Woltk the medicore expansion which became famous as the best

[Treno]

Easy to say with nothing backing it up. Who do you think got the better deal between goblins and worgens? Each side got stuff, same as always.

While I don't know if one should call it bias or not, I seem to recall the devs admitting they put extra time into developing the goblin starting experience out of a need to make it as good as the worgen starting experience.

[Romanesca]

It was when the game became the most accessible and popular, class design / spec identity was interesting as well. Naxx wasn't a bad raid, considering 99% of the player population had never seen it, it was a decent first raid. I believe there was a significant wait for ulduar though, and people got sick of naxx after like a month.

Ulduar was definitely a god tier raid; you could casually clear it with not much difficulty, or you could go for hard modes for better gear and achievements etc. I think having that balance of accessibility and difficulty is why it was so popular.

TOC was filler content, and people forget that ICC was time gated, and had limited attempts on 25H. I think overall the raiding scene was probably the best it ever could have been, with being able to casually clear 10 man or 25 man, or pushing yourself in heroic or going for meta achievements.

The first tier of cata to me was honestly one of the best tiers I ever experienced, but I enjoyed more challenging content and was in the boat of having more difficult dungeons. Then the rest of the expansion took a nose dive after that, but shouldn't be written off as worse than WOD imo.

[hynx]

TLDR; YOU didnt fucking like it. move the fuck on buddy. you might make a friend or two if you ditch the negative attitude too, guy!

[OokOok]

"Now we come to ICC. ICC was a special kind of Raid. It was probably the Raid the most People playing Woltk did. The fights were alot of fun, but at the same time mostly no challenge. Lich king was probably the only fight which saved the Raid from being considerd Naxx level. At one point i hate Icc for being this easy, on the other hand ICC gave people a good way to play after completing the pre dungeons.
"

"naxx level"

said by someone who never raided heroic ICC. Probably didn't even get to see lich king until he paid for his kingslayer title the month before cata

[RoKPaNda]

I think Wrath was pretty mediocre. I know a lot of people like Ulduar but I wasn't really a fan.

They really butchered the Lich King story. Arthas stole all the credit for all the work that Ner'zhul did, developed magic MIND POWERS OMGGGGGGG LOL and killed off Ner'zhul which left us to fight a guy with daddy issues.

[ArenaDk]

About scourge being the most dangerous thing. It it dangerous for mortals. But Lets not kid ourselfs, the devs said Lei shen can 1v1 the Lk and the mogu will lose closely to the scourge. Now we have the whole might of the alliance and horde who could stop the scourge. Deathwing had no chance of dying to anything less than the dragonsoul, the dragons cant be beaten by the scourge if they unite, we freed the Titankeeper, Odyn was preparing an army immun to undeath, the artefact weapons were always in our reach, and alot more. The scourge unleashed was and is not dangerous to the world in an world ending way. Just defending and defeating it will take high cost.

[Craaazyyy]

Wrath had by far the best PVP, because class design was really good(especially for PVP, so dont say that some classes still spammed 1 button or some shit in PVE)

also you said no one would level in wrath zones and while i agree that wrath didnt have the best leveling zones, you cant just say that no one would level there, cuz its just your opinion(in my opinion Legion leveling was worse and the only expansion after that that actually had better leveling was WoD, but thats pretty much the only thing WoD did better than Wrath as an expansion)

the beginning of wrath was a mess in every way and i will agree with that. Raiding, PVP.. you name it, all was a joke and thats why i quit like 2 months into wrath for like maybe 4 months(first time i ever quit wow for longer than a week since i started playing in late vanilla)

but after that it became way better in almost every way

class design was what its supposed to be in Wrath. Again, not saying it was perfect, but for the most part it was at least going into the right direction. After Wrath class design started to go sideways first, like in Cata where they improved some things, but fucked up other things. After Cata it started to go backwards, first it went backwards a little bit in MoP, but then after MoP it just went downhill and never recovered and is a complete joke now and thats the biggest blow to otherwise the game that actually could still be enjoyable even tho it has flaws(but all previous expansions had flaws) outside of class design being total garbage

People loved playing their classes back in the days, now people getting bored of playing one class.. The amount of people that still enjoy playing one class is super low these days, and majority of them only play the game like 5 hours a week or maybe slightly more

Class design is the most important part of the game by far, if your class isnt fun then you're not going to enjoy the game regardless of how much content there is for you to do

it also applied to raids as well, and while some of the specs were definitely not as fun as they have become after Wotlk in PVE(in Cata or MoP specifically) they were still a lot more fun to play than now.. obviously there are individual cases of some specs/classes being designed better in some expansion or another, but Wrath in general had the best concept of class/game design period(despite, as i said b4, not being perfect and having a lot of room to improve) for majority of things you were doing in game, if not for all of them

Classes were super different from each other apart of some basic things that some of the shared, they used to also excel at different things, while at the same time not being completely terrible at other things. All classes had every ability that they had available for each spec(unlike now where you have spec specific abilities, which is a joke imo), and only talents used to actually make your spec a spec which would be different in terms of playstyle, but still similar to other specs. It made it so classes would be complex, but at the same time would make it so you would have a lot of the same abilities as every spec, so you wouldnt need to re learn so much after you switch the spec(again they were still considerably more complicated than now due to them having way more abilities overall, but thats actually a huge part of why they were more fun and enjoyable to play)

im gonna agree that dungeons were too easy across the board, Cata maybe went a bit overboard in the very beginning(even tho i loved Cata beginning and wouldnt want it any other way, outside of it lasting for less than a month really), but it was still way better than Wrath, cuz imo it being too hard is better than it being a cakewalk

when it comes to Lore i think it made perfect sense.. even Naxx 25 made perfect sense

I think in fantasy world like WoW some characters are meant to be resurrected and some not.. and btw Lich King isnt dead



I personally dont like each of 3 expansions that came after MoP, and its not based on couple of fights being boring and couple of quests sucking dick. Its actually based on gameplay and its a super valid complaint, because gameplay has significantly became worse since then.. you can add 55 different mechanics to a boss, but when your class is much easier and complicated( and LESS FUN) to play you will be able to just avoid those mechanics because you dont have to focus on how to deal damage properly.. its way more forgiving to not being really good at the class you play. A lot of abilities, entire mechanics were removed from the game and it reduced the overall complexity of playing your class and took a lot of fun from the game by doing so. Yeah it added some balance(mostly balance in terms of raw numbers of DPS/HPS), but thats not that big of a deal imo

also since Wrath and especially in the last couple of expansions the amount of RNG that has been added on top of already existing RNG is staggering.. Blizzard most likely dont get why people dont play as much wow as they used to(and actually there is a lot of reasons why, but two main reasons in my opinion is that the game is way more boring than it used to be and that the game is old), so they create these systems that basically force people to play more to have some kind of fun they can still have when they play WoW(which is almost none if you're someone like me, who enjoys good class design more than how much shit there is to do in the game, because no matter how much content there is in the game it will be super boring when your class is boring to play)

they add these repetitive things with lots of RNG(like titanforging etc.) so people would do them over and over again and thus spend a lot of time in the game even tho half the time they're not enjoying it its just they see something in the end that might bring them enjoyment(aka good piece of loot dropping)

outside M+ all the other things they've added over the years are still less popular(unless they force them on you and remove similar shit u used to to before. Like WQS over daily quests) than main things people always used to do in WoW - Raids and pvp

so in other words since wrath they've been adding shit to do while fucking class and game design in the ass. Outside of M+ none of the shit they've added is good.

During some expansions after they obviously improved some shit and fucked other shit.. thats why i consider some expansions as going sideways or slightly backwards, but since WoD the game just went downhill in every way and even M+ didnt save Legion in my eyes, cuz they utterly destroyed the most important part of the game in that expansion(that being class design)

there is obviously so many things that were better in wrath than they are now, but they're not as important as things i've mentioned

[therealstegblob]

There's no such thing as faction bias

Merely nitpickers who see the slightest deviations as massive favouritism

But there is a faction bias and it's the reason the storytelling is so bad (or at least it's one of the reasons). There's a strong bias towards never taking/giving too much to/from one faction. If one faction loses something, the other faction also has to lose something of equal value. The unnatural and blatant equilibrium has been negatively impacting WoW's story for years.

[Flurryfang]

Can't really get much of the complaints that OP has. Sure, if you look at just the content, one might find it wanting, but the gameplay was on top and the content we got from raids were nearly without equal. One should never underestimate the content mountain, that was Ulduar for raid guilds. It really did make the entire expansion and ICC just put some amazing sprinkles on the top.

The daily system of the repuations in Wrath was also really good and i did not really see people burn out on them as they were few, but still managed to get people starting each day.
The dungeons were quite easy and simply designed, but it actually did the job. People could farm them, smash through them and not really worry about anything while doing them, allowing people to just go on relax mode while doing them. In the end we did get some challenge in the form of the ICC dungeons, but they did their part too with allowing players to put their TOTC and ICC gear to use.

Overall Wrath did really good and it followed the hype of the community in my opinion. Sure if you look back, we might have gotten more content, better lore and an overall better value expansion after that, but at that time, Wrath really did fufill the needs of many people and kept pushing the quality of WoW up.

And that is the most important thing: Wrath improved on TBC overall and it was clear. That is why it was so liked. People disliked things here and there, but overall, Wrath was just more content, more jumps in content features and more exiting aspects.

[Grenudo]

You face jaraxxus!!!

[Leyre]

WotLK was so fucking bad that it managed to retain the entirety of his playerbase from beginning to end

[Lurie]

There were a great many reasons I, personally, loved WotLK the best. I adored most of the dungeons, I enjoyed all of the raids (with the exception of TotC, but even that had a final boss I really appreciated seeing again), I truly liked questing across the varied and interesting zones, and it was at the peak of WoW subscriptions so that before they implemented LFG (which I don't hate, but could have done without), I was meeting so many people doing dungeon runs that I would keep doing them through the expansion end just for the socialization.

It was a glorious expansion. It was the peak of fun for most of the WoW population from that era (and TBC is still a close second for many). I wouldn't want to go back to it, because so many things have changed from the general game play to the community that would diminish the experience. But I still enjoy taking new toons through Northrend, and overall it isn't a long stay anymore.

I would say the majority of your opinions are in the minority of the playerbase from the era of WotLK. And you can't compare it to more recent expansions, each expansion is judged based on when it was relevant, not based on current vs the past. Doom 2016 is incredible, but that doesn't make Doom II bad. Just older.

[bmjclark]

It's actually funny, Wrath was the expansion that made most of my vanilla friends quit. Not in a "well, the lich king is dead, im quitting" kind of way like some people like to say but in a "This isn't the same game anymore and naxx is fucking boring" kind of way. I do kind of think a lot of the playerbase still playing at this point started in wrath though, and it's certainly far from the worst expansion.

[Fayolynn]

6. I would have said cata for people who read all lore

Nothing screams faction bias more than how Blizzard handled Twilight Highlands.

- - - Updated - - -

Nothing backing it up? Blizzard themselves said they cut Worgen content to develop Goblin content. There was meant to be worgen content in darkshore similar to Azshara for goblins. They also cut the Twilight Highlands entry cinematic/cutscene/gameplay.

Don't forget they just copy pasted the Red Dragon flight questline they wrote for Horde Players onto the Alliance.

[Beerbill Society]

Lich King was the hands down best exp of wow:

All zones were amazing, they greatly improved the game qualify with wotlk zones, Howling Fjord, Grizzly Hills are breathtaking to this day.

You may say quests are boring but really I almost slit my wrists going through BFA quests, same go kill those of those shites and bring me back the only difference are the progress bars.

Wrath quests had so much lore and impact behind it, Wrathgate give me chills to this day was the first ingame quest with cinematics, all chains were amazing and had memorable moments, and the outcomes last to this day Undead Plague, Garrosh Ride to power, Muradin being alive, The Titans of Ulduar and Old Gods, no other exp had so much impactful questing as this.

PvP was broken as fuck but it felt refreshing Wintergrasp felt like the best thing ever if your server was alright.

Wrath was the dawn of raiding of WoW history bringing hardmodes and raid sizes to the table. You may argue that it was easy but raids were filled with bosses and unique mechanics, name one opening raid that had more bosses than Naxx.

Ulduar is the best thing ever created and one of the hardest raids of wow history.

Sure Wrath had many flaws but it's nowhere near mediocre.

[Aeula]

I didn’t play Wrath when it was current, but it seems like there wasn’t much to do at max outside of dungeons and raids. The lore wasn’t that interesting outside of the Wrathgate either imo.

[Tziva]

We sure spend a lot of time announcing opinions and preferences like they are statements of objective truth. People care about different shit. People enjoy different things. People experience unique gameplay. All of that is going to lead to a variety of subjective conclusions.

I played Wrath in its entirety, as with every other expansion. I raided the entire expansion, on normal and through heroic. It remains, neck-in-neck with Burning Crusade, my favourite expansion. I enjoyed the leveling experience, I enjoyed most of the end game content, and I felt like I had a lot to do without being overwhelmed or feeling obligated to do content I didn't want to do. It gave me a lot of time to play alts but also work on things like Loremaster and missed reputations on my main. It had two of my favourite raids and some really cool and unique boss fights that I still appreciate. It introduced achievements and a new class.

Was it perfect? No. Were there things that have been improved upon since? Yup. Were there things I didn't like at the time? Absolutely. But at the end of the day, I had more fun in those years in-game than most others and that's kinda all that matters to me to consider it a great expansion.

I'm sure a lot of people had different experiences and have different preferences. I know people that hated Ulduar and loved ToC. I know people that hated ToC and loved Ulduar. A quick look at the classic forum shows there are lots of people who didn't like any expansion. It doesn't surprise me that some people find Wrath's faults more serious than I did, nor does it surprise me to find some people are indifferent to things that bother me. What does surprise me is the ongoing struggle we seem to have with understanding the concept of subjectivity.

[Deleted]

I remember pretty much everyone I knew, including me, came into WotLK thinking it SUCKED. Many quit all together very early in the expansion. Most quit somewhere around tier 9 while some stayed for ICC.

I personally HATED doing Naxxramas every week for 6 months. Malygos wasn't a good fight. Sartharion +3 was fun though. Ulduar is no denial was a super great raid and probably my favorite raid ever. Tier 9 was laughably horrid and I didn't play in ICC.

PvP was super fun, but I played Paladin and DK, lol. Wintergrasp was just a zergfest and VoA sucked for free loot.

Dailies were few and boring and redundant after a short while as I recall it.

Let's not even mention heroics..... Worst the game has ever seen.

World PvP and PvP in general as well as Ulduar was the highlight of the expansion for me personally, and most of my friends that played different classes all agree.

I never liked WotLK and I welcomed Cataclysm. The beginning of Cata with heroics that were actually hard was probably the most fun I've had since I started playing in TBC.

I don't think WotLK was a good expansion and I can't understand how it is remembered as such.

[Dhrizzle]

1. Leveling:

Leveling in Woltk was something special , people loved it for being a new adventure, following arthas and trying to cross his plans, while fighting of the natives, nature and other dangers. I can understand compared to Classic and TBC the leveling was awesome. The zones were great , and most important there were alot. But in todays time we have every expansion less zones with better quests. There is a reason why people hate leveling in Woltk today. Compared to what we have today the quests are boring, bad designed and repatative. No one would level there if he had the choice.

Gonna disagree with this. Sure it may not stand up to repeat playthroughs but the leveling in WotLK was pretty top notch. Arguably the zones were a bit big and empty, but that added a layer of realism to the environment.

2. Dungeons:

The Dungeons in Woltk were a joke until the pre dungeons for ICC. Heroic or normal, all dungeons had little to now mechanics, reused assests over the whole expansion and after getting the gear there was almost no point in visiting them again. The pre ICC dungeons were challenging for most casuals at the start, but became easier over time and got abused realy fast to equip for ICC which we will talk later about ( which is part of the problem of the dungeon).

Completely agree, not only were the initial batch of dungeons way undertuned they were also spammable for really good gear the entire expansion. I had full t9 plus a couple of pieces t10 on my warrior alt at the end of the expansion and she never set foot in a raid, just kept spamming the same dungeons as her ilvl made them easier and easier.

3. Raids

The addon had probably the worst first Raid of all time. Naxx was heavely undertuned, Onyxia was a 1 Boss raid which dropped far to good gear , obsidian was also too easy, if you did not go for the 25 mount.
Ulduar was the beacon of Woltk. Hands down the only Raid which can be considerd as ,, good´´. Fun from begining to end, tactical fights, good tuning out site of Yogg alone in the darkness and lots of player reponsibility.

We dont need to talk about the next raid i guess. The pre dungeon was fun, but too easy and way to good gear again. The raid was tuned fine, but boring outsite of two boss fights and a meme.

Now we come to ICC. ICC was a special kind of Raid. It was probably the Raid the most People playing Woltk did. The fights were alot of fun, but at the same time mostly no challenge. Lich king was probably the only fight which saved the Raid from being considerd Naxx level. At one point i hate Icc for being this easy, on the other hand ICC gave people a good way to play after completing the pre dungeons.

Fully agree apart from ICC as I'd quit raiding by then for RL stuff. Naxx was way too easy even for casual raiders. Malygos was fun but way too time consuming for the small amount of loot you'd get. Obsidium Sanctum was meh. Ulduar on the other hand was fucking amazing, excellent setting, wonderful lore and brilliant fights.

4. PvP

Awesome world PvP with thousand winter. But Dks, Tanks, Legendarys ruined almost all arena seasons. And with the Cata bug making the tabard worthless, giving it the last nail in the coffin.

Aside from a few casual BGs and Wintergrasp rounds I really didn't bother with PvP. It did seem good that they changed the arena system so you couldn't grind loot by losing 10 matches a week.

5. Lore

Lichking had more Plotarmor than Sylvanas and she died three times already. Like the only reason the Lichking was allowed to exist this long was because no bigger being like Alextrasza had time or interest to even kill him. (useless nexus war )

The lore and the way it was presented was hands-down some of the best they've done in WoW. Not so much the fight against Arthas or the Nexus war, they were fine if a little obvious, but mostly the Titan lore leading to Ulduar - the origins of the humans, dwarfs and gnomes; the corrupt elven world tree, the war of stone against iron, discovering Muradin and reuniting the Bronzebeard brothers... Lots of fragments of interconnected stories that spanned several zones to give you the overarching plot. Then there was the stand-alone zone of Zul'drak - fantastically atmospheric as you discovered the story of trolls sacrificing their gods to stave of the scourge and still failing.

[tripleh]

Wotlk was awesome , it had players wanting to level alts. Wintergrasp was fun pvp that changed every couple hours. Flying wasn't delayed for months. Tons of dailies to work on , not to mention following the steps of Arthas up to Frostmournes cavern. During that time the game was awesome. Then it slowly went downhill.