Would WoD have been more tolerable without the Alternate Universe theme?

[TEHPALLYTANK]

No, the content is more important than the theme. The content was severely lacking and the reward structure was terrible.

[logintime]

Would it have made WoD tolerable? No, too many bad decisions were made this expansion, from beginning to end.

Would it have made WoD a little less unbearably stupid? Yes. Time travel + alternate universe was a stupid gimmick that made this entire expansion feel like a bad fanfic, and also made its events feel utterly irrelevant. Who ultimately cares about this side universe? It will be closed off, we'll go back to the main one, and this whole time spent in Draenor will have been utterly pointless. For players like me who care about the narrative, that's embarrassingly bad.

[Bigbazz]

The alternate timeline is not why WOD sucked.. It was being stuck in your garrison with no content that made it suck. Total of 2 raid tiers with a 15+ month content drought.

[Machinelf]

I was worried when I heard of alt universes. It reminded me of the total mess DC comics had gotten in by the late 80s with Earth 1 Earth 2 etc etc. Nothing really mattered anymore because you really didn't know/care who was the "real" Superman. They cleaned it up with Crisis of Infinite Earths. WOW lore is kinda confused after WoD. Does anyone besides lore nerds really know/care where the real Gul'dan is? In retrospect, Draenor should have simply been a Caverns of Time megainstance and left it at that. Regardless, the problem was deeper than this.

Up until WoD, every expac had a mid tier/major content patch like BT in BC, Ulduar in WotLK, Firelands in Cata, ToT in Mop would have fixed everything. In retrospect MoP was probably the best executed of these. Players got used to this. Can you imagine taking out any of these? Can you imagine Wrath without Ulduar? Basically Naxx and then ICC? Haha.

WoD had a fantastic beginning and end, but no mid game. Everything was fine for one patch. Problems only arose after content went dry in the vaccum in the middle. Sentiment soured right about the time Molten Core 40 hit in early 2015.

It was like you got a good sandwich every 2 years then were handed two pieces of bread. That mid expac sweet spot was missing. WoD could have easily been the best expac ever. A possible candidate, BRF, which could have been a quest hub. Think rideable TRAINS! with tracks all over Draenor that could have led into Faralon... maybe culminating in a Shattrath city raid (that huge circular building in the middle) Different types of Iron Horde vehicles, like in Ulduar, hell even Blackfuse on steroids etc etc so much missed opportunity. This was the part of WoD people would have fondly remembered, But BRF was unceremoniously shoehorned into Highmaul. You would have been too busy to notice how bad garrisons were. It really is that simple. But alas, you never really hit a moment where you went, WE DEFEATED THE IRON HORDE ARMY. Now I know how a woman feels after sex with a man who finishes too quickly.

This blunder, which came from the top, rivals EA completely fucking up the Mass Effect 3 ending. Hopefully, it wasn't a mortal wound and the franchise can recover.

[Celarent]

Nah, the story was kind of interesting at first.

But after an expansion with four distinct chapters conveyed in-game, you expect that proper level of plot development. WoD was like buying a thousand-page novel and cracking it open at home to discover that every page after the second chapter is blank.

[Nyel]

The alternate universe just made the whole expansion a waste of time. It didn't give us anything important besides Gul'dan and even Gul'dan could have been brought into the game much easier without wasting an entire expansion on just a single thing that needed to happen.

[masterjc]

As a lore nerd. For me without alternate universe and remaking some of old-new outland would be okay and much better. Because alternate universe brought to us some troubles in case of lore and even some persons and situations

Anyway. If it was handled better lorewise, game would be better and if it had actually more real nongarrison content that would make game good as well

Undeployed and unfinished expansion and scrapped lore made WoD most horrible expansion for me.
Sofar my favorite is MoP. As it gave new lore and stuff to do in very interesting ways.

Wod had good features like leveling zones but lorewise it sucked and it had almost not content for endgame and for parches except those raids
And only raids are not enough

[melodramocracy]

I don't think the alt universe thing was that much of a factor in things. In hindsight, garrisons were about 80% of the problems with this expansion, either directly or indirectly via their effect on professions, gold generation, etc. Had the work on those been put into other, more standard sort of content (for example, the Ogre island, etc), this expansion would probably be viewed far more favorably.

The remaining 20% of issues would be a mix of the prune and content pacing. The dungeons, raids, and outdoor environments are all quite good in this expansion.

[Tart]

Garrisons killed WoD

[Kryos]

They turned legends into freeloot - proud warriors into trashmobs. It was sad.

[Gadzooks]

Basically the title. Do you think people would have stuck around more for an expansion with a stronger theme? Perhaps with a strong and resonating story, people would have excused the lack of content and stuck around more.

It was an okay idea, that was sold differently than it played out - as sold, it was interesting - go back, see the orcs and their world, and the Dreanii, and see stuff before it was destroyed. You know, the whole "savage" thing.

Well, they kind of did that. Poorly.

We really didn't get to see much of the world, before we started killing them off, one by one. We didn't get to explore or learn much about Frostfire or Karabor, because they abandoned those to make us go through Trashran. We got half the story in the Spires. Grogrond was just a waste. Nagrand was a waste - they build a huge city like Highmaul...and we can't explore it. Hey, ogres actualy have a culture - kill them! Don't get me started on Shattrath.

Basically, they had a somewhat interesting idea - and pissed it all away. It's Warlords of Missed Opportunities and Failed Expectations. We really didnt learn much, other than the so-called "Iron Horde" were just an easy pushover. And the story of the whole expansion is like watching Patton...with the middle hour cut out. And the Nazis aren't a threat. The only real threat were walking flowers, ffs.

And, less than a week's content before hitting the worst grind imagined had a lot to do with people leaving, that, and GarrisonVille

Could it have been more tolerable? Of course it could - they screwed up so badly across the board, anything could have been better. They could have taken the worst parts of the previous 4 expansions, thrown them together, and it would have been better than WoD.

[Deleted]

Yeah, considering that the game effectively became repetition after week#1 was what caused it to become such a mess that it is.

[MoanaLisa]

The alternate universe didn't have much to do with anything although it was a cheap and easy way to explain the existence of the expansion. Much would have been forgiven if the story had been worked out in more detail, if there had been more patches to tell the story they had, and if there was more to do at level 100 that was rewarding and didn't involve raiding. And garrisons, more would have been forgiven there too if there had been some customization so a player could have continued to work on it and if it had functioned more like a traditional hub instead of some place to hide out from the world. Which was just as well because there was little enough to do in the world. You might as well stay warm and dry while not doing it.

ALL of that was more important to the success of the expansion than some flimsy justification as to how we got there.

[Decisive The Hallowed]

I was worried when I heard of alt universes. It reminded me of the total mess DC comics had gotten in by the late 80s with Earth 1 Earth 2 etc etc. Nothing really mattered anymore because you really didn't know/care who was the "real" Superman. They cleaned it up with Crisis of Infinite Earths. WOW lore is kinda confused after WoD. Does anyone besides lore nerds really know/care where the real Gul'dan is? In retrospect, Draenor should have simply been a Caverns of Time megainstance and left it at that. Regardless, the problem was deeper than this.

Yeah, exactly right. Lots of people who arnt really into lore are going to get confused. I had someone ask in chat on the latest PTR why Valen is still alive (referring to the WoD Shadowmoon Valley conclusion) And several of us had to explain to that was just some kinda of alternate version of Valen and our one is still alive...and I can see tons more of people getting confused when Valen turns up in Legion.

[Tomana]

Basically the title. Do you think people would have stuck around more for an expansion with a stronger theme? Perhaps with a strong and resonating story, people would have excused the lack of content and stuck around more.

Not to me. Problem with WOD was the lack of non-raid content, not the theme. Your mileage may vary of course.

[Bosen]

I think a stronger theme would've helped with enthusiasm.

An expansion that concerns our current timeline and lore,matters.

[Pantalaimon]

Well the idea itself could have been okey. Seeing those guys at their height of their power. Last time we saw those guys was in the novels. I was pretty excited for the lore. At least for the potential it had.

But they decided to throw it all out. Which is probably the biggest sin WoD ever commited.

I wholeheartedly agree. The lore was the thing I was most excited for because I had never truly experienced these cool characters I had heard bits & pieces about, or ones that had huge legacies like Gul'Dan. They could have done so much more with them & it did feel hodgepodged after realizing HFC was the last of anything we were going to get. I was also disappointed how we had pretty much killed off most of the warlords after just the second tier. One of them was even a mere introductory boss, the first boss to be killed for crying out loud!

Though I do have to say that part of me wonders why so many people complained about WoD being an alternative universe when there wasn't nearly as much backlash about CoT dungeons & the one raid. The Hyjal raid wasn't even connected with the storyline's current world. The infinite dragonflight wasn't even involved in any way for the version of the raid we were given, it was literally a disconnected raid given to us to see an epic moment. At least an alternate universe has a small chance to effect our world, more than small now that Gul'Dan ended up in our world.

[beanman12345]

no it stilll would have sucked. people got bored fast.

[Cwimge]

No. Time travel and sweeping retcons would of been so much worse without the easy hand-wave of it not being ours. The entire theme was bad

[Thage]

Not really. The alternate universe theme was at the bottom of WoD's list of glaring problems, rating far beneath the broken endgame reward scheme, boring casual endgame, rampant developer hubris, cynically marketing a patch whose defining features were Twitter integration, a toy, and more Garrison missions as a major patch, broken specs that were never fixed, the most laughable PvP balance since 2004, and the outright and complete abandonment of the expansion after two major patches.