Will anything ever be as epic as BC?

[Florena]

IMO both Wrath and MoP so far have been better expansions than BC. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed BC, but while I'd rank it above Cata (mostly because of the letdown that was Dragon Soul) I don't think it's as good as the other expansions.

[wariofan1]

Every expansion has had their epic moments imo:

Vanilla - Naxx 40
TBC - Black Temple
WotLK - Yoggy
Cata - Ragnaros
MoP - Throne of Thunder

I don't feel that the epicness has gone away at all, every incarnation of the game has just had a different feel to it, it's entirely subjective as to which kind of feel you prefered.

I also find it kind of funny that many people apparently dismiss TBC as being the best expansion all of a sudden, while it was clear during Cata that TBC was always ranked as the best expansion, same happened with people's opinions on Vanilla during the transition from Wrath to Cata. I wonder if WotLK is gonna get hit by the realization train next expansion too. Not that any of those are my favorite expansions, that award goes to MoP.

[Deleted]

BC wasn't epic in the slightest IMO.

So "you are not prepared" Illidan was not epic in the slightest? Druids and Paladins being able to play non-healing specs wasn't epic? Paladin and Shaman available to both classes was not epic? What is epic to you then?

[mistahwilshire]

What were those flaws? And please only count things it did worse than vanilla. Comparing TBC to MoP would be stupid, wouldn't it?

Sunwell. The first significant case of class stacking.

TBC in general had the worst PvE balance of any expansion or vanilla.

Also the introduction of dailies.

[Mawnix]

So "you are not prepared" Illidan was not epic in the slightest? Druids and Paladins being able to play non-healing specs wasn't epic? Paladin and Shaman available to both classes was not epic? What is epic to you then?

1. The story wasn't coherent.

2. We killed off Illidan in what, the 2nd major patch? Things went downhill from there.

3. The only time I felt Illidan's presence was in Shadowmoon Valley, and even then he only appeared in one or two questlines. That was it.

4. Shamans and Paladins being available to both factions I saw coming a mile away, pretty much at launch of Vanilla.

Epic to me is a story that envelops me, along with an environment that takes me away and just makes me want to visit it again and again.

When I went through Outlands, it was like pulling teeth. The questing wasn't enjoyable, nor was the story as I've now said multiple times.

Wrath was fantastic.

Cataclysm was meh.

Mists is great.

I just didn't like BC for a multitude of reasons.

So no, nothing you said I found "epic" nor "cool".

[wariofan1]

So "you are not prepared" Illidan was not epic in the slightest? Druids and Paladins being able to play non-healing specs wasn't epic? Paladin and Shaman available to both classes was not epic? What is epic to you then?

Paladins and Shamans for both factions was actually a main complaint during TBC, along with flying mounts, and specs were still not properly sorted out (still a lot better than in Vanilla though.)

[Spl4sh3r]

I would say Wrath of the Lich King was best, especially for us that never experienced Naxxramas in Vanilla. Then Burning Crusade then I'm not sure.

[Chat]

Lol.. BC wasn't that epic.. it felt "epic" because it was the first expansion ever introduced.. Most WoW players see it as awesome because so many people were excited about it and after all the other expansions everyone was all "BC was the best" cause that enjoyment and excitement for first ever expansion stays with it.


I started in Vanilla and tbh.. Lore wise.. WOTLK has to be the best Expansion.

[Kraenen]

I played through both tbc and wotlk, and found LK to be much more epic, immersive, and entertaining than tbc

[Florena]

Among the thigns I'd say were flaws in bc:

1. Raids that weren't accessable to casuals, cutting casuals out of a lot of gameplay and story content. It sucked that you could see the build up to these raids through 5 mans and questing, but couldn't actually see how Illidan's story or the Sunwell played out yourself if you were an average player.

2. Class imbalances in pve. Class stacking etc, especially in sunwell. While BC opened up classes more from their traditional roles, ie paladins being able to tank karazhan and hyjal trash just fine, it wasn't really until wrath that things opened up enough so that every spec could have a place, though even in wrath/cata/mop we still have some specs outperforming others.

3. Botched storylines. Anti heroes Illidan and Kael'thas suddenly evil without a proper transition. Also, if I'm not mistaken, the Sunwell was one of the first instances of out of game lore becomming critical to in game developments. If you didn't read the Sunwell trilogy, would you know who the heck Kalec and Anveena were?

4. Heroics gated behind reputations.


Now that's not to say that BC didn't do good things. It introduced 10 man raids in karazhan and zul'aman. (Yes, there was UBRS but that always felt to me much more like a 10 man dungeon than a raid when it came to difficulty and loot, etc. ) Instead of the inferiour 20/40 man system.

It added the badge system to help players with bad loot luck or who came into the game late to catch up a bit. Wrath often gets blasted for introducing the valor system but it actually started here, and I'm glad it did.

It added heroic dungeons.

There was a lot of good and a lot of bad in BC. All in all I'd say more good, it was an improvement over BC. But to say it was the most epic expansion ever...well granted that's subjective but I found wrath and mop to be more epic.

Outland itself was epic, though I wasn't a huge fan of some of the science fictiony stuff in netherstorm. But still great overall.

[vindicatorx]

Personally BC took way too much of my time. I'm from a low pop server and you might have had a great old time in BC I didn't. For me and people like me MOP is the best expansion yet. I can log in que for LFR and actually do it. My BC experience was as follows log in 30 minutes before raid to ensure I am stocked in supplies. Go to instance and wait for at least an hour as the entire raid team logs in starting at least 30 minutes late if everyone actually showed up. Everyone shows up we start else, we sit around as we try and find a pug. Wait an hour for that before starting else, call it a night. Loot drops people argue about who should get it. Listen to people complain cause dkp, loot council, whatever loot method we use isn't fair. We spend weeks gearing up our healers and they bolt for one of the 2 other guilds who raid. Recruit new healers to fill the void and the process repeats. Black temple opens and we are finally fully clearing Karazhan and have killed Gruul once. We finally down 4/6 in SSC, and are 2/5 in TK and they remove the reqs for entry into Hyjal. Clear up to Archimonde and they nerf all current content getting us our first Archi kill. We start running in BT and down make it to Bloodboil before everyone decides to stop showing up cause Wrath is dropping in a month. I hated how raiding was in BC and am thankful Blizzard finally figured out we don't all live on a server with an active population over 4 thousand and 30 hours a week to raid. I would quit if they decided to go back to the old methods cause my server now is worse than ever.

[Spl4sh3r]

1. The story wasn't coherent.

2. We killed off Illidan in what, the 2nd major patch? Things went downhill from there.

3. The only time I felt Illidan's presence was in Shadowmoon Valley, and even then he only appeared in one or two questlines. That was it.

4. Shamans and Paladins being available to both factions I saw coming a mile away, pretty much at launch of Vanilla.

1. The story wasn't coherent in Vanilla either, but questing was miles better with better questhubs and less single quests spread here and there (wasn't until Wrath of the Lich King that it became linear as it is now).

2. So what if Illidan was killed in the second major patch, so was Deathwing in Cataclysm. Their patching system was so much different back then aswell on what was major and what was minor in a patch. You can compare it to 5.1 which wasn't really a major patch at all since it only added a questhub in a location that already existed in Pandaria even if it was changed with it.

3. I would say overall that how much lore was in Outland was more than enough. If you think about it Outland isn't only about Illidan compared to how Northrend was mostly about Lich King. So those aren't really compareable. What we do know about Outland is that it was about Broken, Orcs, Naga, Blood Elves and Demons. Each of those appeared majorly throughout Outland in appropriate zones. With Northrend the major story there is Arthas even in WC3 and Undead and Blue Dragons.

4. Even if this was predictable it was a major change especially with Blessings and Bloodlust.

Overall I would say Burning Crusade was really good. It had attunements which raiders liked, it had a lot of different and unique bosses that everyone liked. It had the first Heroics which also required attunement (through reputation only to get a key). The only thing bad about Burning Crusade I can think of straight off my head is how Legendaries were handled. All of them were just drops from bosses, no quest and no work at all other than to kill that boss. It had the introduction of dailies. I believe dailies were really something to get Reputation from (which it still is sort of) and nothing else. Otherwise there would have been a lot of mob grinding like in vanilla.

[Deleted]

No

Player base is different these days. Players cannot imagine logging in and not being able to instantly join dungeon run. They are not familiar with concept of smart pulls, not familiar with crowd control, kiting and other challenges that instances used to present. Non-linear instance lasting several hours is not acceptable. If for some miracle a wipe happens in dungeon, instead of trying to solve problem players just quit or kick whoever they think messed up.

Game is very different, player base is different. Going back to TBC would alienate vast majority of players. No sane game developer would do that.

[DeadmanWalking]

I think they say it best in the last 4 minutes of Legendary video podcast episode 121 when asked How wow now compares to all the previous years and the guest says, "Its the best wow has ever been, has there been problems? Of course, but steps were and are being taken to address those problems but the content is more accessible to more players, the raids are more fun and harder, the game in general is just better than any point in the past.

[Florena]

No

Player base is different these days. Players cannot imagine logging in and not being able to instantly join dungeon run. They are not familiar with concept of smart pulls, not familiar with crowd control, kiting and other challenges that instances used to present. Non-linear instance lasting several hours is not acceptable. If for some miracle a wipe happens in dungeon, instead of trying to solve problem players just quit or kick whoever they think messed up.

Game is very different, player base is different. Going back to TBC would alienate vast majority of players. No sane game developer would do that.

I didn't raid past kara in bc, but I know in heroics, the pulls really weren't that hard unlless you were running a group with little or no cc. Have the rogue sap, the mage poly etc, it was easy and repetitive. And I'm not really sad to see that go. Heck as my prot paly I was so good at aoe tanking I often didn't need any cc at all once I got a little gear on her.

[Dangg]

You mean (some) Heroic Dungeon that require class stacking and nobody wants to attempt because of their terrible loot to effort ratio?
You mean spending months on gearing up and attuning alts for raids?
You mean some of the most annoying trash packs ever in SSC with 30 mins respawn timer?
You mean ridicoulous difficulty differences between bosses from Free Loot (Loot Reaver Akama) to straight out impossible for months like Kael thas?
You mean 9 months of farming BT and FREAKIN MH without nothing else to do other than arena? (There were no achievments)
You mean getting Glaives (=better SW progress) being based on nothing else then RNG?
You mean tons of one button specs like CH Shaman and SB Lock?
You mean Blizzard 'Bring the Player, not the Class! But don't forget to always bring 5 Shamans as many ppl as possible with Glaives and depending on the boss 5 Priests, 11 Healers or 4 Warlocks!


That said it was my favourite expansion.
If Blizzard would make the game like it was back then in it's initial stage 90% of ppl would quit though.

[Mawnix]

1. The story wasn't coherent in Vanilla either, but questing was miles better with better questhubs and less single quests spread here and there (wasn't until Wrath of the Lich King that it became linear as it is now).

2. So what if Illidan was killed in the second major patch, so was Deathwing in Cataclysm. Their patching system was so much different back then aswell on what was major and what was minor in a patch. You can compare it to 5.1 which wasn't really a major patch at all since it only added a questhub in a location that already existed in Pandaria even if it was changed with it.

3. I would say overall that how much lore was in Outland was more than enough. If you think about it Outland isn't only about Illidan compared to how Northrend was mostly about Lich King. So those aren't really compareable. What we do know about Outland is that it was about Broken, Orcs, Naga, Blood Elves and Demons. Each of those appeared majorly throughout Outland in appropriate zones. With Northrend the major story there is Arthas even in WC3 and Undead and Blue Dragons.

4. Even if this was predictable it was a major change especially with Blessings and Bloodlust.

Overall I would say Burning Crusade was really good. It had attunements which raiders liked, it had a lot of different and unique bosses that everyone liked. It had the first Heroics which also required attunement (through reputation only to get a key). The only thing bad about Burning Crusade I can think of straight off my head is how Legendaries were handled. All of them were just drops from bosses, no quest and no work at all other than to kill that boss. It had the introduction of dailies. I believe dailies were really something to get Reputation from (which it still is sort of) and nothing else. Otherwise there would have been a lot of mob grinding like in vanilla.

Fact: I was just stating my opinion on it. No offense but nothing you said altered it.

[fangless]

Um, fighting Illidan wasn't epic? Maybe if you never did it -_-; Going through the Dark Portal? The quests in Shadowmoon Valley surrounding Akama/Black Temple, Teron Gorefiend, Gul'dan, etc.

So boss.


What Wrath and BC had were large Warcraft names to back them up. Now we're going outside of the Warcraft games and having to fight new enemies. That loses a bit of specialness, in my opinion.

[Deleted]

"Will anything ever be as epic as BC?"

No. Well, maybe. Farming duties and collecting pokemons could be 'epic' for someone.

[Okacz]

Gotta say, every xpac has its moments. Zul'Aman was what made BC really epic, since it had the most badass trailer, great boss fights and overall design. In WotLK we had the titans theme and Ulduar raid being probably the best raid ever made. In MoP we have patch 5.2, which seems to have managed to throw epicness on the entire new level. And the Brawlers Guild.

For me, MoP is the most epic of them all. But I can agree with all other opinions. Even Cataclysm had great moments, namely Firelands and fight with Ragnaros - this being my probably favourite fight up till now, but I haven't yet tried Lei Shen on normal.