Final Thoughs on WoTLK as we transition towards the Cataclysm...

[Khainos]

Wotlk was the expansion where I got together with Sworn, my raiding group and had some amazing experiences in the diffirent raids of Wotlk.

Ulduar was amazing, being my first real raid in Wotlk. Working on getting Val'anyr was wonderful.
I, for one, liked Colisseum, though it was kind of short. Oh well.
And getting to bash Arthas' skull in, was the absolute epitome of this expansion. I had never expected to get this far, but I did!

I will miss Northrend. It had the perfect eirie feel to it, it certainly wasn't a good, happy place. And that's how it should be.
Thanks for everything, Wrath of the Lich King. Thanks for everything Ulduar, Arthas, Tirion, Malygos.

[jtstormrage]

I loved WOTLK:
- Naxx was great fun. Most people had never seen it (including 98% of people who played in Vanilla). Love the trash and the bosses in there. Happy days.
- I LOVED OS and OS3D is still fun. When it was current, and people were still in 200/213 gear, doing 3k DPS, it was arguably the hardest fight in the expansion. LK HC and Anub HC were hard but when OS3D was current almost noone did it. In fact, most people didn't get their Twilight Vanquisher title until they were ICC gear.
- Ulduar was amazing. People say it was the best raid instance. I LOVED it, and still love going back but I say ICC was just s good. The main difference was that people raided ICC for a year. If Ulduar had been 3.3 and ICC had been 3.1, and people had done Ulduar for a year, everyone would say how amazing ICC is.
- Also people say ICC was too easy - take the bufff away and then do it. Almost noone did that because they were afraid of the challenge. I lol at some of the posts above.
- TOC was pretty awful. It was fun the first few times but it was so faceroll. Only Anub HC was hard.
- The levelling experience from 68-about 76-77 was great. Borean, Howling Fjord, Dragonblight, Grizzly, Zul'drak and Sholazar were all great. Storm Peaks and Icecrown were a bit meh imo.
- I love the introduction of achievements and some of the really cool mounts you can get in Wrath. I love the lore in Northrend and the continued fight against the Old Gods and the Scourge.
- Death Knights are pretty cool. Really different to any other class.
- Generally loved the Xpac and hope Cata can live up to it.

[Durbi]

I didn't really enoyed WotlK that much when looking overall, but some thing were pretty nice and enoyjable...gonna name some i like/don't like

like:

- Sartharion 3 drakes on 25 man

- Ulduar story, encounters...basicly everything that had to do with Ulduar

- Anub'arak 25 man heroic (note only him, nothing else from that god forsaken patch)

- Profesor Putricide and Lich King encounters in Icecrown Citadel, rest was pretty meh, and ok, Lady Deathwhisper was pretty cool aswel (talking about 25 man hard modes here)

- the design of some 5 mans, which were beautiful when looking them

- the tears on forums when Halls of Reflections was released

- Northrend continent in general so much more awesome looking then old areas, questing was pretty fun too (except group quests, cause they were too easy)

didn't like:

- the boredom once legendary Naxxramas was, man they sure did ruin this place, doubt anyone actually enoyed this place that much...would be better if they just let it stay where it was, it was harder then new Naxxramas anyway, even at 70

- the majority of tier 7 raiding with exception of already mentioned Sartharion 3 drakes

- Trial of the Crusader raid...4 times a week in one single room, no trash, no lore...boring boss enocunters on normal, heroic a bit more fun but still nowhere as much fun as Ulduar

- dungeon finder ruined server communites and promoted ninjaing even more

- the whole system where you can change name, apperance, server, race, gender just allowed shit players to do bad thing and get away with it

- Icecrown Citadel design...i didn't like it much, was expecting much more from Lich King personal domain, and in the end in turned out to be few hallways on the right and left side with bosss in the end of them, trash was boring, like they were just expecting us so all prepared, and by far the biggest dissapoitment is teleport to Frozen Throne right in middle there, that was just pure bullshit, the road to LK was supposed to be a lot more epic then that, and the fact we had to farm it 12 months...

- the fact that Mal'ganis didn't appear in Icecrown Citadel as hard mode only boss made me a bit sad too

but yeah, in the end WotLK gets 6,5/10 from me

[Kendrel]

They say that First Impressions are the most important, and when it comes to Raiding in Wrath it turns out that it's very very true. Having a recycled raid instance as your one and only main raid (I don't count Malygos/Sartharion as these were too short to really count as full on instances, even if the fights were fun) really created an impression that lasted - and not positively. I think a lot of people stopped giving Wrath a chance at this point, as sad as it is. Have a recycled raid may not have been so bad had it not been for the fact that it 'was' trivialised, and it was the only option.

Ulduar was Epic. Great feel, great new ideas and the best implementation of Hard Modes to date. Hard Modes that didn't just increase health/damage output, but changed the nature of the fight. But again, didn't provide us with any variety.

ToC was truly poor. It was a nice idea, and I'm not even entirely sure that the execution was off, it just didn't feel right. One of those things that sounded great on paper that just didn't read as well as it should have. Again, utter lack of variety. The Heroic version was just utterly crap. Just more health/damage, and no different feeling from any of the fight, except maybe Anub.

ICC - I really enjoyed ICC. Once you got past the initial euphoria of new content, you realised the normal modes were really quite bland and, with a couple of exceptions, the HM's just weren't that fun. The lore made up for that nicely though.

Mainly, raids seemed to be summed up by being mostly bland, with random flares of brilliance inter-spersed with lack of variety. This is your current tier, and that's it until 6 months time. I'm glad they're fixing this with Cata and bringing back the multiple raid tier system back.

The instances themselves could have been great, but Blizz wielded the nerfbat way too easily and caved in way to much. I'm not a hardcore raider, and even I appreciate that they tried too hard to keep everyone happy, which you just can't do.

Questing was excellent, the best to date, and the zone designs were awesome. I really enjoyed most of them, the exception being Borean Tundra - just didn't have the feel of a place I wanted to spend any time (and I invariably didn't).

Heroics were quite fun and relatively hard at the beginning but just didn't scale with gear. This made them rapidly trivialised by gear and rapidly frowned upon because of the utter lack of anything else to do. (Cataclysm seems to have taken steps toward fixing this will scaling instances, one shot kill abilities if not paying attention etc.) The amount of current tier 'free' gear being given out also left a bad taste in my mouth. I've always felt that current gear should be a reward for hard work in raids, not handed out like free cheese at a party.

The achievement system was pretty good. Some obvious time sinks, but some meaningful achievements that felt epic when you finally got them. Some achievements like Undying and Immortal make you really feel tense when getting to those final couple of bosses. The Meta Achievements were also a stroke of genius imo.

3 Best Bits:

1. Sartharion at gear level. This was a fantastic fight. Truly a highlight. Epitomised what they should have been going for with a nice fight for the casual raider, and an incrementally harder fight for those that were hardcore. You had everything here. Situational awareness with the void zones and the waves, one shot abilities requiring the timing of cooldowns that weren't affected by bad RNG, and a high dps requirement (for the time). Easily my favourite fight of the expansion.

2. Questing/zone design - a huge step up. Questing was lore filled and engaging. No real challenges posed, but quest lines such as the Wrathgate gave great build up and good pay off. The soundtrack also deserves a mention. Alot of the work was put here involving some of the best music both in, and out, of raids.

3. Ulduar - best implentation of interesting fights and hardmode design. More of this please.

3 Worst Bits:

1. Gear Gear Gear! The designs were pretty lacklustre, and it was given away with no effort. Even the Legendaries were provided more because of persistance than any degree of skill. It became more a case of the best guilds had multiple Shadowmournes than having just one.

2. Narrow Raid Variety. Have 1 huge raid at a time may have seemed cool at the time, but it rapidly became very dull seeing the same bosses and the same walls/designs all the time. I think this is the biggest pall against Wrath - multiple raid instances per tier ftw. If you get bored of one, go to the other.

3. Constant nerfing as a reaction rather than any kind of pre-planning. It 'seemed' like if a boss wasn't learned quickly and downed in the first week, it took a nerf bat to the nethers.

- Also people say ICC was too easy - take the bufff away and then do it. Almost noone did that because they were afraid of the challenge. I lol at some of the posts above

Agreed, however, many people didn't turn off the buff because, well, what is the point of intentionally making life hard for yourself? We want something to be challenging because that's the way it was designed to be, not because we've been given the option to intentionally shoot ourselves in the foot with the hand we didn't tie behind our back.

[lolcantdothat]

Wont miss any part of wrath, other than the easy gear.

[Festisio]

Spending 10 minutes converting 80 Badges of Frost to a few gems was a pain in the arse, so I'll be quick to admit you guys are a nice change of pace.

Not that's it's of use to you now, but you could shift right click the downgrade badges and do it all in one go.

You live and learn.

[SerenitySaz]

Wrath had a lot good things in it, and a lot of not so great things. It brought around a lot of positive changes into the game play, had Ulduar (which was amazing) and Icecrown Citadel (came in second place at least), had some lackluster/disappointing omissions, but over all I rather enjoyed it. I'm rather looking forward to no longer having to look at snow though.

Wrath was fun while it lasted, and shall hold a ton of memories for me. Now it's time to say goodbye to the cold northern regions of Azeroth, and time to say hello to the burning lava flows!

/grabs her bikini tier and heads to Booty Bay for a swim

[Warwithin]

Not that's it's of use to you now, but you could shift right click the downgrade badges and do it all in one go.

You live and learn.

10 mins may have been a bit of an exaggeration, but, even so, (shift+click*80)*5 + 8 = way too many clicks for a handful of gems.

Just sayin'

[Zuben]

Really loved the environments of Northrend and am glad we have a reason to go back(archeology).

[Snebbles]

Questing is what I think Wotlk improved on a lot, I'll definitely like that.


One thing I won't miss is the endless sea of people complaining that ICC was too easy without having touched the game since patch 3.0

[Beelz]

I'm sorry but my opinion of wrath remains as a failed expansion.

Fails..

1 - The biggest fail in my opinion was NO CC !! dam i missed this..
2 - instances were pointless with aoe nuke on everything
3 - i hated the levelling, it was just a rushed grind with nothing offering the slightest threat to you dieing (including group quests soloed)
4 - no rep grinds (except maybe hodir, but lets face it, not much of a grind)
5 - pvp....just pvp !
6 - buff's....nerf's...buff's...nerf's....
7 - trivialisation of the game itself. In TBC i always had something to do, from grinding some rep or grinding materials for a new item, grinding the kara key...whatever... but tbh i dont think this will ever come back as it dont suit the overall player base paying the bills.

There are some things they did well, but in general....

I think people will look back with fond memories because after a year at the same tier level they finally starting fixing things to play right, but in my opinion most of this expansion was plain fail. Bring on Cata because if it lives up to how it reads it will be a much better expansion (not going to be hard ! )

Beelzebub

[Willeonge]

The only thing I will miss about Wrath is something I can be nostalgic about and go and look at, and it would be the look and feel of Northrend zones. I shall miss you Zul'drak.

[Zilch]

My final thoughts? Well..if I am to sum up WotLK I'd say inconsistent. A ton of mistakes were done with the design, and we've suffered long periods with very little meaningful content. At the same time, WotLK introduced some great features.

Imoho the best aspects of WotLK would probably be the final battle vs the Lich King (which was damn epic), the design of Icecrown, the majority of Ulduar, LFG system, Death Knights (after balance fixes) and the concept of Wintergrasp.

And to make up for the good parts we've got blunders and abysmal ideas like the "unused" world, questionable arena comp balance, Blizzard giving up on 2v2, boring dungeons/heroics, uninspired filler raids, vehicle PvP, long periods without new content and the execution of Wintergrasp.

Overall it was okay. I guess.

[Mixon]

only good memory of wraith was lvling for the first time thru northrend. and ulduar was pretty fun keepers+

[melodramocracy]

I didn't start playing until Wrath was about 3 months old. Obviously I really enjoyed the questlines and environments in Wrath, though the phasing aspect of Icecrown made group quests a headache.

ToC was neat in the sense of being a raid Pit-of-Anguish sort of deal. And folks with the rose colored glasses on forget how many pugs fell to either the champions, or the twins. Or, they forget how tough the heroic modes were when you didn't outgear them.

Ulduar was fantastic.

ICC was a letdown in the sense of the layout of the place. It seemed like it should have almost had more Kara-like elements to it, or at least started in the AN area and you'd have to work your way up through the basement. Gunship was the most interesting fight of the whole encounter, but just too easy. On the other hand, the place was plenty challenging. Again, folks that think otherwise forget what it was like when they didn't outgear it, and forget how many guilds got heroic LK down without the buff (ie, none).

All 3 ICC 5 mans were very well done, though HoR should not have been nerfed. Crowd control and smart play made the original version very do-able, and it makes me think that some people are going to have a very difficult time in Cata.

The worst parts of the expansion were re-used gear models, and the ever-complaining, snowflake riddled playerbase itself. That's probably a constant, however.

[Babyrobot]

Northrend was nice, I liked the zones and the quests.

The raids were a letdown. Ulduar was good.

However BC was better it just had that better 'feeling' which i'm sure Cata will restore.

[Ylera]

The only thing I didn't really like was the round room as a raid instance, was really bland, although some of the weapon models were the best the game's ever seen imo (example).

Ulduar was a triumph. The way achievements and hard modes worked for it was perfect, imo. And the lore and epic feel of the whole place was great.

Wotlk added a lot of innovative and good features (dual-spec, LFD, achievements), and the levelling zones and polish were top notch. Definitely an enjoyable expansion for me. Would just like harder heroics and more innovative hard modes in Cata (ala Firefighter).

Wow community remains pretty immature and self-entitled however which is a bit of a shame.

[Lefach]

I honestly think I'll remember it fondly, I wasn't terribly pleased with how some of the progression played out but I really enjoyed it. Ulduar was a shining example of what raiding can be, and ToC was really a lot of fun (It was! We were just stuck with it for way to long :P). The questing was more or less really pleasant and the zones are incredibly memorable (Grizzly Hills and Storm Peaks will be up there in my list of favorite zones for a long time.) I had good times, but I'm going to embrace Cataclysm with open arms.

WotLK will be far better to remember than it was to play.

/ Agree

[Deleted]

My sole sentiment is good riddance.

[GennGreymane]

The only things that I didn't like about WOTLK were Gearscore, DK tanking and the recent change to paladin mechanics.
Just my opinion.

one of those things is cataclysm....... the other one wasnt made by blizzard and one of those made it easier to get tanks

---------- Post added 2010-11-22 at 03:05 PM ----------

Apart from ToC it was an amazing expansion that got bad rep from people not understand or liking the new progression path of heroic modes.

this times over 9000

turns out instead of doing the instance 10000 times on normal. heroic mode is where the progression is.