Do you agree with this image?

[Hazard X21J]

Hard for me to say whether I agree or not, though I started back in BC and I feel as though many aspects of the game have been in a steady decline. I personally feel as though MoP was an alright step in the right direction overall, I just hope WoD can build off of that. (Yay new models/playerhousing!)

[Deleted]

"You're a Druid? L2HT4 noob" ....yeah, class design was ACE in Vanilla

[Annarion]

They literally didn't develop some of the specs in Vanilla and TBC. Everyone lost their goddamn minds when Ret was actually able to DPS when the wrath patch hit. The only reason we had a ret pally in Sunwell was seal-twisting to boost the rogues. Your spec was chosen for you if you wanted to raid in Vanilla. Resto Druid, Holy Pally, Holy Priest, Prot Warrior, Frost Mage, etc etc. If you weren't that spec, your tier bonuses were useless and so was the gear.

PvE and PvP are only getting better with time. The only major thing I miss from Vanilla was quests for rep with BG factions. I missed the GM/HWL grind but that's back with RBG's so I'm satisfied. Do you not remember getting oneshot by hunters in AV? Do you not remember StunHerald with Stun Specialization and an extra Stun Talent? Did you even play during BC?

The only downside there's been in PvE quests is... well nothing really. The quests for every expansion have gotten more creative, more intuitive, less buggy, better story-telling, better zone flow, better rewards. I remember killing like 7,000 boars for their livers in Westfall, gaining like 1 bubble of exp, and then the quest reward was a mail belt with spirit on it for my warrior. Vehicle/Possession quests where you get new buttons to press that can be overpowered as hell but not affect gameplay otherwise? Didn't see many of those in BC.

I'm not too sure what you're meaning by community, but if you're talking about how back in the day the quality of player that you met doing dungeons was higher, that's because people were terrified of PvE back then. I knew people who literally never stepped into a heroic dungeon because they thought that you had to be amazing just to enter. Like HC raider amazing. Dungeon and Raid design is more complex, more difficult, and more varied than it ever was back then. Yes, by making entry more accessible, they've allowed the pool of available dungeoneers to become somewhat diluted, but if you compare what you expect of players in a 5man now compared to what you required of raiders in Vanilla, I think you'll find players are better now than they were then. Rotations a lot of the time were 1-3 buttons. I mean for two full expansions, the preferred way of playing warlock in PvE, which was the highest dps spec going in Sunwell, was to press Shadowbolt every cast. Our hunter dps'd with a macro on one key and a dippy bird, I shit you not. He actually had a dippy bird that pressed his macro every 1.5s and topped meters consistently. That was cutting edge realm first shit, and there he was with one button on his bar. Until you've played an entire expansion with your spec ignored, you can't say that PvE is worse than it was in Vanilla. And I don't buy your blah ret paladins gap closer blah excuses either. I'm talking about Ret Paladins having literally no synergy, healing talents, and doing less dps than I did as a holy priest smashing smite on cooldown, for the whole of Vanilla. Same with class design. The closest we come to having to spec a certain way to bring a certain buff is hunters having to use a pet to make up a hole in buffs for small groups. I used to have to spec into improved spirit as a holy priest.

So, that's a consistent, measurable improvement on the world, dungeons/raids, pvp, class design, music, art and storytelling. Just because you didn't like the story MoP told, doesn't mean it's not presented better. We had a fucking narrator for Christ's sake. And it was fucking Optimus Prime/Winnie the Pooh. Fucking Jesus you can't please anyone these days. We got to see Chen Stormstout, and he kicked ass and made beer. We got to see Thrall fucking vaporizing people with lightning. We saw faction leaders on the forefront, leading charges, directing troops. We got so many chapters of stories that continued as the expansion progressed, instead of seeing one scripted encounter in a zone and then forgetting about it. We got backstory, and "Well this is what's going on here, but what about people back home?" Look at the Dark Iron scenario. How cool was that, that they went and developed lore for other races and other factions?

Do I wish the game was just a little harder? Yes. Do I want CC to factor more in PvE? Yes. Do I want dungeons to be just a little bit longer? Yes. Do I think that we should just roll everything back to Vanilla and start again? No, God no. The game gets better every year, and as someone who actually raided in every expansion, actually competitively PvP'd in every expansion, someone who did every quest when they were current, took in every patch, experienced every story firsthand, I can say, with a reliably high level of confidence, that people who think the game is worse now are just butthurt because they've outgrown the game but still hold onto it, either from obsession, or nostalgia, or from lack of options. You complain because you don't enjoy the game as much. But objectively, the game is much better than it used to. The common denominator is you. Go find something you actually enjoy, instead of ripping on something that doesn't hold the appeal it used to.

[Eon Drache]

Its nothing more than nostalgia crying out. All of these, except community perhaps, have gotten better over time. Vanilla should have no squares for Class Design. Some specs were entirely useless, some where nothing but a buff bot.

Class Design and Raid/dungeons should have gone up the most over time.

[Nelaphim-EX]

Music & Art and then Story & Setting should be two different categories.

MoP has amazing music and art, but the story and setting are subpar.

MoP raiding (SoO and ToT) is significantly better than Cataclysm, up there with TBC, eclipsed only by Ulduar.

[BlissfulBlithe]

This image is very wrong.

Vanilla:
PvE(Q&W): 4/10
PvE(D&R): 3/10
PVP: 5/10
Community: 7/10
Music, Art, Story & Setting: 5/10
Class Design: 3/10

TBC:
PvE(Q&W): 6/10
PvE(D&R): 6/10
PVP: 7/10
Community: 6/10
Music, Art, Story & Setting: 5/10
Class Design: 4/10

WotLK:
PvE(Q&W): 9/10
PvE(D&R): 8/10
PVP: 8/10
Community: 6/10
Music, Art, Story & Setting: 8/10
Class Design: 5/10

Cataclysm:
PvE(Q&W): 7/10
PvE(D&R): 3/10
PVP: 6/10
Community: 5/10
Music, Art, Story & Setting: 5/10
Class Design: 6/10

MoP:
PvE(Q&W): 8/10
PvE(D&R): 8/10
PVP: 2/10
Community: 4/10
Music, Art, Story & Setting: 9/10
Class Design: 7/10

I feel the game in my eyes has made a giant bell curve, with it getting better over time from Vanilla onwards to the end of Wrath and then worse as it went on until we are now.

[crakerjack]

There's a few tweaks i'd make, but there's quite a few things that are spot on.

[Ulfric Trumpcloak]

Yes that's pretty accurate i guess...

I don't agree with the quests & world though, i think questing was at its best in WOTLK and Cataclysm, while TBC questing was terrible...

[Deleted]

I'll agree that Vanilla had terrible class design, but I agree with most of the other stuff.

One thing I preferr about Vanilla WoW was its world design. Whereas ever expansion has had everything in it designed around a certain motif or theme (elements in Cataclysm, Chinese/Asian in MoP), in Vanilla WoW kept a more all round fantasy theme, which I liked. I keep thinking it would be cool for Blizzard to do an expansion without any major motif, so they can make more diverse element within it.

Armour sets are a good example of this. In Vanilla the classes set felt really different for each class and generally gave a really good feel for that class. By comparison, the armour sets in MoP that I've seen are all designed around the same 'fantasy asia' theme, so they all kind of look the same.

If you feel the game has improved since then, fine, but please don't start saying that Vanilla was utterly terrible and the worse thing ever, because frankly you wouldn't be playing WoW today if it had been as bad as some people are making out. People loved WoW at release because it really did have a depth of creativity and care in how it portrayed a world people had previously only seen from a very limited perspective. Back in 2004 WoW was mindblowing to a new player just because no other game had such a beautiful and detailed world to explore, and I think that the original game's design holds up far better than some people give it credit for.

[Deleted]

>MoP questing that low
>MoP being worse than Cata in terms of Story/Music/Etc

This image is shit, and that is before even looking at the rest of it.

meme arrows?????????? epic XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

i see you go to reddit too xPPP

[Deleted]

meme arrows?????????? epic XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

i see you go to reddit too xPPP

People write in quotation arrows on reddit?

Something tells me a lot of people who use those don't even know where they're actually from.

[Annoying]

People write in quotation arrows on reddit?

Something tells me a lot of people who use those don't even know where they're actually from.

Considering he called them "meme arrows" and mentioned reddit... yeah.

>MFW greentext.

[Deleted]

Considering he called them "meme arrows" and mentioned reddit... yeah.

>MFW greentext.

ummm yes reddit has the best memes lol what's your point?????????

[Grizlus90]

I don't fully agree with this picture but the community within servers has dropped significantly since vanilla imo.

[Doctor Amadeus]

Yes, i would say it is accurate, not 100% but it's pretty on the mark. Not sure I would say community has ever been something WoW has been about, but the game used to require people to make phony friendships, and shaky alliances to raid with people they didn't care about or like to get the stuff they were told they needed to have., or they think they wanted.

[Bladeface]

that person thinks cata had the best story/art/music/setting(what the actual fuck?) and that vanilla had the best class design so hell no.

[jazen]

100% opinion.....generic and 3rd grade style graphics do not help make the point that you dislike MOP.

[Granyala]

Would you say its accurate?

PvE (World): Nope, Quests have gotten better and MoP pretty much fixed the overzealously forced linearity of the old world revamp.
PvE (Dungeon): YES, while dungeons have gotten more detailed and beautiful to look at, reducing them to trivial faceroll makes them boring.
PvE (Raid): Nope, Raids have gotten better and more complex every expansion.
PvP: Cannot judge, do not play it.
Community: Nope, you have assholes and nice guys, ragequitters and excellent tutors, ninjas and generous people. Just like back in the day.
Music, Art, Story, Setting: Nope, Detail only improved. Esp in storytelling it improved A LOT.
Class design: Nope, classes are as balanced as never before, every spec is viable sadly that came at the cost of homogenization.

It ain't a perfect world, but in my humble opinion WoW did only one thing during it's lifetime: get better.
With the sad exception of 5man content.

[Shiny212]

No I don't. I commend this person for pointing out many flaws of MoP and cata, but neglected to point out its worst flaw. In fact he's thoroughly misguided on that point.

[Trickname]

Not at all.