Whatever Blizzard did to make WOTLK, it was a masterpiece.

[Archermit]

Honestly? Nostalgia.

Doesn't mean it wasn't great. Because it was, in places. But it was also terrible, in places.

For every Lich King we had a dozen forgettable bosses. Ulduar is counterbalanced by Naxxrammas. The occasional brilliance in Wintergrasp was nullified by the mundane drudge of every other Wintergrasp. And 5 mans were just massively undertuned (though the three ICC ones were very good and well tuned).

For its time? It was fantastic. A great step up from Burning Crusade, which itself was a great step up from Classic. But compared to Mists of Pandaria? Its got its fair share of problems.

I will say the music is probably my favourite, though. And it has my favourite zone, Storm Peaks.

The heroic dungeons were very difficult, well some of them were and you needed CC and carful pulls...granted tat was only until you got some raid gear together at by the time ulduar came out they were almsot trivial.

What made Wrath the best? The story, the Arthas/LK story is for me at least one of the best stories in the game. LK would taunt you at every quest and even had some easter eggs constantly saying you will serve him when you are more powerful. He is the onyl boss that I can think of to fulfill his promise, he said he would kill us and raise us as his strongest troops...well he did kill us but Tirion decided after 12 minutes is was about time to ask for help and then end it all!

[Deleted]

Nope. The subs increased in vanilla and TBC, WLK made it plateau so from commercial standpoint it was already a failure (business dont want to see plateaus, they want to see constant increase). And you're still (wilfully) ignoring the churn to try to make some kind of point.




You missed the word "my" there. Also Tier7 was tuned well for average player but it was tuned complete dogshit (approximately to current flex level) for 25man raiding guilds. T7 killed numerous guilds because for the first and the only time in WoW's history when you could actually pug the current raids and didn't need guilds for anything anymore.

- - - Updated - - -



It came out when it was ready, and because there's no trash and it's half tier size it came out way too fast. There's no special rushing or tinfoil hat theories involved.




NUmber of people who did Nax40 while it was current content was very few. Number of people who pugged it or did bored drunken guild raids on it during late TBC is pretty big.

No. No its not. The official blizzard numbers for people who tried out naxx more or less succesfully are very very low

[Debased]

Ulduar was the crown of Warcraft raiding. So many incredibly memorable fights and with maybe the exception of Firefighter they were all tuned very well. I very much liked ICC too. I don't understand the ToC hate, yeah it wasn't great but I thought most of the fights were rather fun, maybe they just dragged it out too long even if it was already fairly short.

I missed ToT but I heard it was quite good, but besides that maybe the only raid that is within that league is Firelands. I was late to SoO too and I worked to run it through Normal once for the wolf but since then I haven't touched it, what a god awful aimless mess.

[AVPaul]

WotLK was best xpack. It only has two major flaws: class balance (yea, OP Paladins and gimped Shamans) and stat inflation (Blizzard had to implement ARP, which killed itemization for some classes). Sad to say it, but in the past I thought, that players, who were asking for old Wow version servers, were driven by just a nostalgia, but now I'm finding myself in their camp. While you still could enjoy old content in game (via leveling alts for example), game mechanics are damaged so badly, that it became uninteresting to play this game on live servers. How can you enjoy old content with 3-button style dumbed down game mechanics and homogenized classes and specs? I really wish, we could have 3.3 official server (we don't need this bnet crap and Ruby sanctum from 3.4) - peak of Wow's popularity patch.

[fixx]

No. No its not. The official blizzard numbers for people who tried out naxx more or less succesfully are very very low

While it was current content. There's never been any comments on how many did Nax during TBC. In my low population realm there was weekly pug to Nax running for more than year, with Corrupted Ashbringer reserved (and it never dropped afaik).

[Bombino]

Really? Didn't Wrath have the longest time of the last raid being out before next xpac?

I think the graphics and everything were great too and other stuff. But I'm a bigger fan of BC. BT/Sunwell seemed epic.

[Shraug]

Really? Didn't Wrath have the longest time of the last raid being out before next xpac?

I think the graphics and everything were great too and other stuff. But I'm a bigger fan of BC. BT/Sunwell seemed epic.

BT/Sunwell were awesome as well. But the entire package of WotLK was as a whole great. The soundtrack, the story, everything.

[melodramocracy]

Wrath was the apex of this game as far as story and environment go (and in some ways, the mechanics themselves). The content that was presented, for the most part, all meshed together extremely well, though looking back, there were things that could have been done better.

Crystal Forest as a zone was completely under-utilized.

ICC itself, to me, was a bit of a let-down. A fairly symmetrical multi-floor setup wasn't really what I was hoping for, especially after seeing Ulduar, and how well done it was from start to finish.

The Old Kingdom should have had a raid attached to it, or, as has been discussed on this forum elsewhere, should have been the way into ICC.

I liked ToC. It was short, quite challenging for pugs (on my server at least), fun, and people are quick to forget that a trash-free raid was asked for pretty frequently on the boards before that.

ICC lasted too long, and the follow up raid was really just 'meh'. I think the expansion would have been better without RS at all.

Wintergrasp, once it was sorted out, was an awful lot of fun.

I wasn't around for it, but in retrospect I think I'd still call BC a better expansion, even if it was less of a focused effort.

[Deleted]

Ulduar was a Masterpiece. Not the whole of WotLK. Naxxramas was milking nostalgia from Vanilla players, ToC was disgusting in aesthetics (though good fights design to be honest) and ICC mainly impressed people because "I kilz Arthas".

[Deleted]

WoW has used the exact same model since WotLK.

The only difference between now and then is that the majority of the people have now reached the ends of that model (not a whole lot of achievements, mounts, pets, whatever to farm anymore even for most casual people*), so instead of having a minority being bored as hell, you now have a majority.

But game design wise the core has absolutely not changed one bit. PvP systems have been the same since BC, PvE systems have been the same since WotLK. Rest are fluff that kept you more or less occupied for more or less long.

*that they're interested in

[Deleted]

I play since vanilla and wotlk was definitely a masterpriece, sadly it went all downhill after wotlk. But at least we get Dalaran back, so we got that going for us, which is nice.

Also, i think wotlk was the only expansion where flying mounts made sense with Dalaran high in the sky.

[Tonkaden]

The expansion was a success both based on the leaps and bounds in subscribers, and the community opinion overall, with it's only major detractor being ToC. I don't see how nostalgia has anything to do with that.

It had just about everything going for it.

Do you even do research before you respond or post? TBC got all of WoW's subs, period. When wrath released, WoW was already up to 10.7 million subs. That means they gained 1.7 million subs give or take.

I don't know how half the people in this thread post. Most are wrath babies. Im not saying that as a negative term. Its the truth. Nothing wrong with wrath? Are you kidding me?

We had Naxx (which was cleared the first week by almost every guild or pug that went in it, be it casual or hardcore), Eye of Eternity (1 boss), The Vault (4 bosses on a release schedule that were stupid easy), Obsidian Santum , 1 boss... We basically had pushover raids that were done in a week or 2 for 5 and a half months. Ulduar and ICC were the lone bright spots of this expac. The 5 mans were severely undertuned, with the exception of the ICC ones.

The whole expac was nostalgia indeed. Its also guilty of introducing one of the worst things in the game's history as well as worst in the industry, which is the LFR / LFD tool. I am 110% that this single inclusion ruined MMOs and the feeling of community as we knew it.

[Palisis]

It was the best expansion. It's only flaw was ToC.

It was my fave for a long time as well. But late into MoP, I found MoP to be my favorite expansion.

[Tonkaden]

It was my fave for a long time as well. But late into MoP, I found MoP to be my favorite expansion.

I loved MoP as well. The music, the zones. I hope every day that at the next blizzcon they will say they are releasing progression servers. I hope hope hope.

[Kickbuttmario]

Your nostalgia is showing. The expansion is what started the issues of wow today and what segregated the playerbase of hardcore vs casuals when in reality it was social players vs non-social players. Believe me, I played that expansion from the start and as soon as ToC was released with the catch-up badges and such, everything went into disarray.

Cata tried to change it back into some form of TBC raiding but failed due to massive complaints from the playerbase, then they reverted the changes. LFR came and that it was officially started the social vs solo players.

MoP took it a step up from that and built so many accessible systems that it became too accessible.

WoD not sure what it was trying to become. Seemed more like a time issue than anything.

[Dadwen]

For me WOW starting going downhill after WOTLK when they started screwing with the class design in cata or 4.0 patch, (I kinda thought MOP was starting to go in the right direction but then we had WOD and the pruning crap)

[Laerrus]

Most are wrath babies.

Oh FFS that term is still in use? It's been nearly 7 years since the beginning of WoTLK...

Personally I enjoyed WoTLK. The only thing I didn't like was the fact that old raids were made irrelevant by badge gear.

End of TBC = Wide range of progression to choose from, guilds in Kara all the way up to SWP.
End of WotLK = Everyone in ICC, other three raid tiers not being utilized.

The whole expac was nostalgia indeed. Its also guilty of introducing one of the worst things in the game's history as well as worst in the industry, which is the LFR / LFD tool. I am 110% that this single inclusion ruined MMOs and the feeling of community as we knew it.

Community is what you make of it. Everyday on my realm there is the group of usual suspects that are either trolling or chatting about some other kind of bullshit (like current events), some of them end up going and doing stuff together (Arenas, etc.). We also have plenty of social/casual guilds that enjoy doing things together. Blaming the perception of loss of community on a game feature is just an excuse.

[PepeLePewPew]

It was the best version of the game overall. Those who disagree are the true 'Wrath Babies.'
It provided the most fun for the broadest spectrum of players hands down with a wide range of difficulty and plenty of content. Contrast the nit-picking about Wrath with what could be negatively said about 'vanilla' and TBC. Blizzard won't likely put forth that level of effort again since they know WoW has plateaued.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Wrath had flaws on the management side of things. Here is my opinion on the whole thing. I don't think it is overly positive or negitive.

Naxx bring a total reboot tier was totally under tuned, recycled content, and simply unentertaining after a short while. But it fit the theme and not many people before the WotLK mode saw it. So I give them a pass on that in all honesty. But the tier lasted way to long. It was very yuck because of that.

Uld raid was fucking amazing. But the patch didn't bring much more content wise. So great raid at the cost of new 5 man's and fresh dailies but I feel they were working hard to push out LFD at the time. So kind of forgivable.

ToC patch was good in the sense of us getting 5 mans, dailies, and a raid. I like that model. But the raid itself was very forgettable. Along with the 5 mans. Although I kind of liked the dailies but to each their own.

ICC was an amazing tier. But it was gated to hell at the start. Also it lasted way to long and was nerfed to the ground way to much. But the patch itself brought some of the better 5 man's ever imo.

Also that last boss they kinda just threw in was meh. I liked the encounter but the zone itself was pathetic attempt to drag ICC out longer.

[Ryme]

"Wrath was a masterpiece" = "Patch 3.1 was a masterpiece, I also liked Grizzly Hills."