If WotLK was released today

[Kevyne-Shandris]

What about the lag in Naxx, that was some extreme lag.

Still the raid was so easy, your entire raid could lag and as long as they kept spamming their abilities, the boss would die.

The lag was horrid but that was due to the location of battlegroups. In WotLK it was all over the map. Emberstorm battlegroup was in the Seattle datacenter and the latency was horrid (150ms to the SOE LA servers; but Shandris was rocking 300+ms to Seattle from GA).

Naxx may have been very easy, but it also defined something that WoW players loved: Patchwerk bosses.

Sure, it's nothing fancy but an Arcane Mage pincushion, but it was fun. It was a straight out DPS show off boss.

WotLK had fun still in the game.

What's really fun can people remember of WoD in comparison (Cata or MoP for that matter? Pulling world bosses into capital cities maybe)?

[Deleted]

If we go by just forum complaints, the entire life span of wow has been a failure. WotLK, while having a rehashed Naxx, still had what is considered one of the best raids ever put into WoW, Ulduar. I also doubt Naxx was actually rehashed for the vast majority of players, including this forum, because less than 1% of the player base even killed more than one boss in vanilla Naxx.

This. Complaints have always been there, but never has the WoW community hated an expansion as much as WoD.

[2hot4you]

IF Wrath was released today, someone would make a poll in the MMO-C general forums titled "Worst WoW xpac?", and Wrath would have a substantial amount of votes compared to the other xpacs. You people are too old and will always be bitter towards "what stupid kids are into these days".

[Tekkommo]

This. Complaints have always been there, but never has the WoW community hated an expansion as much as WoD.

I see people say this every expansion.

[vitor210]

It was taken as a failure when it was current content.

This forum was littered with complaints.

wait what? But..but I thought the community agreed WotLK was the best expantion. You mean all those that cry about current state of the game and say WotLK was the best, were the same that said it sucked when it was content?

[Demithio]

And dont forget we actually got a real capital city back then with supporting storyline and interaction. Woltk was the last real full size expansion IMO.

[endur]

Naxx was far too easy, even as a casual group who barely scratched Black Temple we were having to cut raid nights short to leave something for other people to kill.

Anyone who did the Attunements for Black Temple in BC was not casual.

[Dhrizzle]

This. Complaints have always been there, but never has the WoW community hated an expansion as much as WoD.

Cata seemed to have a lot worse complaints, a lot of resources went into the old-world content so the lvl 80+ stuff was lackluster.

[Deleted]

I see people say this every expansion.

No.

What happened with WoD has never happened before. And the numbers confirm it. Never before have so many players left the game so early in the expansion, and all at once. Usually that happens at the end, in the content drought, and not before the first real patch.

You really have to be in denial to not see what's happening here.

- - - Updated - - -

Cata seemed to have a lot worse complaints, a lot of resources went into the old-world content so the lvl 80+ stuff was lackluster.

Cataclysm didn't have nearly the same problems WoD had, didn't have nearly the same negativity and complaints WoD had. It was mostly hated in retrospect. WoD makes Cataclysm look good.

[Dhrizzle]

Anyone who did the Attunements for Black Temple in BC was not casual.

By the standards of the time we were quite casual. Only three 3-hour raids a week and each person was only expected to attend 1 or 2 of them, and we didn't force people to play particular specs (which bit us in the ass quite often.)

[randprin]

just a point regarding rehashed naxx. there was no doubt the normal naxx was easy, but that's because it was meant to be accessible to everyone (sort of like LFR is these days).
the real challenge was in the achievements (the glory ones, immortal and undying) where you really showed your above average skills, not because you had the advantage of gear, but because you were skilled enough to gain them.

[Blackmist]

"The current expansion is the worst one ever" is basically the default state of mmo-champion.

I could tell that WoD must be fairly decent because there was about one week at the start where people were actually enjoying themselves, before others pointed out that just wasn't cool, and so we went back to not enjoying it.

[Frozen Death Knight]

No, it wasn't.

Take off those nostalgia glasses. People complained non-stop about WotLK on the forums when it was current and raiders thought the 3.0 raids were ridiculously easy compared to what they got in TBC. It's easy to look back at the expansion now and say "oh, it wasn't so bad", but the fact of the matter is that it had its fair share of issues as well.

[Shiny212]

pretty nonsensical dilemma, it was a huge success and it'd be a huge success today. Virtually all changes made to wow after WOTLK have made it worse and it shows in the playerbase and subcount.

[Kevyne-Shandris]

This. Complaints have always been there, but never has the WoW community hated an expansion as much as WoD.

It appears that way, but even with the flying SNAFU, Cata and the Real ID fiasco was seriously much worse. The national media picked up on it and it snowballed from there.

Cata really was bad for all of the changes Blizzard tried to implement, and some that no self-respecting gamer would try to push (work/career and gaming stay separate. Bosses don't need to know you play WoW and ERP in Moon Guard, for example). That showed gamers that Blizzard wasn't exactly gamers for gamers anymore.

[Tekkommo]

No.

What happened with WoD has never happened before.

You must be new around here, or suffer from long term memory issues.

[Deleted]

I only remember the following complaints:
-Naxx rehashed
-ToC and ToGC have no environment and no trash
-ICC lasted 12 months
-some complaints of balancing, but these come every expansion so... yea.

That's preety much it. The Argent Crusade questing zone was great even if its dungeon and raid weren't that great. Ulduar was great. The lore was great. You had the right amount of dailies. You could catch up to people... but not be the same level as regular raiders. You still had a social aspect. You had amazing raids but also amazing zones outside. Zones didn't get cut from launch. You had a beautiful capital and professions weren't done in some instanced zone, you actually had to fly and do stuff. You had Wintergrasp which was tons better than Assran (spelled intentionally).

[Dhrizzle]

No.

What happened with WoD has never happened before. And the numbers confirm it. Never before have so many players left the game so early in the expansion, and all at once. Usually that happens at the end, in the content drought, and not before the first real patch.

You really have to be in denial to not see what's happening here.

Never before had so many people come back for an expansion either, and afterwards the sub numbers returned to about where you'd expect them if the expansion hadn't happened (which is a trend for every new-expansion jump.)

Cataclysm didn't have nearly the same problems WoD had, didn't have nearly the same negativity and complaints WoD had. It was mostly hated in retrospect. WoD makes Cataclysm look good.

Most of the problems with the expansions boil down to it's too hard/it's too easy/it takes too much time/it's over too quick/there's too much I'm forced to do/there's not enough I want to do and so on; in general todays problems are the solutions to yesterdays problems and I doubt Blizz will ever find the magic formula that pleases everyone.

Cata also had some unique problems. Revamping the old world took a lot away from the "new" content and having expansion zones spread across a larger map took away from the sense of exploring a new land. Cataclysm also came after an expansion that not finished tidying up the plots from WC3 and Frozen Throne but had also given major reveals for the genesis of the gnomes/dwarfs/humans and dragons.

[Demithio]

Take off those nostalgia glasses. People complained non-stop about WotLK on the forums when it was current and raiders thought the 3.0 raids were ridiculously easy compared to what they got in TBC. It's easy to look back at the expansion now and say "oh, it wasn't so bad", but the fact of the matter is that it had its fair share of issues as well.

Thats because TBC content was amped raid wise, it actually broke a number of guilds on my server. Coming for a fairly successful raid experience in TBC, I did find Wotlk to be "dumbed down" somewhat. I agree not everything was roses with Wotlk. However, overall, Wotlk wasn't a bad raid experience and the overall world experience was solid compared to what we have seen since.

I dont think this has to do with people and their "nostalgia glasses", more along the lines of an overall well designed, full content expansion vs. the half-baked development we see now.

[Sergas]

It is just the way it works in WoW, back in the day everything was better. People would complain about Wotlk Naxx just like they do now about Shipyards.

I get sick on tired about people that keep saying "I just want it to be like back in the day. Hard dungeons, I want to grind rep for rewards, I want...., I want......". What people don't understand, you will never get that feeling back, when you first started playing this game. Whatever Blizzard does will not be good enough. People bitched about MoP dailies ,"so many damn dailies... I don't want to do dailies anymore", so Blizz removed dailies in WoD. Now all the haters go: "Dailies grinding was so much better"

Blizz just can`t win... plain and simple.