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

[Kokolums]

Myself, I played WoW from vanilla thru BC into Wrath. Wrath was so terrible that I unsubbed for about half the xpac. I skipped all of Ulduar and most of Trial. I came back only for ICC. It was really awful to play. I wouldn't want to relive it. Yikes.

[Powerogue]

I can already replay the leveling experience, and do, every time from 60-80 because it's way better than BC in that regard, and have a music box item from Legion that has the Grizzly Hills and Howling Fjord music in it (peace scroll). I can replay my favorite raid from then in the timewalking and actually get more than 3 bosses in, so that's cool.

That doesn't leave much to revisit besides spending months grinding the same awful dailies in Icecrown getting that Traveler's Tundra Mammoth.

[Satelliteyears0o]

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.

eh, legion n mop were better. For many it was closure from wc3 FT, but others who knew nothing, it was the time they started playing the game.

[derpkitteh]

i don't think they will. i don't think classic is popular enough to warrant it.

i sure wish they would. peak class design, peak content design, peak gearing, everything is just better than any other incarnation of wow.

[Onikaroshi]

i don't think they will. i don't think classic is popular enough to warrant it.

i sure wish they would. peak class design, peak content design, peak gearing, everything is just better than any other incarnation of wow.

It tripled subs, even if it doesn't maintain tbc and wrath would be cheap enough to be worth it

[derpkitteh]

It tripled subs, even if it doesn't maintain tbc and wrath would be cheap enough to be worth it

might have, but i highly doubt it kept them. that was probably just a "hey investors, look at this big number" moment.

i want tbc at the very least. but getting to play wotlk again is like getting to play warhammer online again, my deepest and most closely held gaming dream.

[Kynario]

Wrath added in the dungeon finder. Wrath was trash.

The end of Wrath was trash. The beginning was epic.

During the Ulduar patch there was no Dungeon Finder. :-)

[Ghostile]

might have, but i highly doubt it kept them. that was probably just a "hey investors, look at this big number" moment.

i want tbc at the very least. but getting to play wotlk again is like getting to play warhammer online again, my deepest and most closely held gaming dream.

There's a way to play WAR *hint hint nudge nudge*

[derpkitteh]

There's a way to play WAR *hint hint nudge nudge*

i watch the videos and sob.

i just don't feel safe with anything like that, so i hold out hope for a re-launch. maybe if EA sees their competitor activision being successful with the classic launch, they'll re-launch WAR.

[Vorkreist]

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.

You must be joking. Wrath dungeons where stupidly easy from the start. Easy mechanics and stupid tuning. It was one of the major complaints in wrath.

How did you massively outgear those stupid heroics when everyone was farming them jumping in with their quest greens?

[Onikaroshi]

might have, but i highly doubt it kept them. that was probably just a "hey investors, look at this big number" moment.

i want tbc at the very least. but getting to play wotlk again is like getting to play warhammer online again, my deepest and most closely held gaming dream.

Can't speak for every server but the one I played on is still packed

[Ghostile]

i watch the videos and sob.

i just don't feel safe with anything like that, so i hold out hope for a re-launch. maybe if EA sees their competitor activision being successful with the classic launch, they'll re-launch WAR.

There's a reason WAR didn't make it back then and there's a reason it won't make it now.

The one that exists atm is pretty much the only hope.

[Onikaroshi]

There's a reason WAR didn't make it back then and there's a reason it won't make it now.

The one that exists atm is pretty much the only hope.

Because ea didn't want to give it a chance

[Ghostile]

Because ea didn't want to give it a chance

5 years isn't a chance?

Companies aren't charities so there's no chance they'd keep a game running without profit.

[Aeula]

I’d rather have TBC. Wrath’s aesthetics and endgame look boring as fuck to me.

[Onikaroshi]

5 years isn't a chance?

Companies aren't a charity so there's no chance they'd keep a game running without profit.

It was profiting, it just wasn't wow level profits. They didn't want to put any money into it, no expansions, very little updates

[Ghostile]

It was profiting, it just wasn't wow level profits. They didn't want to put any money into it, no expansions, very little updates

An expansion was in development.
Reading about its cycle of life, the playerbase was quiting as early as 2010 to the extent servers had to be merged.
License agreement ending with GW seemed to be the final nail in its coffin.

And knowing GW, it's more likely it was them and not EA pulling the plug

[Onikaroshi]

An expansion was in development.
Reading about its cycle of life, the playerbase was quiting as early as 2010 to the extent servers had to be merged.
License agreement ending with GW seemed to be the final nail in its coffin.

And knowing GW, it's more likely it was them and not EA pulling the plug

They should have had an expansion announced and in beta in 2010. The game has legs but didn't work out.

Popular private server for it out now though

[HolyBulwark93]

I had a ton of fun in Wrath, but I don’t know that I would ever play a Wrath legacy server. The memories I have and made during that time are priceless and got me through a challenging time in my real life. I’m not against a Wrath legacy server, in fact I think a lot of people would really enjoy it and see the magic we all felt during that time. But for me, I’d have to pass on actually playing it

[Vankrys]

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.

Not only did i play wrath and TBC but i played since 2004 BETA, from vanilla to Cata in pretty much nolife mode, best guild on the server and top 200 worldwide. I did guild run (which usually went well) and i did pug run (as a war tank).

And yes, yes wrath heroics super easy from the start. You have to move away from loki when he cast his 10 seconds nova, big effing deal, and as soon as you get some blue, you don't even have to.

I'm sorry, but how can you even begin to compare with shadow labs or shattered halls. Even gear in tier 4, you can't afford to half sleep through those dungeon, a bad pull, a CC break could wipe an epic geared group.

I don't even recall needing CC in WotLK. Are you really arguing Wrath and TBC heroics were on the same difficulty level, are you really willing to die on that hill?

for you to say TBC heroics were easy is you trying to flexx some imaginary muscle. They were challenging, doable, enjoyable, but challenging. And wipes happened to the best of groups.