What did people complain about?

[Deleted]

I started WoW a month after the launch of Wrath of the Lich King, so I never got to experience Vanilla or The Burning Crusade. People (It is unclear as to how many) often say that The Burning Crusade was 'the sweet spot.' What I want to know is, what did people complain about back in Vanilla and The Burning Crusade? I know there was uproar about Paladins/Shamans being playable on both sides in TBC, and bugs in Vanilla, but what else did the community rage about? Thanks.

[icausewipes]

1. Rogues stun locking ppl from 100-0.
2. Game crashing.
3. OP mages
4. Attunements

[Phasma]

They complained that the game required too much of their time to play and they should be able to see content they pay for. They complained about class balance. Oh, how they are eating those words now...

[Frozenbeef]

i can remember in tbc people complained that 5man heroics offering epic gear / bg's offering arena gear

[klaps_05]

SL/SL locks
hitting said locks for 200 frostbolt
s3 resto druids god mode

vanilla was fun tbh - played a arcane/double trinket pompyro so i can oneshot anyone. then a warlock hits me for 3500 shadowbolt while seduced or a warrior killing you before you can blink

[Afrospinach]

TBC - rep grinds(keys for heroics), heroics being particularly punishing for melee at first, attunements, cost of epic flying, slow flying mount slower than ground mount, too much red in hellfire peninsula, too much purple in netherstorm, rares that were not soloable, too much awesome in nagrand, green gear replaced epics, primal nethers were BoP so if you were shitty at heroics you could never really be a guild crafter. I had particularly whiny people in my guild at the time. It was awesome.

3. OP mages

Oh that reminds me, free action potions.

[Deleted]

Stability problems, latency and lag (oh mother of god TBC was laggy sometimes). As well as the amount of grind that some things required (attunements without a LFG tool was nightmarish, if not in a good guild)

[Noorri]

I didn't pay much attention to the game back then and only started playing midway through BC, but here is what I have heard.

Alot of people comlained about the Draenei in the same way alot of people complained about the Pandaren. Spaceships etc...
There where a good amount of controversy in general with the "welfare epics", from PVP gear to Badge of Justice gear.
On a similar note, I saw alot of complaints from raiders back in BC when Blizzard put in the last batches of Badge of Justice gear that was as good as T5 gear or better.

That's what I can remember of the top of my head. Generally there where less complaints since forums didn't have the population they have now and the game was still new and exciting to people.

[azemis]

Having to spam lf1m healer vc for 3 hours then spend 2 hours getting halfway through the dungeon wiping and running back then having the tank leave before smite.

[Zaelsino]

Can't speak for vanilla, but common BC complaints included:

1. PVE players having an advantage in PVP (particularly rogues)
2. Warglaives in PVP
3. Locks and resto druids (more so the latter)
4. Ret being horrible
5. Arena being too easily exploited and poor matchups
6. Ganking; people still cared about this, and united realm rage against X ganker was quite common
7. Stun-locking (Stunherald, anyone?)
8. The grind up to even apply to a serious guild
9. The amount of time it took to get somewhere notable progression-wise
10. Attunements
11. Seal of Blood (<3)

I remember a lot of rage about engineers too.

[Uvwaex]

They complained that the game required too much of their time to play and they should be able to see content they pay for. They complained about class balance. Oh, how they are eating those words now...

It is wrong to assume the same people are complaining

[Phasma]

It is wrong to assume the same people are complaining

True, but you know there are probably some that all they want to do is complain about everything.

[Zaylin]

1. Rogues stun locking ppl from 100-0.
2. Game crashing.
3. OP mages
4. Attunements

No one complained about OP mages, they complained about OP Warlocks. Warlocks outperformed Mages in the first three raids of Vanilla (MC, Onxy, and BWL) and all of BC. Warlocks also dominated PVP at the time.

Also Horde complained about Pallys in Vanilla. Pallys had the best buffs in the game at the time and were the best healers.

[Deleted]

TBC - rep grinds(keys for heroics), heroics being particularly punishing for melee at first, attunements, cost of epic flying, slow flying mount slower than ground mount, too much red in hellfire peninsula, too much purple in netherstorm, rares that were not soloable, too much awesome in nagrand, green gear replaced epics, primal nethers were BoP so if you were shitty at heroics you could never really be a guild crafter. I had particularly whiny people in my guild at the time. It was awesome.

Oh that reminds me, free action potions.

made me remember 360 cleaves, oh god

[marthsk]

Ninja'ing gear. Man THAT was such a big deal back then. Your name would be forever tarnished on your realm if you tried to pull that off with any remotely serious guild.

Nowadays, all you get from that is a tad bit of rage, and nothing more.

[Zaelsino]

Yeah, ninjaing gear was a good way to become a pariah. Ninjas would be slammed all over the place, in-game and out.

[Afrospinach]

made me remember 360 cleaves, oh god

Yeah, during our learning period I spent a lot of time chewing the floor as a rogue, but all said and done I miss the challenge.

[Keoren]

Back from TBC I remember SL/SL warlocks, rogues ganking people, resto druids(+warriors), PvE vs. PvP gear and warlocks eating mages alive being quite universal complaints. There were quite some other class balance complaints as well, and the 30% nerf at the end of the expansion raised some sort of a storm from what I can recall. There were also quite some more realm-specific topics and I remember some folks having a pretty bad reputation because of ninjaing an item or two. The average guild didn't want to be associated with such people either.

Shattrath lag.

[Zairn]

Lets see if I can even remember, it's easy to get things mixed up after so long.

Hunters had the widest equip-able item base, so they got a reputation for being horrible ninjas that would roll on random fucking gear that was useless to them. You hadn't lived til you had cloth robes with spirit and int on them taken by a hunter. Not that spirit was really useful outside of raiding thanks to the 5 second rule. Oh, and they would jump down a ledge and their pet went the long way and aggroed every mob you skipped, so they got a reputation as bad players.

All of classic PvP was insane burst. Thus people complained about stunlock from 100-0, AP POM Pyro, Windfury, etc.

Itemization, there was lots of gear that could be useless and a ton of gear had wasted stats.

Oh, a HUGE one was enforced roles. Druids, Paladins, Shamans, and Priests were all forced to be healers. Warriors were the only tanks allowed. Druids and Paladins especially felt like 2/3rds of their class was rendered unplayable in the name of optimization. Trying to play any spec besides those for those classes was an uphill battle.

Material resources were a major problem. Most classes had reagents they needed to buy just stacks and stacks and stacks of and running out when you need them occasionally happened and felt awful. Mage food had to be individually summoned, food and water weren't the same item, and you didn't even summon an entire stack in a single cast. They had to show up to raid a half hour early and fill up all their bags with food and water then hand them out to 39 people, then summon more and be ready to hand them out at anyone's beck and call. Paladins started with 5 minute buffs that were individually cast on people which...well, is why we have the term "buffbot". Even when they got greater blessings, it was only 15 minutes, still had to be cast multiple times based on class for the entire raid, and required reagents. Warlocks had it worst since soul shards didn't stack and you needed tons of them and obviously you also had to go out into the world, find mobs that give EXP, and farm them before raids.

Some of the popular fight mechanics were obnoxious. Dispeling bad things was a massive chore and debuffs that needed to be dispeled composed like 60% of all bad things raid bosses did. Fights that needed resist gear (Fire for MC and BWL, Nature for AQ, Frost for Naxx) had you farming really terrible gear that you were forced to use even though it sucked otherwise. Was worst for tanks who needed an entire set of the appropriate resist gear.

You needed a key to get in UBRS, which obviously no one ever had since it came in 3 pieces in LBRS and it was brutal to get all three on a single person since everyone wanted them. Usually resulted in PUGs paying a Rogue to come over and unlock the door for you. Which also brings up the idea that the non-"real raid" UBRS were 15 man PUGs that you joined and waited around for an hour and a half to form up and find someone that can open the door. Ludicrous in retrospect.

Speaking of which, dungeons as a whole...took forever to find the people for it since that entailed spamming chat in trade. Then it could take you FOREVER to actually get there (Scarlet Monastery as Alliance for example, from Ironforge that was like a 20 minute run). And everyone had to make that run unless you had a warlock, in which case you still needed 3 people to make the run. You had to commit to hours to actually run a dungeon, a lot of that time not spent doing anything.

Getting your epic mount took 1000g and represented hundreds of hours grinding but what were you going to do? Running around on your normal ground mount at 60 was legitimately depressing. Speaking of which, even it represented a lot of grinding. If you were smart with your money you could buy it when you dinged 40 but most people were maybe a level or two higher before they got it if they didn't know better to start saving much earlier.

TONS of other stuff that doesn't come to mind at the moment. The most interesting stuff is probably all linked to things that were eventually changed because of all the people complaining and now people are complaining about the improvement.

[Togarox]

Off of the top of my head in Classic people complained about how the other faction had a class they didn't, flight paths took too long, the fact that 40-man raids were a pain to get together and about how rogues and warlocks could stun-lock/fear you almost perpetually. Of course there were the usual complaints about balance and having to PvP on PvP servers.

In BC, horde players complained about getting Blood elves, small guilds complained about not being able to get enough people to see 25 man content, Heroics were too hard, attunement quests were annoying, and cant forget the shattrath lag caused by all the random fighting and laughing NPC's. And of course the usual class balance arguments.