What if Blizzard Re-released Wrath of the Lich King?

[Nak88]

More people would play WotLK than Shadowlands, that's for sure.

[Hinastorm]

BC was much better than wrath. Wrath just happens to be when the most people showed up to play, mostly because of A) its the lich king, and B) wrath was very very casual friendly, in numerous ways.

BC was a better mmo though.

[Onikaroshi]

BC was much better than wrath. Wrath just happens to be when the most people showed up to play, mostly because of A) its the lich king, and B) wrath was very very casual friendly, in numerous ways.

BC was a better mmo though.

BC was ok, but I wouldn't call it better than Wrath, it still had a LOT of issues with class/spec design and itemization left over from Vanilla, but it was definitely better than vanilla, at least you could somewhat play every spec.

[Hinastorm]

BC was ok, but I wouldn't call it better than Wrath, it still had a LOT of issues with class/spec design and itemization left over from Vanilla, but it was definitely better than vanilla, at least you could somewhat play every spec.

I didn't at first, but I now subscribe to the theory that letting 90% of players clear a raid makes it feel pointless, and that started in wrath.

Although, unpopular opinion. I really miss group finder for easy content playing classic. Just as I predicted, spamming in chat for groups is shit, and I miss being able to just queue up for easy content. I don't think queueing for hard content is a good idea though.

[Onikaroshi]

I didn't at first, but I now subscribe to the theory that letting 90% of players clear a raid makes it feel pointless, and that started in wrath.

That really is just personal opinion though, I don't care what other people do in this game, if they clear an easier version of the raid, more power to them.

More people that see a raid, more reason to keep putting money into them. Like if it kept up with the low participation of vanilla/bc, would we really have as many raids and bosses as we do now?

[Hinastorm]

That really is just personal opinion though, I don't care what other people do in this game, if they clear an easier version of the raid, more power to them.

More people that see a raid, more reason to keep putting money into them. Like if it kept up with the low participation of vanilla/bc, would we really have as many raids and bosses as we do now?

Fair points.

[Dartz1979]

Wrath is often regarded as the pinnacle of WoW, particularly on this forum. Is Wrath really as good as some of us like to remember. The release of Classic has forced some players to admit that original WoW certainly has its shortcomings. The reality is you can't relive Vanilla WoW. So one should assume that the same applies for Wrath. But is that really the case?

I remember the first months of Wrath of the Lich King in quite some detail, perhaps better than most. The question is how would it all playout if the game was released again today. Well let's examine some of the content firstly. Northrend had some of the best leveling ever in the game, but it didn't take that long. It might take the average player only a week nowadays to ding 80. While the leveling content is fun compared to Classic, it is quite short.

The max level content in early Wrath was as follows. The dungeons included Utgarde Keep, Azjol Nerub, The Nexus, Gundrak, The Violet Hold, Drak'tharon Keep, Ahn'kahet, Utgard Pinnacle, Halls of Stone, Halls of Lightning, and The Oculus. Some of these dungeons were very disliked by the community. Dungeons like Oculus, Nexus, Gundrak, and Violet Hold were often complained about on the forums. The dungeons were also quite easy compared to TBC dungeons. Just imagine how easy they would be if played through today. I do think that the Utgard dungeons were pretty exceptional, but overall alot of the dungeons were forgettable.

Now for the Raid content. There were two raids. Naxxramas and The Vault of Archavon. Naxxramas was a pushover. It was considered faceroll back in 3.0. It is comparable in difficulty to some Classic WoW raids. It was that easy. Not only that, but it was a replica of a raid from Classic WoW, only now tuned for 25 players instead of 40. The reception was pretty mixed back in 3.0. Then there is the Vault of Archavon, the raid in Lake Wintergrasp. It was essentially a 1 boss encounter that players could complete once their faction controlled the Lake Wintergrasp PvP zone. The fights were all quite short and straightforward. It took about 30 minutes to finish.

The PvP in Wrath is considered one of the high points. What was it really like though? The fastest way to get Blue PvP gear was to honor farm in Strand of the Ancients. SotA is a battleground that largely involves siege warfare. The reason it was so popular in WOTLK is because the games would end fast. Players would often avoid fights and instead focus on destorying walls with siege vehicles. You didn't actually need to fight other players, since the ultimate goal was to siege the walls of the defending team. The Lake Wintergrasp PvP zone was pretty similar. It involved a lot of siege vehicles. Some players were into that kind of thing. Arena was bursty. Players would often be 100-0'd by Retribution/DK combos. The Deathknight class was truly heroic, and quite overpowered in Arena. While there was variety of decent comps, a lot of specs were pretty unviable when compared to the power of an unholy DK.

As fun as the leveling in Northrend was, there really wasn't that much world content. Players rarely revisited some zones. Dalaran was the main hub. It was majestic, yet at the same time cramped.There was a lot of standing around in Dalaran, no different than what you see in Orgrimmar or Stormwind in Classic. Now I know that Wrath eventually added some pretty spectacular content (Ulduar), there was definitely some disappointing additions (ToC). The Icecrown Citadel patch was pretty well received, but there was very little added to Wrath after ICC. I can't imagine being stuck in ICC for 8 months would be that fun nowadays.

I had a lot of fun in Wrath, but I question whether that could ever be relived. Knowing what we now know.

They have to release burning crusade classic first.

[Azerate]

As someone who loved Wrath back in the day, I have to say I wouldn't play a re-release of it.

Wrath was cool back in the day, the atmosphere was great, I had great community and good friends. It won't be like that anymore. Also, Wrath had basically almost no world content, except for some 1 minute dailies here and there and later argent tournament. And the most important thing...I already did it. I'm more interesting in playing the current/new content. Wow for me is a continuity, a timeline. I couldn't care less to replay old stuff on a separate server

[Vektorix]

The only way I could get excited about a re-release of Wrath of the Lich King is something that simply wouldn't happen:

If Blizzard went in and finished all the elements planned but either not completed or scaled back, I would be thrilled. Azjol-Nerub zone, whatever the planned raid was going to be out in the big troll temple at the far end of Zul'drak, original Malygos raid (which was revamped as The Oculus), MAYBE use modern tech to put the tournament where it was going to originally be in Crystalsong Forest.

THAT would get me to come back, but not just a re-release…

[Onikaroshi]

As someone who loved Wrath back in the day, I have to say I wouldn't play a re-release of it.

Wrath was cool back in the day, the atmosphere was great, I had great community and good friends. It won't be like that anymore. Also, Wrath had basically almost no world content, except for some 1 minute dailies here and there and later argent tournament. And the most important thing...I already did it. I'm more interesting in playing the current/new content. Wow for me is a continuity, a timeline. I couldn't care less to replay old stuff on a separate server

Just shows you're not really the target audience /shrug.

I've spent quite a bit of time on wrath pservers, its one of my favorite points in the game. Like mop better, but the mop pservers are.... less than desirable or dead during NA times.

[rpdrichard]

Blizzard of today would find a way to make it suck horribly.

Exactly this, after the huge disaster they made with Warcraft Reforged I hope they don´t touch any previous expansions, games.

[deenman]

Dungeons weren't easy because of mechanics or lack there of. It was because it was very easy to get better gear to massively outgear them. They were a struggle at first.

they lacked wipe mecanics and 1 shot stuff like cata

[SirCowdog]

They have to release burning crusade classic first.

Not necessarily. Blizzard could fiddle with the scaling and iLVL of items to allow players to go straight from EK/Kalimdor(1-60) into Northrend(60-80). It obviously wouldn't be the purist #nochanges version of Classic that we see now in Vanilla. But it could be done due to TBC be almost entirely on the other side of portals. Just lock IQD.

[Onikaroshi]

they lacked wipe mecanics and 1 shot stuff like cata

Because those went over SO well lol.

[deenman]

Because those went over SO well lol.

well its hard to hit people with decent dungeons once you train milions in wrath kiddie style

[Vankrys]

Wait what?

Did you seriously just claim all of WotLK had bad dungeons that were totally forgettable? Holy shit son. Holy shit. That is some truly remarkable reality-denial.

i didn't say they were forgettable, i say they were very easy, pretty much face rolls.
TBC NORMAL dungeons claimed more lives than WotLK HEROIC.

I don't recall ever strategizing in wolk dungeon, i don't really recall planning pulls with icon like moon for sheep, square for trap, star for sap etc...
In fact for that matter, maybe you're right, they were forgettable.

I remember very well TBC and cata dungeons, the wipe, the difficulty. The fact that you can't ignore a mechanic means you have to learn it. And if only for that, TBC and CATA dungeon were brillant, you learn the fight mechanics, you learn the mob specificity, and with that, you learn the dungeons.

[rrayy]

they lacked wipe mecanics and 1 shot stuff like cata

That doesn't make dungeons hard, that makes them a pain in the butt that nobody wants tio do. As I siad, they were easy because everyone was able to massively outgear them quickly. People absolutely did struggle with them at first. People forget this because of the 12 month content drought where people already massively outgeared them to where they were trivial. That is all people remember. It had nothing to do with mechanics.

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well its hard to hit people with decent dungeons once you train milions in wrath kiddie style

Wrath was not kiddie style. Please stop with this myth.

[Eurhetemec]

i didn't say they were forgettable, i say they were very easy, pretty much face rolls.
TBC NORMAL dungeons claimed more lives than WotLK HEROIC.

I don't recall ever strategizing in wolk dungeon, i don't really recall planning pulls with icon like moon for sheep, square for trap, star for sap etc...
In fact for that matter, maybe you're right, they were forgettable.

I remember very well TBC and cata dungeons, the wipe, the difficulty. The fact that you can't ignore a mechanic means you have to learn it. And if only for that, TBC and CATA dungeon were brillant, you learn the fight mechanics, you learn the mob specificity, and with that, you learn the dungeons.

First off, no non-M+ dungeon in WoW is or ever has been particularly challenging, so rating dungeons on that basis is like some old dude deciding running 1200m is "really challenging" or something.

I don't think you played WotLK at release, and I don't think you played TBC more than a few months after release, if you believe the rest of this tomfoolery. As someone who played solidly for pretty much the entire period, I'd say that was largely nonsense. TBC non-heroics were not desperately threatening. You did not have to CC in most pulls, at all. The only threatening thing about most TBC dungeons was the hilariously high mob density which meant that a few steps in the wrong direction caused a pack to add. TBC dungeons did, and to this day, have poor flow, and frequently poor gameplay period - a lot of them are extremely easy to grief in, though, if that's your sort of thing. Heroics were hilariously difficult for most people, unless you had a prot Pally after what, patch 2.3 or something? WotLK dungeons weren't particularly difficult, but they were extremely well-designed, with good mechanics, good flow, trash which was entertaining but not yawnsome, and so on. Cataclysm's dungeons were a fucking CHORE. They were some of the most boring, and insipidly-designed dungeons, full of dull mobs with zero personality, and genuinely forgettable boss-fights. They weren't hard. Don't pretend they were "hard". All you had to do was mark and CC before pulling. That's not difficult. That's like saying putting your dinner in the microwave for 2 minutes is "harder" than eating it cold or something. There's both piss-easy, just one of them requires you to do a very simple and rote task beforehand. Further, they were just not fun to replay. Which is good, because they were they were itemized gave you zero fucking reason to ever go back in those tedious shitholes.

Also, let me just say, the first dungeon in Cataclysm, is the only one that might genuinely be called hard, and only because of grief-y noob-trap instant-death mechanics (Blackrock Caverns), which still murder people who've never been there before to this day. But it's not actually hard, it's just a case of "Do you know about these shit noob-trap mechanics?" - if yes then it's easy. And then they all got nerfed anyway, because I guess Blizzard was like "huh just making dungeons slow as shit doesn't actually make them better".

Also who the fuck used "star for sap"? Condom was sap. That was true on all the EU and US servers I played on from open beta through Cataclysm.

So what I'm saying is, you like bad dungeons, really bad dungeons. Dungeons which are slow and dull and still not actually "challenging". I say that as someone who was there at the time, in all cases.

[WoWDoItLive]

I’d be surprised if the accountants at activision blizzard weren’t already planning the release of ongoing expansions being added to classic

[deenman]

That doesn't make dungeons hard, that makes them a pain in the butt that nobody wants tio do. As I siad, they were easy because everyone was able to massively outgear them quickly. People absolutely did struggle with them at first. People forget this because of the 12 month content drought where people already massively outgeared them to where they were trivial. That is all people remember. It had nothing to do with mechanics.

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Wrath was not kiddie style. Please stop with this myth.

denial is strong in this one