When did Modern WoW start?

[Zorachus]

I consider modern era starting with Legion. It brought M+ dungeons. World Quests. And bunch of other stuff that to me seemed newer or refresh of the game.

The shit era of crappy expansions started with Cataclysm and ended in WoD. But Shadowlands belongs in this era now.

[Stardrift]

Every expansion WoW becomes more "modern". In 5 years, the game is going to be extremely different from what Legion was like. It's already extremely different from how MoP/WoD was. And those two are just as different from TBC/WOTLK

[Lakrin]

The first age of WoW was vanilla-wotlk

The second age was Cata-WOD.

The modern and third age of WoW is legion to now

This seems about right to me. These feel like distinct stages in the evolution of WoW so far, with some blurred edges as some features that are prominent later got first iterations in earlier phases.

[Ulfric Trumpcloak]

I'd divide in 3 parts, same way other people are thinking. The modern era with all the daily/weekly chores, time gating, and borrowed powers, didn't start until Legion. While Legion was actually a pretty good expansion(until Argus), it was the actual beginning of the end.

Kids and Young People Today don't want to work for anything any more.Instant Gratification FTW.

WoW is a video game. People are sick and tired of "working" in a video game. We don't want to work, we want to play, have fun, and be entertained, not work.

[Jericho21]

With Cataclysm.

Bingo. Yahtzee. Bazinga! Cataclysm shoe-horned in the current iteration of WoW as we know it. That's why I know they'll do TBC Classic and Wrath Classic and that's it. Why? Because that's the end of "Old WoW". New/Current WoW started in Cataclysm.

[Swnem]

Cataclysm.

That's when the base world was revamped.

[Relapses]

Modern WoW started on November 23rd, 2004.

[Itisamuh]

Legion was without question the beginning of the current era.

[munkeyinorbit]

With Cataclysm.

Wrong. You're thinking of WoW 2.0. Wow 3.0 aka modern wow started in legion. You can differentiate between the 2 with the raid or die mindset of wow 2.0 with the systems on systems seasonal play on modern wow.

[Chilela]

For me, it's WoD. It introduced mission tables, temporary systems as a primary expansion feature (Garrisons), added Mythic dungeons, made 20-man the baseline for the highest raid difficulty, as well as being the first to have flexible numbers for lower, non-LFR difficulties, started the "Huge sub count at the start of the xpac that tanked quickly" trend, and, perhaps more importantly than anything else, effectively normalized boost culture by introducing the WoW token.

[Relapses]

this - Legion is definitely the newest era, don't miss the era in-between tho, even though I liked MoP.

This is MMO-C. You're not allowed to like the current expansion. (It's illegal, and if you say something remotely positive about the game's current state you'll be quoted by somebody who will tell you all of the "issues" the current game has.) Also, if you don't think Legion is the best expansion ever, you're wrong. Additionally, WotLK is the best expansion ever. If you think anything else, you're wrong. Also, Ulduar is the best raid ever. Don't you dare suggest otherwise. Also, BT is the best raid ever. This doesn't contradict the previous statement because BT came first. Also, Vanilla is the best time ever. And this era existed before most of the current WoW population was born and as any modern psychologist will gladly affirm for you, anything that happened before you were born is better than what's happening currently. This is written somewhere in the Constitution for the creation of the modern universe.

- - - Updated - - -

Wrong. You're thinking of WoW 2.0. Wow 3.0 aka modern wow started in legion. You can differentiate between the 2 with the raid or die mindset of wow 2.0 with the systems on systems seasonal play on modern wow.

lmfao -- how dare anybody disagree with your completely fucking random designations of "eras" in WoW.

[oldgeezer]

WoW started out as a MMO for casuals.

[Luxeley]

You can make a very strong argument for the introduction of LFG during a patch in WOTLK as well as Cataclysm, a distant bronze would be MOP.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

I would say the big three eras are as follows:
Classic to Wrath
Cata to WoD
and Legion to shadowlands.

If you insist on before and after though, certainly cata was the beginning of the end as it were.
It still shocks me how confident the developers of the game were in just removing half the quests and zone content in the game to make a mediocre attempt at a fresh start.

10 years later and they still haven't undone this mistake fully.

[jakeic]

There are generally three pillars upon with successful MMO's are built. The social aspect, the world, and the game.

WotLK destroyed the social aspect of the game, it damaged guilds so badly that they added the guild reward system in Cata to try to repair it, and dungeon finder made it so you didn't have to talk to anyone to progress.

It also did serious harm to the world, your character stopped being an explorer/traveler and became the hero. Rather than coming across some people who were desperate, who saw you as someone with a sword who could help, you became the savior. The world stopped existing outside of the players actions.

Finally, the gameplay lost it's focus. Classes began to lose their distinct advantages and disadvantages, abilities began to just sprout up to cover perceived deficiencies of classes, everything began to run together and feel the same. Classes began to lose their moments to shine in favor of everyone doing the same-ish (except DKs, fuck DKs).

There were changes before this that were negative toward these pillars, and certainly the introduction of the flying mount in TBC did not go the way the developers originally intended, but the three pillars were heavily damaged to the point of WoW basically being a new game during WotLK. Since then, it's just been a zombie lurching forward, every two years it "resets" itself and players flood back with hope that WoW will have recaptured the magic it once had, only to discover quicker and quicker that the game is not what they wanted. That began with WotLK.

[arkanon]

With Cataclysm.

This was my first thought, and no matter how i try to rethink it, this is still what i think. HOWEVER, this thread is absolutely subjective, because there are so many factors to take into consideration.

[WowIsDead64]

...

Yeah.
1) Phase 1 - is Vanilla-WotLK. That's, when game was growing, not declining.
2) Phase 2 - is Cata-MOP. That's, when some problems started. Further way required game to evolve even more and to become even more casual friendly, but Blizzard started to backpedal, because despite of having super-profits they didn't want to invest this money into increasing quantity and quality of content.
3) Dunno, if WOD should be in Cata-MOP, Legion-SL or even in it's own league. It's some sort of transition phase. It doesn't seem to belong to either of sides. Yeah, it was last casual-friendly xpack in Wow's history, but at the same time changes towards Legion model were too drastic to just ignore them. For example change of visual style and attempt to remove flying.
4) Phase 3 - Legion-SL. Return of grind, unfriendly niche game, cheaper development, etc. Overall decline in interest and attempts of Blizzard to keep players playing via forcing them into content, instead of making game, they would like to play by themselves.

[sam86]

wow in current form where vast majority of players play solo content and don't interact with anyone at all? WoD started it
Garrison made u literally don't need anyone, with gear equal to raid by right click
Also Legion did need more 'social' interaction, it still nothing like before
WoD killed all social, with token wow and ppl selling boosts like crazy for actual real life money (since wow gold = real money now) social aspect died and ppl either buy boost, sell boost, or just don't even care to do anything and stay solo
I don't have any information about how wow used to be, but we have confirmation (source : blizzcon vidoes, the one they talk about faction balance) that right now wow vast majority of players (their words) is the most casual u can think, ppl who login and don't do a single mythic dungeon, at most do a hc dungeon as their only 'group' activity

[Noctiphobia]

It's funny how everyone tries to lump in WotLK together with Vanilla and TBC, when in fact it was the one expansion that transformed the game the most into what it's now during its course. The only thing it was missing from being pretty much more or less the same thing as what came next (besides being the last expansion that could easily build on top of Warcraft 3 story) is Mythic+.

So anyway, Vanilla was an entirely different thing from anything else later on, where they didn't really know what they want to do, and everything was new for everyone. Vanilla to TBC is the biggest change in the history of WoW. So if I had to pick arbitrary points in game where the changes were the largest, the first one would be Vanilla->TBC transition for giving the game a direction (as well as removing most of world pvp besides specified locations thanks to addition of flying), then possibly mid-WotLK for adding all of the quality of life stuff, and then Legion launch for adding Mythic+.

Then again, there were some less important changes that affected some people much more than others. Personally, Cataclysm making 10 man raiding legitimate, and then WoD killing it were two more important points, but that's mostly my personal preference for smaller groups and more personal influence, that clearly not everyone shares.

Expansions between WotLK and Legion did gradually modify game mechanics, the way classes play (e.g. using 2 buttons every a few seconds no longer was a valid DPS rotation), etc., but the changes were not drastic, so it's hard to justify picking a random point and saying it's a new era of anything.
On the other hand, there are some changes that nostalgic people like to pretend changed the game in any significant way, such as cross realm play or LFR.

[ReVnX]

Mid/Late Cata