I feel like WotLK was the sweet spot

[Mormolyce]

What is this rubbish?

Ridiculous, TBC had a lot of shitty dungeons. There's a reason why it's the worst part of leveling 1-90. Blizzard took the multi-wing instance thing too far and we got oversized repetitive dungeons like Auchindoun with recycled assets and bosses, don't tell me that crap was so compelling. And back then there was no random heroic option, so everyone just did Mechanar... so what was the point of having heaps of 5m bosses if people all did one dungeon?

WoW is just old, buddy.

[Solidsteel]

Wrath was the best, this isn't opinion it is fact. All you have to do is look at the sub numbers that were at their height at the end of WotLK and at the beginning of Cata.

[Vankrys]

i would always associate WoLK with Naxxaramas and easy, snoozefest heroics.

That being said, ulduar and ICC were very good raid. ToC bosses were decent but too few and 1 room with no trash was just lazy. It killed the tier.
I think part of WoLK were good. In the same way, part of TBC were good too.

The ideal expansion would be a mix of TBC/WoLK.

[PureColour]

Wrath was the worst expac i have ever seen.

ICC got boring fast, pvp was in shambles. Nax was pretty decent, but, even then, it was just that..decent. I'm super glad that expac is over and done with, and i hope i never see anything like it again

[shimerra]

Oh HELLS NO you didn't say that.

Wrath dungeons were SOOOO not AoE fests at the begining! I remember wiping several times on the last boss in Halls of Lightning. If you didn't get out of that AoE blast, you were one-shotted.

I remember having to gather and deal with the adds against the final boss of Halls of Stone.

I remember having an INSANE tough time hoping to hold out against the adds in the Bran Bronzebeard escort part.

I remember Venoxis without the add-kiting glitch at the door... /shiver

I remember getting malowned by the final boss of Old Kingdom simply because I couldn't handle the shadow-adds. >_<

And lets not forget the terror that was the Consortium guy in Violet Hold!

Yeah... they were NOT AoE fests at the beginning. They only became as such when LFD happened, and people actually got gear-matched with other players...

I STILL remember the very loud disdain people had when they heard about LFD for the first time. All anybody pictured in their minds was wipefest after wipefest... (ironically, what we feared when LFD was first announced DID happen when Cataclysm was released...)

NOBODY expected it to become a fast-paced AOE bananza fest! :P

---------- Post added 2013-05-21 at 03:47 AM ----------



BC fans would complain... the rest of us would be enjoying playing Wrath and not reading the forums. :P

You can tell me what they were all you want. We were aoeing down packs with a main spec ret paladin in sunwell tanking gear. Zero exaggeration. I still play with three of the people from that 5 man. I honestly can't think of a single trash mob that was worth the effort of CCing. I know there were one or two but I honestly can't remember an instance were we CC more than single specific mob.

Halls of lightning was difficult for one single healer, holy paladins. For every other healer it was a laughable snooze fest. I'm serious the only time I ever had a problem with that fight was with our paladin healer because he had no healing on the go.

They were AoE fests snooze fests in heroic gear, the second you had any amount of naxx gear they were laughable face rolling jokes.

I remember falling asleep on the Bran fight. The only challenging part was me playing a DK and multi add fights like that were just weird to handle as a fresh tank that zerged his way to 80.

The consortium was a terror? Only if your tank sucked. He was cheesed by a non-retarded tank kiting him and half way decent dps. The shadow guy was harder and even he was a joke.

By the time LFD came out I could solo large chunks of heroics on my dk. That first boss in halls of lightning? I remember pulling him with the first two trash packs on me as well when LFD hit.

Venoxis was a cataclysm release in ZG so excuse me if I question your recollection.


The last boss of OK was only hard if your dps was too stupid to interrupt their healer. The second one single dps beat their add wave that fight was over. Have any dks in your group? Have them pop army and enjoy the face roll.

The single difficult achievement from the Heroic meta was Anub'Arak, and we still got it in a single night of attempts. Getting the right amount of RNG with that pound at 71% was annoying as hell. I don't remember what magical difficult instances you played. There were at best a few annoying bosses but the trash inside of them and 90% of the bosses were not difficult.

[shanthi]

Seems like a lot of people have short memories.

Healing was incredibly dull in Wrath. Chain Heal, Rejuv, Bubble, Whatever 1 big thing pallys do.
Tanking is much more improved with the new active mitigation abilities.
LFG was painful. With the exception for bosses, it was mind sear, bladestorm, hurricane etc.,
PvP was awful. "Is that a destro/ele ..." (dead).

Raiding was good. Raiding is good now too.\

This is essentially my opinion, too. They've made the combat system more sophisticated. Some people complain about how they "removed threat" as if threat was some serious mechanic in Wrath. While "drop hate puddle, make sandwich" is a bit of an overstatement for paladin tanking, it wasn't that far from the truth. I think tanking and healing have become a lot more engaging since Wrath. Yes, threat isn't a tug-of-war anymore, but maximizing survivability and DPS through active mitigation is a more interesting and fun challenge, IMO. Healing has evolved away from "fill a super-specific niche" (Rejuv blanketing or bubble-botting, etc) into a generally more well-rounded toolkit for most healing specs.

The raids and the lore were the best part of Wrath, but the lore resonated so much largely because it was players getting to "play through" events that were legendary from past Blizzard games. I don't think the story-telling is demonstrably worse in MoP and the raids are excellent in MoP as far as I'm concerned. I guess the one thing I liked about Wrath that is notably absent in MoP was the mood and atmosphere. I liked the dark and ominous tone of Wrath, whereas MoP has a lot less of that to me. That said, if every expansion felt like that, it would probably lose any significance.

[Mormolyce]

Wrath was the best, this isn't opinion it is fact. All you have to do is look at the sub numbers that were at their height at the end of WotLK and at the beginning of Cata.

Actually subs hit their peak around the launch of Wrath and mostly declined until Cata. Then they lifted back up just as Cata was released (because subs go up when a new expansion is launched... I mean.... duh).

http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-1.png

But yeah let's continue to pretend that sub numbers = game quality.

[OrcsRLame]

i would always associate WoLK with Naxxaramas and easy, snoozefest heroics.

That being said, ulduar and ICC were very good raid. ToC bosses were decent but too few and 1 room with no trash was just lazy. It killed the tier.
I think part of WoLK were good. In the same way, part of TBC were good too.

The ideal expansion would be a mix of TBC/WoLK.

No trash was one of the few redeeming qualities of ToC. If ToC was a full 12+ boss raid, and Faction Champs wasn't so RNG based with the comp you got, I'd call it the best raid of the expansion. Seriously, fuck trash in raids. I don't mind it at all in dungeons, but in raids I'd rather cut myself than clear trash. It's not a coincidence that I quit the game like 2 months into Firelands.

On topic: I can't comment on if WotLK was the best or not. Wrath and Cata were the only two expansions I played seriously. Of the two I preferred Wrath, especially concerning dungeon content.

[Wildmoon]

Not really. Difficulty of the first tier and last tier were BS. Healing in WotLK was downright mindless. ToC still hold the trophy of the worst raid of all time. If you wanna talk about sub number then WotLK is not the xpac that gain the most subs.

[Vankrys]

Oh HELLS NO you didn't say that.

Wrath dungeons were SOOOO not AoE fests at the begining! I remember wiping several times on the last boss in Halls of Lightning. If you didn't get out of that AoE blast, you were one-shotted.

the term AOE fest is applied to trash mobs, usually more than one. Loken was alone, there is no point to use aoe spell on him. And yes, you had to move out of his aoe to live, was it so bad.

I remember having to gather and deal with the adds against the final boss of Halls of Stone.

by gather and deal, you mean AOE them?

I remember having an INSANE tough time hoping to hold out against the adds in the Bran Bronzebeard escort part.

by holding, you mean you lose them due to ... AOE?
or you were taking much damage due to ... AOE tanking?

I remember Venoxis without the add-kiting glitch at the door... /shiver

indeed, nice boss, nice cataclysm boss

I remember getting malowned by the final boss of Old Kingdom simply because I couldn't handle the shadow-adds. >_<

well, those were 1 to 1 fight, so you shouldn't ... well ... aoe him.
Beside, that part was easy as pie...

And lets not forget the terror that was the Consortium guy in Violet Hold!

again, single boss, you don't aoe him. But the trash before them, you ... aoe them.
that boss, you could kite him out of line of sight of the sphere.

Yeah... they were NOT AoE fests at the beginning. They only became as such when LFD happened, and people actually got gear-matched with other players...

They totally were ... when you fight more than one enemy at a time. As soon as there was 2+ mob, spam aoe.

I STILL remember the very loud disdain people had when they heard about LFD for the first time. All anybody pictured in their minds was wipefest after wipefest... (ironically, what we feared when LFD was first announced DID happen when Cataclysm was released...)

nope the death of the community started out in wrath. 10 and 25 man PUG, were still maintening some community ties, but LFR dealth the killing blow.

[ipoststuff]

Gameplay improved a lot since wotlk. Speaking for my class here. Holy paladins just spammed holy light. Nothing but holy light. Tanks used a 96969 rotation and gem full stam (tanks werent balanced either). Ret was fcfs. You just hit the skill that was off cd. Now all three specs are much more interesting to play.

Like every expension wotlk had its goods and bads. Although i had great fun playing during wotlk i dont want it back. Lets move on.

[Reyzzz]

A wise man once said: Never change a winning team.

Someone also said never say never. Anyway, if you always pick scissors, enemy will adapt and pick rock instead of paper.

[Goldfingaz]

Agreed. Whatever they did in wrath it worked. My specuation on why this was is because:

- Large, open world. Northrend was huge, and probably the largest 'expansion' area to date.
- The story focus on Arthas was the best villain focus they've had really, also yogg saron had its own neat quaility.
- The raiding tiers, there were several, and by the end of the expansion, the weekly raiding quest system had some really good reason to pug into the raids, with alts, and do things with them.
- ICC was probably the best final raid, not on par with ulduar itself, but it was still fun, better then compared to sunwell and dragonsoul.
- introduction to badge system
- intro to LFD

And lots of other reasons that shaped the game for so many different styles of playerbase.

I have one major problem with this post, and am surprised no one said anything (Or maybe I missed it?)

introduction to the badge system? Badges were implemented in 2.0.3 under the name "Badge of Justice". WotLK changed how "BoJs" (As most called them) worked, and I personally didn't like the change, but it didn't really hurt the game for me, it was purely a preference thing.

[Glaziola]

Best time ever during ICC with my fav guild still missing those times
Loved doing dailys in sholazar basin with the epic music in that zone!

[arden714]

It was a shining bright spot in WoW's history for sure, but realistically there still isn't much to compare it with.

I enjoyed being able to play alt characters at almost the same capacity as my main, and the fact that pick up groups were common and frequent in trade chat. you never see people LFM for any panda raids now days. that in itself is a big problem. Normal modes need to be accessable in some degree to the PUG. the success of that group would depend on the raid leader and quality of players, however it should be assumed that the first couple bosses would be pretty brainless. PuGs for ICC didn't come into trouble normally until Saurfang at the earliest. 3 "free" boss kills was enough to entice most people to give it a try. I miss those days. "LFR" just doesn't fulfill that void that the game has right now

[Deleted]

I'd say we had a pretty good sweet spot around the time of Black Temple.

[prwraith]

funny cuz two years ago if you said wrath was the best.

You were a wrathbaby.

My how times have changed.

[Deleted]

I think a big problem with Wrath is the amount of cut or reused content. Azol Nerub I was originally meant to be a raid with an entire zone dedicated to the spiders (can't remember the proper name at the moment) and having Naxx as the first raid tier was kind of cheap.

[Wildberry]

I agree 100% the only way they could really improve upon the Wrath model is by pushing content out faster (Though really, I enjoyed doing ICC)

The story was amazingly done (I still enjoy leveling through Northrend to this day)
The gear looked great
Everyone got to see raids, but there were plenty of Difficult encounters for people that enjoyed the Challenge
People by the end of the expansion could pug full normal mode ICC with a few heroic bosses here and there
Badge System was great
Wintergrasp was fun
VoA was a neat way to gear up, especially for alts
There was plenty to do (unlike DS) yet it was still alt friendly.

Really I wish they would go back, I mean, I enjoy MoP quite a bit, but it's no Wrath, BC had some nice elements, and every once in a while I miss even pre-bc, but overall, I'd have to say Wrath really just "nailed it" for me.

[OrcsRLame]

the term AOE fest is applied to trash mobs, usually more than one. Loken was alone, there is no point to use aoe spell on him. And yes, you had to move out of his aoe to live, was it so bad.


by gather and deal, you mean AOE them?


by holding, you mean you lose them due to ... AOE?
or you were taking much damage due to ... AOE tanking?



indeed, nice boss, nice cataclysm boss


well, those were 1 to 1 fight, so you shouldn't ... well ... aoe him.
Beside, that part was easy as pie...



again, single boss, you don't aoe him. But the trash before them, you ... aoe them.
that boss, you could kite him out of line of sight of the sphere.




They totally were ... when you fight more than one enemy at a time. As soon as there was 2+ mob, spam aoe.



nope the death of the community started out in wrath. 10 and 25 man PUG, were still maintening some community ties, but LFR dealth the killing blow.

I don't think you really understand what an AoE fest was in Wrath. An AoE fest late in the expansion was when you pulled multiple groups of mobs + the boss and just AoE fucked them. Like in Nexus I'd pull from the first mob all the way to the boss, grabbing the other mobs behind him. Playing a prot warrior with 700 Arp and 40% crit was good times in dungeons. ^_^ And at the start of the expansion, smart groups just face tanked Loken's lightning nova, because smart groups brought a hunter or shaman.

The dungeons that didn't let you pull multiple things at once fucking sucked late in the expansion. I remember in 3.0 VH was considered to be the fastest heroic to run. In 3.3.5 it was the slowest, though CoT gave it a run for its money.