The story was incoherent. It felt like there were less dungeons than there were due to low resource variety.

Things I can think off of the top of my head:

Small Servers it being almost impossible to get groups for raids or Heroic five mans if you weren't in the top 3 or 4 guilds hours in chat waiting.
The gap between people who could get into a 10 man but couldn't get into a 25 and a 25 requiring gear from previous 25s (no catch up mechanic until sunwell)
A requirement of Revered, maybe honored I can't remember, for heroic dungeons
Tedious heroic dungeons that sometimes required specific classes to get through (had to have enough CC for certain ones with certain tanks)

Yes. People who are anti-LFD either didn't experience or don't remember how bad getting groups was in BC, especially if you didn't have a CC which basically ruled out every single hybrid class. It wasn't uncommon, if you were one of those unfortunate individuals, to not even be able to get the daily heroic done.

PvP balance was non-existent.

[Xjev]

I remember how bored we got from Karazhan/ZA and we were asking for new stuff.

[Daymanmb]

Nope, not ever. It was perfect.