So lemme get this straight

[Kehego]

People put wotlk on a pedestal which had

1) naxx10/25
2) Ulduar which wasn't playable to most people till ToC
3) ToC

as one of the best expansions? literally one of the 4 major content patches were "good"

I don't get it. Dungeon finder/welfare gear only happened in ICC patch, when was wotlk this fantastic experience? genuinely curious.

[Begrudge]

People put wotlk on a pedestal which had

1) naxx10/25
2) Ulduar which wasn't playable to most people till ToC
3) ToC

as one of the best expansions? literally one of the 4 major content patches were "good"

I don't get it. Dungeon finder/welfare gear only happened in ICC patch, when was wotlk this fantastic experience? genuinely curious.

Raid finder didn’t exist, dungeon finder didn’t come out till late in the expansion, the community was completely different

[zhero]

coherent story line, small towns/hubs had well done back story to them.

[FakePizza]

WoW was good until lfg finder/gearscore came into play.After that,it was all down hill.

[rarhyx]

dk starting zone - one of the best zones and quests
you still had classes and not specs
community was different
(*good*) story telling till the super sayian attack when we all died and got revived to take arthas down
most tier sets and weapons had good designs

personally I liked the catchup system more than today

[ThiagoTorres]

Most iconic character of this game in WoLK
Arthas being a menace during all level experience
Almost perfect Lore
Northrend best region ever. Not too long, easy to cross aroung, nice songs, good theme, not that crap full of mobs like maw
Dalaran better city this game have
Classes much more unique, good pvp, wpvp and pve
Ulduar best raid this game ever had, ToC some ppl love it (me) some ppl dont, much better dungeons
and more important, the community back there were much much better than now

[Kithelle]

People put wotlk on a pedestal which had

1) naxx10/25
2) Ulduar which wasn't playable to most people till ToC
3) ToC

as one of the best expansions? literally one of the 4 major content patches were "good"

I don't get it. Dungeon finder/welfare gear only happened in ICC patch, when was wotlk this fantastic experience? genuinely curious.

1) Not a lot of people actually experienced Naxx in vanilla so it was new to a lot
2) Ulduar was a awesome raid
3) ToC.....was ToC

WotLK was fun...classes were in a better place (hybrids like Enhancement and Retribution had some actual buttons to push and get some love for their magic damage)

WotLK overall was a nice expansion

[Queen of Hamsters]

People always forget the bad and remember the good, WoW expansions are always beloved in hindsight.

WOTLK took immense flack when it was current, and as someone that actually remembers the bad, I don't count it in my top 3.

[unbound]

People put wotlk on a pedestal which had

1) naxx10/25
2) Ulduar which wasn't playable to most people till ToC
3) ToC

as one of the best expansions? literally one of the 4 major content patches were "good"

I don't get it. Dungeon finder/welfare gear only happened in ICC patch, when was wotlk this fantastic experience? genuinely curious.

Everything wasn't solely about raids for starters. 16 dungeons kept things more interesting.

Furthermore, raids were a progression. You weren't just stuck with the current raid.

A year from now, the only raid anyone will be doing (outside of grinding xmogs) will be whatever the latest raid is. So anyone who was on the fence about SL and decides to join in the year won't really experience the first or second raid because of catch up mechanics. Whereas if you joined Wrath 1 year in, you could find a guild and run the first raid as an actual challenge.

I'm sure this is confusing to most modern WoW players who expect dungeon runs to take no more than 10 minutes, raids to be cleared in a couple of hours, and gear to be handed to them weekly for very little effort. But old WoW (Vanilla - Wrath at least) wasn't for that type of attitude.

[Kehego]

1) Not a lot of people actually experienced Naxx in vanilla so it was new to a lot
2) Ulduar was a awesome raid
3) ToC.....was ToC

WotLK was fun...classes were in a better place (hybrids like Enhancement and Retribution had some actual buttons to push and get some love for their magic damage)

WotLK overall was a nice expansion

the same ulduar with yogg, mimiron, flame leviathan, ignis? lmao
the same ulduar that had abysmal participation rates until toc?
the same ulduar that people are clueless about in tw?

couldn't be the same ulduar lmao

[Belloc]

1) Naxx 10 and 25 were fun. Yeah, sure, they were easy, and the loot was practically free, but... it was fun. That's it. And we also had Sarth (1,2&3d) and Malygos.
Achievements were brand new and you bet your ass we went for them! You know how satisfying it was to finally get The Immortal?

2) It was perfectly playable at release. My guild, at the time, wasn't heroic-capable in 25-man, but the normal fights were perfectly fine for even our lesser players. 10-man was even better, though, because we absolutely had a solid core 10 players. My server wasn't big, but we had plenty of guilds progressing through and clearing normal without issue in both sizes. You say that there was low participation, but that was absolutely not my experience. Maybe you were on a dead server?

3) Talk shit about ToC. Try it. What you got? Here's what I got:
The fights were unique. They did things that we hadn't seen before. Out of the 5 fights, there was really only one that was particularly boring, and that was the second boss. The first boss was good on normal and a nice challenge on heroic. The third boss was a PvP puzzle that, afaik, still stands as one of the most unique encounters in the game. The fourth boss hit players with the concept of bullet-hell and encouraged some innovating strategies. The fifth boss? I'm biased on the fifth boss, at least on heroic. Normal mode was whatever. For non-heroic players, it was fine, no complaints. But heroic was a raid-wide challenge. Add tanks had to have specific lower-level gear sets, heavy cooldown rotations required from a variety of raid members, resource conservation (the frost), pathing and positioning, and then an intentionally low-health war of attrition for the final phase.

It. Was. Awesome.

Oh, and no trash. No one likes trash and there was absolutely none of it. No one ever gives the raid the respect it deserves.

[Kehego]

Everything wasn't solely about raids for starters. 16 dungeons kept things more interesting.

Furthermore, raids were a progression. You weren't just stuck with the current raid.

A year from now, the only raid anyone will be doing (outside of grinding xmogs) will be whatever the latest raid is. So anyone who was on the fence about SL and decides to join in the year won't really experience the first or second raid because of catch up mechanics. Whereas if you joined Wrath 1 year in, you could find a guild and run the first raid as an actual challenge.

I'm sure this is confusing to most modern WoW players who expect dungeon runs to take no more than 10 minutes, raids to be cleared in a couple of hours, and gear to be handed to them weekly for very little effort. But old WoW (Vanilla - Wrath at least) wasn't for that type of attitude.

lol wotlk was the first expansion of throw away raids though, like, when toc released you really had no right being in ulduar, same with toc and icc.
Wotlk was THE expansion of 10 minute heroic runs, as in they didn't change the difficulty of content from launch to end, so il 200 heroics rewarded 232-251 gear

Wrathbaby is a thing for a reason, you're thinking of cataclysm where heroics were hard and people cried about it.

- - - Updated - - -

dk starting zone - one of the best zones and quests
you still had classes and not specs
community was different
(*good*) story telling till the super sayian attack when we all died and got revived to take arthas down
most tier sets and weapons had good designs

personally I liked the catchup system more than today

you 100% had specs cus the retarded trispec hybridlol specs died a sound death in wotlk, cata just sealed the coffin. There was *maybe* 1 viable "trispec" build in frostfire mages and that's literally it.

- - - Updated - - -

coherent story line, small towns/hubs had well done back story to them.

You mean arthas running round like team rocket through zones?
The storytelling got better since wotlk, people just have a hardon for sephirot...err arthas

[shadowmatrix]

TOC, I'm assuming you mean the raid. That was Blizzard giving some players what they kept asking for, a raid with no trash mobs. Why one room? Without the trash mobs was use is there for having more then one room.

[Kralljin]

People like to ignore that Wotlk was initially a rather controversial expansion, for reasons mentioned and a variety of other changes that the community has simply accepted at this point or just plainly forgotten about it.

I think Wotlk still represents some variation of the older iterations in terms of character pogression (altough it's not compareable with Classic / TBC quite frankly) and that its gameplay has simply aged better than Classic / TBC while still retaining some its original feeling.
Rotations aren't superfast paced but they're also not a one button rotation like in Classic / TBC.

I think there is also the fact that a lot of people really started dig into WoW's endgame with Wotlk as it made raiding far more accessible (or just plain started then), which then further supports this notion as the being "(one of) the best expansions", as they lack a proper comparison to Classic / TBC.

In hindsight, Wotlk is an expansion that did trade a lot of (MMO)RPG aspects in favour convenience and accessability, altough the final result is still not as extreme as the expansions that followed.
The expansion is more well regarded due to being a balance between Classic / TBC and future expansions.

Also, "welfare" epics did start in TBC with the badge vendor introduced in 2.4 for all intents and purposes and in Wotlk, they really kicked the "play the patch" off with 3.2 and ToC 10man being so horribly undertuned despite dropping superior loot to anything that could be found in Ulduar outside of 25man Hardmodes.

[FelPlague]

People put wotlk on a pedestal which had

1) naxx10/25
2) Ulduar which wasn't playable to most people till ToC
3) ToC

as one of the best expansions? literally one of the 4 major content patches were "good"

I don't get it. Dungeon finder/welfare gear only happened in ICC patch, when was wotlk this fantastic experience? genuinely curious.

ok lets go over why these things dont matter



1) nax, while in this day "reusing content" is a shitty prasctice we hate, back then people didnt care, and many people were extremly excited, because a majority of the playerbase did not get to do naxx when it was current, this was their first time, even if it was "shitty recycle of a raid"


2) ulduar 10 man was easy enough for most people to play, they didnt need to wait till ToC, of course the 25 man hardmodes were locked for MANY till later in the expansion, but the base raid in 10 and even 25 was very doable for most players even in pugs

3) TOC was actually a polirizing raid, many people loved the theme, and loved the whole thing of fighting in 1 room, especially with ZERO trash, so it was actually seen as a decent raid, while it had a lot that sucked, it had a lot that was great, no travel, no trash, just boss fights.

"One of the major content patches was good"
lol what? ICC and ulduar were both amazing, thats ATLEAST 2, let alone the rest.

also welfare gear was always a thing in wotlk from the very start, it was called badge gear, it even existed in TBC, although not to the same extent.

wotlk also had most peoples favorite time in PVP, it was before every class got tons of CC, and when pvp combat took a bit, you wernt burst down and died instantly, it took a bit, but at the same time not TOO LONG, it was a great time for pvp, there was skill, and there was expertise, there were meta classes, but if you didnt play meta you wernt burst down in half a second, nor were you cc'd the entire match as your party member just died.

[Acidbaron]

People put wotlk on a pedestal which had

1) naxx10/25
2) Ulduar which wasn't playable to most people till ToC
3) ToC

as one of the best expansions? literally one of the 4 major content patches were "good"

I don't get it. Dungeon finder/welfare gear only happened in ICC patch, when was wotlk this fantastic experience? genuinely curious.

Ulduar was something you could clear for the biggest part if you didn't do HM's, the division of 10 man and 25 man actually made it so social raiding groups were formed that cleared the 10 man content which was easier. No raid finder put people in guilds and made them make an effort to group up, guilds were bigger and had often 10 man raids with socials. Not sure how one would say it wasn't playable.

ToC had fun fights and challenging achievements like no deaths. Block stacking for Anub adds was a bit off. You also had the Argent tournament thing that tied well into it even for a lesser patch it had quite a bit to do.

I also like the badge/token system more than things we have now.

[loras]

People put wotlk on a pedestal which had

1) naxx10/25
2) Ulduar which wasn't playable to most people till ToC
3) ToC

as one of the best expansions? literally one of the 4 major content patches were "good"

I don't get it. Dungeon finder/welfare gear only happened in ICC patch, when was wotlk this fantastic experience? genuinely curious.

The lore, atmosphere and aesthetics just worked, also pvp had not been sidetracked back then (currently it is being restored, but the balance is stll off) so there was genuine variety in endgame content back then that did not involve raiding.

If raiding is all there is to WoW for you then it was poor, but for those who liked the world part of WoW it was awesome, as it all worked relatively well in conjunction with one another.

WoW's selling point has never just been its raids though, some people around here tend to forget that.

[Kehego]

People like to ignore that Wotlk was initially a rather controversial expansion, for reasons mentioned and a variety of other changes that the community has simply accepted at this point or just plainly forgotten about it.

I think Wotlk still represents some variation of the older iterations in terms of character pogression (altough it's not compareable with Classic / TBC quite frankly) and that its gameplay has simply aged for than Classic / TBC while still retaining some its original feeling.
Rotations aren't superfast paced but they're also not a one button rotation like in Classic / TBC.

I think there is also the fact that a lot of people really started dig into WoW's endgame with Wotlk as it made raiding far more accessible (or just plain started then), which then further supports this notion as the being "(one of) the best expansions", as they lack a proper comparison to Classic / TBC.

In hindsight, Wotlk is an expansion that did trade a lot of (MMO)RPG aspects in favour convenience and accessability, altough the final result is still not as extreme as the expansions that followed.
The expansion is more well regarded due to being a balance between Classic / TBC and future expansions.

Also, "welfare" epics did start in TBC with the badge vendor introduced in 2.4 for all intents and purposes and in Wotlk, they really kicked the "play the patch" off with 3.2 and ToC 10man being so horribly undertuned despite dropping superior loot to anything that could be found in Ulduar outside of 25man Hardmodes.

I will concede that welfare existed in tbc, but wotlk made welfare play a viable playstyle

log in, grind easy 200 il heroics for a couple hours, log out with full 232 gear.

you couldn't do that in tbc.

[McNeil]

WotLK started with 12 dungeons (added 4 later, most of any expansion so far), 8 leveling zones (Wintergrasp and Crystralsong Forest had another purpose), a brand new class, new profession, lots of work made on every class with an expanded talent tree, lore is 100x better than what we got afterwards, there was more replayability and content felt way more rewarding. There goes a lot more into an expansion than just the raids, and I don't even think WotLK had bad raids. Naxx10/25 was still a lot of fun as I and my guild never raided it in Classic, Ulduar is top 2 raid, ToC wasn't an interesting raid but it had some good boss fights and no thrash which made up for it, ICC is another top 2 raid, on top of that it got some good and interesting one-boss raids. A huge improvement over both Gruul and Magtheridon at least.

It is the best expansion by a long shot. TBC is also one of the best but WotLK improved on a whole lot of things.

[Belloc]

lol wotlk was the first expansion of throw away raids though, like, when toc released you really had no right being in ulduar, same with toc and icc.
Wotlk was THE expansion of 10 minute heroic runs, as in they didn't change the difficulty of content from launch to end, so il 200 heroics rewarded 232-251 gear

Wrathbaby is a thing for a reason, you're thinking of cataclysm where heroics were hard and people cried about it.

I get the feeling that you're cherry-picking small examples and conflating them into large problems. Heroic dungeons weren't particularly lucrative during Wrath, not once you got into raids. It wasn't until they introduced the 3 ICC dungeons that gear levels, which rewarded ilvls from 219-232. The 251 you mention is referring to a single sword that was the result of an epic quest chain and was somewhat rare.

I've always been a raider in WoW. It's the only thing I've ever been interested in. Wrath was my favorite expansion for raids, so I have no idea how you can think of them as having been thrown away. My guess is that you were on a dead server or stuck in a shit guild.