When did Modern WoW start?

[Niwes]

for me „modern wow“ exactly started with Legion, but the pruning in WoD foreshadowed it already.

Legion brought:
- WQs
- Borrowed power systems
- Legendaries (which is essentially essences or SL legendaries or Azerite gear etc)
- „systems“
- m+
- flooding of collections like mounts, pets, etc
- a game design memtality and philosophy that has nothing in common with original oldschool MMORPG

so imo modern WoW started somewhere between WoD and Legion.

[Kokolums]

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

That was Diablo 1 in 1996. The first thing everyone did was hack the game files, give themselves god mode, kill Diablo in 5 minutes and then say "this game is boring" and quit. People begged Blizzard for some sort of security measures to prevent rampant hacking because they could not control themselves.

[Tronski]

When did Modern WoW start?

Modern WoW or Retail WoW
Retail WoW or Modern WoW
Whatever you say.

Modern WoW era: 2015 to Present??

The Modern WoW Era:

WoW being an Esports, Arenas, Rated Battlegrounds, Transmogrification, Dungeon Finder Tool, Premade Groups Finder Tool, Raid Finder Tool, Cross Realms, The WoW Token, Pet Battles, Toy Box, Linked Auction Houses, The New Auction House Interface 2019-21?, Reagent Bank, Void Storage, 30-slot Hexweave Bags, Professions are still useless, No Social Interaction any more in PUGS, Toxic PUG Community, elitism in PUGS, Introduction of Mythic+, No Social Interaction any more at all in WoW, Gear is boring now, Sooo Many Ways To Get Gear, Guild Finder which still sucks, etc.

- started when everything started being dumbed down, being more casual friendly.

- Blizzard catering to the casuals.

- Making everything easy.

- When they added the pandas

Button bloat.
Too Many Abilities Now.
Blizzard removing Button Bloat.
When Blizzard started removing abilities because too many.

Example: Druid's Ability Symbiosis (back in the day)
The Druid would cast Symbiosis on a friendly target
The Druid would get an ability of their class
And the friendly target would get an ability of the Druid

"Yes! I got Cyclone!!!" as a melee rogue.

We are old now lol:

It is 2021. People are old now lol. Families/Kids/More Responsiblities in Life. We as a people have changed, gotten older, got married, had kids, are more familiar with the game, know how to play WoW now (from our noob days starting WoW for first time lol). We want Instant Gratification. We don't want to work for our gear. We just want our gear handed to us lol. Instant Gratification FTW. Kids and their Fortnites. Kids with their V-Bucks they can just buy it lol. They just want to buy it. Not have to work for anything. Kids and Young People Today don't want to work for anything any more. Instant Gratification FTW.


When did Modern WoW start?

There was always a modernization process, but in my opinion the real leap was from WoD to Legion. They experimented with some systems in WoD, mainly through garrison, and that was simple and relatively clean, but people powered through it so quickly they ended up spending most of WoD complaining there was nothing to do.

With Legion we got Borrowed powers, never-ending grinds to increase said powers, world quests as a means to grind AP, rep and resources outside of instances, order halls and things became pretty complicated pretty quick. There was so many quests that lacked breadcrumbs that you often had to use guides to find out how you got from point A to C. Through BfA and SL things only got more complicated and became the modern mess of mobile game mechanics we have today.

[Dhrizzle]

Depends what you consider "modern WoW" and how you like to play. For people who level>dungeon>raid with guild it started with Vanilla. For Arena players it started with TBC. For people who like super-casual dungeons it's WotLK..

[Knight Meta]

I agree but watching your post made me realize the actual breaking point

Cata Mists = era 1
Wrath = "something happened"
Cata Mists WOD = era 2
Legion+ = era 3

Here I was just strolling trough the comments here when I spotted your reply.

This is your thread from a while back; https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...ever-MMO-Champ

Why are you still around? Just curious.

[Dastreus]

No. Old talent trees were cut in mid Beta to simplify them. In Cata Blizzard decided, that heroics and raids weren't for casuals, while not introducing any other endgame content. Except Tol'Barad, nobody liked. Then they continued with Molten Front in 4.2, that was also that MOP-like claustrophobic location, that was also completely pointless. At that point nobody thought, that it was global tendency, not just local design mistakes, that would be fixed in next xpack. Yeah 3 new heroics and LFR in 4.3 were great, but it was a little bit too late and, as we all know, this content didn't get any real further support in MOP. Yeah, heroics were made easier in MOP. May be even way too easy. But their major rewards were gated behind rep grinds and therefore many players just didn't have time to actually do them, because all time was going to daily grinds. It was point, when heroics actually died as major kind of endgame content. And LFR died due to it's overtuning, that killed whole purpose of casual raiding.

Yeah MoP was garbage. But what do you mean old talent trees were cut mid beta? I remember it being a thing through cata all the way to pre-launch mop.

[Zantera]

I agree with those saying Wotlk doesn't really belong with TBC and Vanilla. It really was a transitional expansion that made a lot of changes resulting in 'modern wow' that people have complained about since. Things definitely got easier and more accessible (for better and worse). Warlords also had a bit of that feel, introducing some things that would go on to play a part in Legion and forward.

[sam86]

Wrath was however the first expansion that conclusively cemented the idea that raiding was done for its own sake and nothing else.

In TBC you did world content so you could do dungeons so you could do raids so you could do more raids. The entier game was designed as somewhat ofa cohesive whole.

mid-TBC they removed all that, ppl for some reason forget patch 2.3 forward or something
2.4 u didn't need anything to go to sunwell, u didn't even need to go a raid prior, because tokens give better items that fits u perfectly than any raid can, when 2.4 was out u just do a week or 2 hcs (but ALL hcs), get MgT trinkets, and now u ready - gearwise - for sunwell, which did need 2 weeks of intensive play, still 2 weeks
Or if u casual 2 months of just doing daily normal/hc dungeon (both give tokens if i remember right, of course do both on hc for tokens) and u get same result
Wrath if anything at least didn't give u ALL items u need pre-raid, the new dungeons in 3.3 didn't offer everything (they still offered enough) + wrath had a massive playerpool that raiding was everywhere, with weekly raid quests and so on

[Crushima]

100% Legion.

Mythic+ bullcrap (worst addition to game, should have been left as cosmetic rewards/realm best titles and no loot as it was in MoP Challenge Modes)
World Quests > Daily quests were much better IMO
Legendary 'power' bullcrap > simply not needed

Best gear needs to come from weekly non lockout raids, fullstop. Want to play 24/7, no job/school/basement life style? Play Diablo and farm all day.

[micwini]

I'd divide the game into 3 periods, not 2.

Classical era: Vanilla-Wrath
Post-classical era: Cata-WoD
Modern era: Legion-current

Cata had a lot of changes going into it. From fucking up the old world, to massive class changes and the removal of many elements like mana relevancy and hunter ammo for example.
Legion changed the game completely by introducing an infinite progression system via artifact weapons, adding world quests and adding M+.

[Loveliest]

Modern is the current expansion only. Everything else is old and cant be experienced again (not even Classic).
Innovation-wise, MoP was a turning point. Added new stuff like scenarios, pet battles, challange mode and cosmetic sets as reward, warforge, bonus rolls, treasures all over, brawler's arena, proving grounds, legendary for all (required, basically). You name it.
Everything after was a reiteration or improvement of these ideas.

Cata changed the azeroth world, but otherwise it didn't have much innovation outside lfr (extension of Wrath lfd) and xmog (which was, indeed, quite big). It seemed to me quite close to Wrath.

[LionSinMaikeru]

Modern WoW started towards the tail-end of WoTLK / the entirety of Catacylsm with the gutting of the talent trees and the removal of all the RPG elements / immersion in the name of "quality of life"

I also really dislike when people say things like this:

It is 2021. People are old now lol. Families/Kids/More Responsiblities in Life. We as a people have changed, gotten older, got married, had kids, are more familiar with the game, know how to play WoW now (from our noob days starting WoW for first time lol). We want Instant Gratification. We don't want to work for our gear. We just want our gear handed to us lol. Instant Gratification FTW. Kids and their Fortnites. Kids with their V-Bucks they can just buy it lol. They just want to buy it. Not have to work for anything. Kids and Young People Today don't want to work for anything any more. Instant Gratification FTW.

A majority of people who played WoW "back in the day" weren't kids, lol. They were adults and a lot of them did have children.

[WowIsDead64]

Yeah MoP was garbage. But what do you mean old talent trees were cut mid beta? I remember it being a thing through cata all the way to pre-launch mop.

Old in this case - WotLK ones. Blizzard turned them into something like "Vanilla ones", i.e. cut in a half, somewhere mid Cata's Beta. It was first time, when talent trees were cut.

WotLK:

Cata:

[HitRefresh]

Well i don't think SL is bad and they made what they told us they would do. Just very slow.

Didn't say it was bad, but they don't know what they're doing.

[Drusin]

Legion imo

[Zexaniro]

mid to end of WOTLK

[Firefall]

It started in Wrath. Cata was just Wrath 2 the same way TBC is Vanilla 2, nothing changed in terms of modernization. Then MoP was when real modern WoW began--modern questing, modern talents, quality of life excessive focus ect.

- - - Updated - - -

Cataclysm. Its a clear departure from the design philosophies of the "Classic" Era, which were really only additions to the core Vanilla game.

Cata is where they threw out the old talent system, made it completely into queuecraft (and expanded it service wide with the abolition of Battlegroups), devalued crafting professions to uselessness, etc.

Cata is "Modern WoW".

Cata is not when the talent system changed, you have no idea what you're talking about, that was MoP. Cata slightly tweaked talents so you couldn't intentionally make your performance absolure garbage by snubbing meme "hybrid" specs that involved all 3 trees, which was needed because Wrath brought dungeon queuing into the game, not cata. Also professions were huge in cata, I was forced to swap professions at one point by my GM because they had such major impacts. And battlegroups for BGs were not abolished and still technically are not, they have been expanded and modified but not fully removed. Either your memory is wrong (understandable, it has been a long time) or you didn't play the game.

[Doffen]

Biggest shift in design was between TBC and WotLK, so definitely WotLK.

[arkanon]

This is entirely subjective, because as you can see by the replies in this thread, people are reading the question as "when did wows design change in a way that you personally do not like". People are viewing it as "it was good up until this point, then it was bad".

[GMZohar1]

Pretty sure it was Cata