Comparing WOTLK Launch Content vs Shadowlands Launch Content

[Queen of Hamsters]

Hard to tell. Keep in mind that a lot of the increased engagement prior to launch is due to Classic being a thing (Classic was so popular that it doubled subscriptions when back when it released in August of 2019). MoP had around 9 million subs prior to its release iirc which increased to 10 million when it launched so WoW could definitely be sitting at 10 million right now. I'd be interested to see how the proportions have changed in regards to the whole classic/retail thing.

That was in August, we already had the quarterly report for that period. They tend to specifically mention Classic if it's driving anything and despite Naxx coming out, social media for Classic is oh so quiet.

Makes sense, since they 1) Didn't advertise and 2) Shadowlands launched just a week ago.

"Player engagement" with the "Franchise" though, on closer inspection, doesn't necessarily mean that the MAU's are beating any records. The franchise involves 2 games and books. In the context it makes more sense to be about people actually playing the game, but it's a BS corporate term that they could easily replace with conclusive terms.

Either way, it's a good thing that the game has a lot of people focusing on it. Gonna be fun seeing the next quarterly, unless WoD-style...

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Yeah, which is obviously super impressive. But the current playerbase has a lot of whales and has shown a willingness to pay much more than 15 a month. I wouldn't be surprised if they make almost as much from faction transfers and race as subs.

The wow token is probably one of their biggest cash cows for the game.

I wish they'd slash the price on character services, they could probably do that and grow profits from them as more players would utilize them.

[SirBeef]

You're forgetting pet battles, transmog hunting, treasures, rare hunting(apploes to both), micro holidays, secret mounts.

Will point out that making the art for the game now takes a lot longer due to in increased fidelity, go gone are the days having 2 or 3 dungeons in a zone. Asset flipping was super heavily used between same szone dungeons.


Another thing to remember is a lot of concepting for WotLK happens during Vanillas development as well as TBC. Areas were to be included at launch, with potential other areas opening up in parches. So post WotLK, everything was concepted from scratch when development started. That eats at the time.

Also, this was pre sharding and layering, and with the issues we had in TBC, they needed more zones to dissipate the players.

Overall I don't really think they are fair comparisons. The covenant system is far greater than and more involved than anything we had in WotLK. So it's almost an apples to oranges comparison.

[Frozen Death Knight]

If you want to compare things that aren't included in the Op make a new thread.

OT: Very different eras in gaming. WoW has casualized itself to the point where adding even moderately challenging content causes the community to collapse on itself like a pack of starving feral hounds. While WotLK was certainly the starting point of that slide, the players who experienced it were looking at a vastly different set of metrics.

WotLK is arguably the most casual expansion to date, so I don't know what you are talking about when you say that it was just "the starting point". A very common complaint was that the PvE content was extremely easy, with only a handful of raids actually being remotely challenging: The Eye of Eternity, Ulduar, and Icecrown Citadel.

Just to put things into perspective, the first tier of Wrath only had two "difficult" encounters: 3 Drakes Sartharion, which was being commonly pugged at the time (even on smaller servers like mine), and Malygos, the only one which I would consider truly difficult. The only reason Malygos was actually hard was because the final phase introduced a brand new mount mechanic which very few were truly prepared for. The flight mechanic was overall uncomfortable for a lot of players because of having to fly around in 3 dimensions in specific formations with abilities that weren't intuitive. Naxxramas was in fact so easy that even some of the most casual guilds were working on the final few bosses, with Kel'thuzad being difficult, but not difficult enough to hinder a lot of guilds from progressing. I even remember my first 10 man kill on him where I and 3 other people managed to deal with the final phase on our own despite the rest of our team having wiped fairly early into the final phase. It was a very challenging fight when playing it like that, but once some of the basics were down he was put on farm by a lot of guilds at the time.

Dungeons were a complete joke even before everyone was decked out in Naxx gear and their difficulty didn't scale at all during the entire expansion. The name of the game back then was to speedrun through every single dungeon and because of this some dungeons were completely skipped since they had mechanics that made them slower to run than other dungeons. For instance, dungeons like The Oculus were often completely skipped because of the mount mechanic and the slow rise to the top of the dungeon, which made it a really disliked dungeon by the players who focused on farming badges. None of the dungeons were truly hard, but some dungeons were simply more favoured than others by their design alone. Speed was everything back then since there was no actual challenge, even before LFG came out.

PvE has become a lot less casual overall since WotLK. There are now way more daily and weekly activities, more mechanics for bosses, trash mobs, and the environments for each raid and dungeon, and way, way more progression systems to keep track of. The legendary system alone in Shadowlands is more hardcore than any progression system WotLK ever had with its legendaries considering all the moving parts with professions, materials to collect, and effects to farm from various places in the game. If you wanted a legendary back then, you for the most part farmed the latest raid and not much else and they would be guaranteed BiS if you could equip them. In Shadowlands you have to do Torghast, dailies/weeklies, dungeons, raids, and more to craft several legendaries you don't know for sure will be BiS for your spec and playstyle compared to other legendary effects.

So yeah, not sure how later expansions, especially Shadowlands, could be considered even remotely casual when compared to Wrath of the Lich King.

[Nerovar]

That was in August, we already had the quarterly report for that period. They tend to specifically mention Classic if it's driving anything and despite Naxx coming out, social media for Classic is oh so quiet.

Makes sense, since they 1) Didn't advertise and 2) Shadowlands launched just a week ago.

"Player engagement" with the "Franchise" though, on closer inspection, doesn't necessarily mean that the MAU's are beating any records. The franchise involves 2 games and books. In the context it makes more sense to be about people actually playing the game, but it's a BS corporate term that they could easily replace with conclusive terms.

Either way, it's a good thing that the game has a lot of people focusing on it. Gonna be fun seeing the next quarterly, unless WoD-style...

Social media presence was much bigger for Classic's launch though. I checked during both launches and I think WoW had like 200-300k more Twitch viewers during Classic's launch than during the launch of Shadowlands (which is totally crazy to me). While I don't think that Classic is driving much growth these days due to the nature of the game, it still probably has a very solid playerbase that boosts things like "engagement prior to expansion launch".

[Kralljin]

(if you wanted a legendary back then, you for the most part farmed the latest raid and that's it).

I find some of your points in rather questionable, but this one really sticks.
Would you really go on and say: Wotlk Legendaries are easier to grab for casuals than the Shadowlands legendaries?

I'm going to take a shot in the dark and say that you'll see a BiS Legendary in Oribous over the course of SL more often than you saw Shadowmourne or Val'anyr during Wotlk.

[Chilela]

I feel like this comparison might be a *bit* apples to oranges.

-Dungeons
While WotLK did, in fact, have more dungeons at launch (although not the most of any xpac, TBC had more launch dungeons at a total of 15, if I'm not mistaken, although some required some form of prerequisite at entry), the Normal/Heroic/Mythic system means that SL's dungeons have more staying power as far as remaining relevant than Wrath's did, especially once M+ starts up again, plus SL dungeons are an order of magnitudes more mechanically complicated than Wrath. If nothing else, SL is more "quality than quantity" here. But technically, Wrath has the edge in sheer variance and volume.

-Raids
Not counting the minibosses in the Obsidian Sanctum as actual bosses, WotLK launched with 18 bosses to Shadowlands's 10 (which technically aren't launch, but for sake of argument they are here). All 10 of those bosses are new, whereas the overwhelming majority of Wrath's launch bosses were recycled, via Naxxramas. SL has a very obvious edge here, even if Sarth ultimately started the trend of hard mode raid bosses as we know them today.

-Classes
DKs vs, well, nothing. Wrath easily wins here.

-Cities
I'm giving this one to SL. While the 4 covenant sanctums are more big towns than major cities, them + Oribos blows Dalaran out of the water in terms of content, as much nostalgia as OG Dalaran gives me nowadays.

-Professions
WotLK added a profession, while SL "removed" a profession in terms of newer content (Archeology). Nothing to say of the fact that even with SL's profession changes, Wrath's professions were, IMO, more complex in terms of crafting. But content-wise, Wrath easily wins here.

-PvP
Wrath launch added a new PvP zone, a new (recently-retired) BG, and a new arena map. SL added... PvP WQs, I guess? IDK of any PvP content actually added into SL. Wrath wins here.

-Zones
Even if you take out the near-useless Crystalsong Forest, Wrath wins again here, pitting 5 zones against 8. However, the SL zones are much more intricate than the WotLK zones, so again, quantity vs quality.

-Non-repeatable quests
WotLK absolutely stomps here. I'm pretty sure the DEHTA quests by themselves are equivalent to several SL side quest chains. The only thing SL has going for it is the post-cap campaign quests, and those are pretty timegated at the moment.

-Repeatable quests
However, WotLK falters pretty hard once you get all of the previously-mentioned quests out of the way. Dailies at launch were an order of magnitudes more scarce than SL's WQs, or at least my memory of it is as such. If nothing else, SL's quests are much more varied than Wrath's were.

-"Game-changing" new feature
This one I added myself, and it seems to boil down to Achievements vs Chromie Time, since most of the rest of SL's features will probably go away next xpac. While achievements can barely be called content on their own, Chromie time is the literal recycling of content. I'm appreciative of both features, don't get me wrong. But achievements are at least kinda-sorta content-ish, so I'm giving Wrath this one. (Plus, you could also count vehicles in Wrath if you really, really wanted to)

-Other features
SL is a clear stomp here, even though the timegating doesn't really help. Covenants, Torghast, and the several new systems all more or less count as content as far as I'm concerned. Whether or not they'll have any staying power through is irrelevant for the sake of this argument.

I probably missed some features, but it's ultimately a mixed bag, and depends in part on what you quantify as content to begin with.

[Nerovar]

I find some of your points in rather questionable, but this one really sticks.
Would you really go on and say: Wotlk Legendaries are easier to grab for casuals than the Shadowlands legendaries?

I'm going to take a shot in the dark and say that you'll see a BiS Legendary in Oribous over the course of SL more often than you saw Shadowmourne or Val'anyr during Wotlk.

Yeah, this is an insanely uninformed or bad faith take. How can you claim that Legendary acquisition in Shadowlands is harder than in Wotlk when we're in week 2 and people already have their first legendaries? FeelsWeirdMan

[Frozen Death Knight]

I find some of your points in rather questionable, but this one really sticks.
Would you really go on and say: Wotlk Legendaries are easier to grab for casuals than the Shadowlands legendaries?

I'm going to take a shot in the dark and say that you'll see a BiS Legendary in Oribous over the course of SL more often than you saw Shadowmourne or Val'anyr during Wotlk.

Sure, if you count the time it took to complete the legendaries from WotLK by the amount of runs you had to farm Ulduar and ICC to complete Val'anyr and Shadowmourne compared to being able to craft one a week into Shadowlands as being complex, I can agree to an extent. However, you can't seriously tell me that getting 30 fragments from raid bosses in a single raid to craft Val'anyr is more complex than having to engage in several vastly different types of content on a week by week basis to not just craft legendaries, but also upgrade them over time. I made my first legendary yesterday, but unlike in WotLK where once you got your legendary it was BiS, it will not become BiS for me until months into the expansion with a lot more farming outside of raiding, i.e. Torghast levels.

Just for a personal anecdote, yesterday I had a guildmate quit the game because he got sick of the complexity of the Shadowlands legendary system and even brought up WotLK as an example of when things were simpler. Personally I actually like the legendary system because of the community effort required to craft them through professions, but considering that I will have to do far more content weekly to keep engaging in the legendary system than just having to spend raid nights like in WotLK, I would also consider this overall more time consuming, complex, and yes, even more hardcore by that comparison since you can't just raid like in WotLK to keep up.

[tirisfalskeleton]

Its not debatable at this point. Shadowlands is easily a top 2 expansion, everyone agrees.

I was one of those players who came back for Classic. I didn't play BFA and only leveled a bit in Legion. I followed all the criticism on BFA by watching streams and reading this forum. I was one of the many players on Classic that ridiculed retail and believed that it was basically unplayable. Shadowlands surprised me. It is still early, but think WoW hasn't been this good in a decade This is coming from somebody was practically a retail hater.

I brought up the WOTLK comparison, because it is often considered the pinnacle of the game. Nostalgia is real. Classic was not as fun as Vanilla. Have I enjoyed it? Absolutely. but I recognize that there were positive changes made with the expansions that came after Vanilla. One special aspect of Wrath was the Lich King. Getting to see Arthas and the conclusion of his story meant a lot to so many players. That is something the Jailer or Sylvanas will never compare to.

I was trying to make an unbaised post comparing the early content of WOTLK to Shadowlands.

[Shadowferal]

Lets compare MoP content to any other xpac, i think MoP Destroys WOTLK on content. What u wanna point out OP?

Hmm...
MoP had quite a bit going and more than a few content patches;
5.1: Landfall:
5.2: Rise of The Thunder King:
5.3: Escalation:
5.4: Siege of Orgrimmar:

Wrath of the Lich King
3.1.0, 'Secrets of Ulduar
3.2, 'Call of the Crusade
3.3, 'Fall of the Lich King

[ceall]

creates throwaway account.
tries saying "aktchually wras has had moar content, so shadowlands musht be lazy" on the one hand, but on the other hand also says, that wrath launch content was poorly received.
says wrath is the expansion, that is best received by the playerbase when actually legion is rated better (AFAIK on metacritic that is).

tl;dr: use your main account next time

[FelPlague]

Well does that make early Shadowlands better than early Wrath?

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Ya I think so as well.

it depends on the person, does the person prefer having 10 okay meals, or 1 fine dining meal, which do they prefer?
thats why what is good and what is bad is subjective.

[Kralljin]

I would also consider this overall more time consuming, complex, and yes, even more hardcore by that comparison since you can't just raid like in WotLK to keep up.

I think that sums up the error in your logic quite well, because let's make one thing clear:
The Wotlk Legendaries required you being part of an organized raiding group (And on top of that, an important member of that group to have any chance of getting it "early") and that already filters most casual players, especially in the modern game.

By that logic, Warglaives, Thori'dal & Atiesh are also casual friendly - you just have to farm the raid for it, right?

Your view on "casual" in that context is extremely twisted, because it ignores that actual casual players do not partake in the activity that actually yields the legendary item, and even there only one person at a time can acquire the item, meaning the rest has to wait until it is their turn.

The average modern day casual players would never even get a shot at a legendary the way Legendaries were designed in Wotlk.

Just for a personal anecdote, yesterday I had a guildmate quit the game because he got sick of the complexity of the Shadowlands legendary system and even brought up WotLK as an example of when things were simpler.

Simple things can be hardcore, casual things can be complex, those two aren't mutually exclusive.

Heck, the Rank 14 grind is at its core also pretty simple:
Make more honor on your server than anyone for 3months straight - that's also pretty simple.

[Magneto]

Time to compare total quests, repeatable quests, demographic..cmon, statistics and analysis can be fun but also can be no fun. this is no fun.

[Garybear]

I'll take Oculus before Mists of Tirna Scithe ANY DAY

Mists of Tirna Scithe is my favorite dungeon though

[kukkamies]

Levelling and questing did feel much more engaging back then. Though I feel too busy to do it currently, so might just quit if wotlk came this year. Shadowlands was nice and quick, so I did play until 60 and few dungeons. Probably still only one month game though, too many other games too.

The gold rewards from questing were much better until MoP. New characters were rewarding seeing the increasing gold stack along with the characters. Nowadays you get pretty much nothing.

[Kumorii]

Seems a bit pointless since I find the new content have more intricate and detailed content. Old content was very simple in design and dungeons / bosses aren't that special in mechanics compared to now.

Don't think I dislike any dungeon and it's bosses so far. Plaguefall might be the odd one out with the first and last boss not being that interesting at least on heroic. Last boss is sorted in Mythic since tentacle slams happen during the fight and not just in the intermissions.

Zones are a lot more interesting and so are the quests. Raids are absolutely a step up in newer expansions as well.

[TheVaryag]

Out of curiosity I decided to compare the launches of Shadowlands and Wrath of the Lich King. Wrath is heralded as the best expansion pack by much of the playerbase. I actually played Wrath of the Lich King at launch all the way until Ulduar was released. While we don't know exactly what content will be added to Shadowlands over the coming month, we have somewhat of an idea. Below I will be comparing the first few months of content between the two expansions.

Once you dinged 80 in Wrath of the Lich King you would hang out in Dalaran. Content included Normal/Heroic Dungeon farming, Battlegrounds, Season 1 Arena, Wintergrasp + Vault of Archavon, Naxxramas, and Zone Reputation grinds. Below is a more detailed summary.

Was there really more content in early Wrath compared to Shadowlands?

Wrath of the Lich King:

Normal/Heroic Dungeons (No Dungeon Finder)

There was no dungeon finder so you had to form groups with players on your server.
WOTLK launched with more dungeons than any expansion, but some were not well received.
Some dungeons were a lot more popular than others. Players would often avoid certain dungeons.

- Utgarde Keep (Popular/Fun)
- Azjol-Nerub (Unpopular/Many players would leave early on)
- The Nexus (Unpopular/Avoid by many)
- Drak'Tharon Keep (Not that popular and often mixed up with Gundrak)
- Violet Hold (Short and repertitive.. was in Dalaran)
- Gundrak (Not well liked/Lots of annoying trash)
- Stratholme Past (Well received.. but it a bit boring)
- Ahn'kahet: The Old Kingdom (Often confused with Azjol-Nerub)
- Halls of Stone (Pretty popular)
- Halls of Lightning (Fast paced and fairly well-liked)
- The Oculus (Not popular/many complaints)

PvP

- Lake Wintergrasp (Vehicle PvP, zerging + lag)
- Strand of Ancients (This was the most popular BG. It was vehicle rushfest.)
- Honor Vendor (No weapons)
- Season 1 Arena (Dalaran Sewer + Ring of Valor)

PvE

Zone Reputations and Vendors (Daily Quests)

- Borean Tundra (A bit barren, but memorable)
- Howling Fjord (One of the best starting zones ever)
- Icecrown (Not much to do here at lower levels)
- Storm Peaks (Same as Icecrown)
- Wintergrasp
- Crystalsong Forest (This zone was empty usually)
- Zul'drak (Not that well-liked.. lots of trash mobs that would chase)
- Sholazar Basin (Relaxing and fun)
- Grizzly Hills (Very memorable and fun)
- Dragonblight (Flat and fairly empt)

Raids

- Naxxramas (1 difficulty.. and easy and recycled)
- Vault of Archavon (1 boss)
- Obsidian Sanctum (1 boss)
- Eye of Eternity (1 boss)

Classes

- Deathknights (Very popular, yet imbalanced and controversial)

Cities

- Dalaran (Cramped, laggy, yet pretty)

Professions

- Inscription (Popular)



Shadowlands

Normal/Heroic Dungeons/Mythic/Mythic+ (Dungeon Finder)

- The Necrotic Wake
- Plaguefall
- Mists of Tirna Scithe
- Halls of Atonement
- Theater of Pain
- De Other Side
- Spires of Ascension
- Sanguine Depths

PvP

- Season 1 Arena
- Honor Vendor
- World PvP quest
- 2 Battlegrounds (Normal and Epic)

PvE

Faction Reputations and Anima

- Torghast (Mutli-layers and Legendary Powers)
- World Quests (Anima)
- Bastion
- Maldraxxus
- Ardenweald
- Revendreth
- The Maw


Raids

- Castle Nathria (LFR/Normal/Heroic/Mythic)

Cities

- Oribos

Imean I hope people realized long ago that Shadowlands is a very budget expansion, 8 dungeons, barely any GOOD content to do and even then the content isn't really there as the expansion is clearly unfinished, unpolished, untested and almost unplayable, just doing Torghast Week 1 was a coin flip on if you had good Anima Powers, the correct OP class of the week and some more RNG on weather or not you could defeat the last Layer boss and get Soul Ash.

Shadowlands Is an improvement over all over BfA. But again, that's like saying Legion is an improvement over WoD, yes It was. But that's only cause WoD was so bad. Legion was still not as good as Mists or Wrath was and SL is definitely not better than Mists or Wrath yet. Hell, even WoD so far I'm ranking higher than SL for now. But Bfa, Legion are still worse. See, the last few expansions, SL, BfA, Legion and WoD are the worst expansions we've had over all in the game. Yes one could better than the other but It's still choosing a turd among a pile of turds, but that turd you choose is the most polished and shiny.

I'm still not hyped for SL, I'm trying to do PvPing as I always do and keep dying to Sub Rogues cause a Blizz Dev looked at Classic WoW sub rogues and thought "This is balanced, lets do that for Retail" where you get 2 shot, stun locked and can't do anything, yeah that's fun. The PvP weekly seems to be either earn Honor in Bgs/Epic BGs and I can predict the next one will be Arenas. That's terrible, It should be honor earnt over all and therefore encourage to queue for all kinds of PvP even go outdoor and Warmode. We still dunno how well we can earn Conquest Gear, how high level it will go and why PvPers are forced to do Mythic 0 right now to get a leg up on PvP power. That's not even discussing Versitility being used as a "Temporary PvP Stat" basically. They should just slap a PvP stat on Honor/Conqeust gear and be done with it, but a REAL PVP STAT not use Versitility.

[Malania]

It has been a long time but the only dungeon I remember people actively avoiding in Wrath was Oculus (as in join, see what they got and leave instantly) because they hated the dragon mounts.

[Hastis]

Compare legion to shadowlands

Shadowlands fetaures:
5 zones
covenants (reputation hall insted of class)
thorgast

Legion:
5 zones
class order halls (class instead of garrison)
mythic +
world quests
artifacts system
new honor system
new class demon hunter