When did Modern WoW start?

[enigma77]

How is cata any different from wrath? We still had the same thinking in endgame: badges, rep vendor gear, gearing process, reputations, outdoor world content etc.

That's a fair point but I feel like cata also greatly changed things: you couldn't do hybrid builds anymore, it was the first time the game really had specializations, you couldn't put 10 points into fire and 20 into frost anymore for example; 10 man raiding become 'equal' to 25 man; also the class design became incredibly homogenized starting in Cata and they doubled down on the accessibility idea with LFR. To me Cata felt vastly different from Wrath (and I didn't like it back in the day so I quit after loving Wrath).

[Kalisandra]

WotLK might be called a transitioning phase, but really it all started for real with Cataclysm.

I think I agree with this - Wrath doesn't really fit with vanilla and BC, because Wrath was when the idea that some specs just didn't belong in the end game was given the boot, and when the devs concluded that DPS that brought buffs and massively under-performed in personal DPS just weren't possible to balance. In this respect it's 'modern'.

However, it still had a lot of 'old' features, such as the quest flow, the class talent trees being the only things that defined specs and players being free to buy up them however they liked, and so on.

Cata locked you into a talent tree until you called it, and for the first time had things that only worked for a particular spec (rather with particular abilities unique to a tree), and introduced Mastery which worked in different ways depending on your spec. It's also when they decided that plate wearers would only wear plate, rather than it being sometimes optimal to use leather or mail (or cloth in the case of Holy Paladins). So Cata is 'modern'.

MoP continued where Cata left off, with the modern talent trees that changed with spec, etc. However, it's also the end of a period - it's the last expansion where going to a new expansion meant a clear step up in character capability.

WoD marks the beginning of the true 'modern' era in some ways - ability trimming for everyone. On the other hand, while that laid the foundation for the latest three expansion, WoD didn't have the modern 'borrowed power' model, and it's that which marks the most modern expansions.

So I'd divide WoW into 'old', that being Vanilla and BC; 'intermediate', that being Wrath, Cata, MoP, and WoD; and 'modern', that being Legion, BfA, and SL. Both Wrath and WoD belong partly in the other category they sit beside.

I think of BC as the polished version of the old WoW, MoP as the pinnacle of the threads carried through from then and the best example of the mature WoW. After that, we have the odd effect of Legion being the introduction of full-on borrowed power and open-end open-world activities (outside of grinding rep and gathering) and also the best implementation of it - BfA and SL just don't match up though with SL there's still time to fix it up, and to be fair to it every expansion has had problems in the first tier/season and has generally improved over time (even BfA, though corruptions undid much of what had been fixed).

[Army Dreamer]

M+ and diablofication - this is your modern era.

[Kalisandra]

The dumbing down started in Wrath.

People seem to always forget the difficulty in Wrath for the vast majority of content was forced to be played at the lowest it’s ever been.

Heroic 5-mans were not easy when Wrath opened. They became easy, and as they dropped badges people kept running them, so we remember them as being mind-numbingly easy but they were not easy to start.

[Jibjub]

This is answer is absolutely WotLK. To use a modern-day analogy: Even if the bulk of the "modernization" of WoW happened through Cata and MoP, WotLK is inarguably when the "Industrial Revolution" began. It was a great expansion, but it also marked the beginning of the end.

[Cosmic Janitor]

So I'd divide WoW into 'old', that being Vanilla and BC; 'intermediate', that being Wrath, Cata, MoP, and WoD; and 'modern', that being Legion, BfA, and SL. Both Wrath and WoD belong partly in the other category they sit beside.

I think if I had to name actualy turning points where their design changed then I would probably have to agree with Wrath and WoD, though I would say mid/end of Wrath and beginning of WoD. I also think Legion was a bit of an anomaly in 3rd era WoW, because they clearly put way more effort into it due to the abandoning of WoD early on. This effort saved alot of the stuff in the beginning and masked the formulaic design that started in WoD and later plagued late legion when their design efforts no longer could keep up again.

[Kalisandra]

whenever they time-gated flying behind patches. that's when I started taking expansion-long breaks.

WoD. MoP was when not-flying zones became the norm for patches. WoD was when not-flying nearly became a thing forever. I left for FFXIV and only came back when they decided to allow flight in the final patch of WoD. I was unimpressed with how long it was before we got flight in Legion, though at least it was account-wide. And than again in BfA, when 'in the second tier after a short grind' turned out to be well into the expansion with the first 'major' patch and after a time-gated grind.

I'm not thrilled about SL's flight being so limited, but at least we're getting it in the first patch, not the what's actually the second patch, and at least it doesn't look to be a grind. The dev's stinginess around flight really pisses me off. Oribos is a city that's great for flight, like Shattrath - wide open spaces, plenty of room for people on flying mounts. But, no. No flying where you can show off your mounts for you.

[Volitar]

I would consider Legion and onward a new era of WoW.

The never ending grindy bullshit era.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

Cataclysm and/or Mists of Pandaria.

[crazyswayzee]

To me it makes sense to say:
Oldschool wow: vanilla, tbc, wotlk
Transition wow: cata, mop, wod
New wow: Legion, bfa, sl

Maybe this is order works also:
Good wow: vanilla, tbc, wotlk, cata, mop
New wow: wod, Legion, bfa, sl

[Lei]

I would consider Legion and onward a new era of WoW.

The never ending grindy bullshit era.

I wholeheartedly and sadly agree with this.

[diarx]

Think probably the first experiments into Modern WoW started with WoD (pathfinder campaign, pruning, garrison rental abilities, multiple system UI's, garrison resources, mission tables etc).. maybe MoP a little too with the farm plot system..

But I feel Legion they really pushed the modern style of WoW as we know it now.

*Artifact knowledge/practically infinite power bar
*world quests + wq mini games
*classes fairly homgenised, pared down and barebones without obtuse systems/rentals.
*legendaries, made players able to mass pull in the open world and turned them into self healing aoe wrecking balls (legos may be gone, but the classes can mostly still do this)
*rental abilities on aforementioned legos plus the (?)vindicarr (forget if there were others too?)
*bonus talent UI on the artifact wep that focused more on things like passive damage/stat boosts rather than adding much of substance/utility.
*class hall talent system
*super focus on the player being "the champion"
*proliferation of slot machine epics, legos
*zone mob scaling (ofc necessary for the WQ system)
*and just generally stepping too far away from the core basics of what the game was.

btw, totally get some peeps like a lot of the stuff from legion I mentioned, some of it (OP legos) was even fun for a short while for me too, just not for me these days.

[ThrashMetalFtw]

- - - Updated - - -

1.Classic & TBC is its own era, where the game has been the most MMORPG like.
2.Cata & MoP is where they focused on gameplay and streamlined the shit out of it for its own sake.
3.Legion, BfA & SL places a heavy focus on systems.

Wotlk is a mixed breed between the first and second - but most certainly not part of the former in my opinion.
WoD is similiar to Wotlk in that aspect, somewhere between Cata / MoP and Legion.

Everybody who disagrees with this statement are objectively wrong.

WotLK can never be put in the same category as Classic and TBC, since it has much more in common with Cata and later expansions. This is the case for gameplay, raid/classdesign and in-game systems.

[Crimson Spears]

I would consider Legion and onward a new era of WoW.

The never ending grindy bullshit era.

Your not wrong but I wish desperately that you were...

[Rexosaurus]

Well, the advent of instanced BGs in Vanilla effectively neutered the open-world PvP community and turned it into a grind to get gear, rather than the spontaneous player-driven fights over random towns/zones that previously existed. The monetization of character transfers also made their debut some time in Vanilla.

TBC introduced Arena which kickstarted WoW's E-sportiness, it featured vendor badge gear that became the basis for the ever expanding source of high-level non-raid/PvP gear, and it also introduced daily quests that aimed to get you to log in every day.

Wrath brought further expansion of paid services. It also had our character's power level ramping up wildly which resulted in the creation of the "gogogo" mentality that has become a staple of WoW dungeons/LFR.

And so on and so forth. There have certainly been flash points that are more obvious (e.g. Cata with LFR, Legion with AP grinds/endless WQs/randomized gear, etc...), but I'd say that they've been adding things that have contributed to Modern WoW since Vanilla.

[s0ul]

WoD with the Garrisons, but became gradually worse in Legion even though the notion of artifacts was interesting and Mage Tower was some of the best content in years. The overall gameplay and talents, abilities, etc. were in the process of being destroyed. This endless grind bs and "core systems" as Ion calls it has ruined the game. Retail is beyond recognition now but Ion loves his Loadouts lmfao.

[Daffan]

IDK, probably IoQ patch actually. That was the real beginning.

They put in 80% expac skip with that patch lulz, so basically the formula of modern WoW.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

WoW went off the rails with Burning Crusade.

Burning Crusade

• Beginning of class homogenization as Paladin and Shaman are no longer faction exclusive.

• Introduced dailies and reputation grinds that were pretty much mandatory to progress.

• Catchup gear that invalidated entire tiers. Only the latest raid tier is actively farmed.

• Flying: there is no more challenge in navigating the world. Flying completely killed world PvP (you're farming your dailies when suddenly, some guy swoops down from above, ganks you, and then flies off, so you'll never have a chance to get revenge. Gankers can remain in the air and choose to engage at their own choosing and there is nothing you can do about it).

• Beginning of WoW feeling like a lobby game. Shattrath had portals to every capital city, meaning you no longer had to really navigate the world, stumbling upon other people. You could instead just port near where you needed to go.

Wrath of the Lich King

• Introduced heroic mode. Beating the Lich King is no longer a prestigious thing. "Ah, but did you kill him on heroic?". Having multiple difficulties mean that you're getting a subpar experience raiding on any difficulty other than heroic/mythic, because the game designers design the intended gameplay experience on heroic/mythic first, and then dumb down/remove mechanics for the lower difficulties. Furthermore, having multiple difficulties of gear just artificially pads out the length of content for no added value of FUN. This is a video game. I'm supposed to come home after work to have FUN. I don't want to have to spend months farming the subpar version of a raid just to get geared to do the actual raid that I want to have fun doing in the first place.

• Introduced LFD, helping hasten the death of server communities.

Cataclysm

• Introduced raid finder. Enough said.

• The auction house in Dalaran was no longer engineer only, incentivizing people to just sit in Dalaran and never go anywhere else.

Mists of Pandaria

• Raid design becomes extremely linear from this point on, making raiding more tedious as each week you do the bosses in the exact same order every time. If your guild is struggling with one boss, you can't put that boss on hold and go tackle another one and then come back later. That's simply the end of your raid progression.

• Introduced titanforging.

Legion

• Meta RNGendaries that you HAD to have in order to get into a group, but more often than not you were screwed by RNG. Only the people who got lucky could get into groups.

• Even more grind added with artifact power grinding.

BFA

• Lol azerite traits

[kukkamies]

Think TBC already started the modernizing in many aspects. Summoning stones, flying, much more linear quest paths, dailies, portals to cities, catchup gear, smaller raid sizes, much less unique items.
Probably the biggest changes in a single expansion so far? Most of these changes are still in the game today. A lot of them are good and I do like them, others not so good. Still TBC is closer to MoP than to Classic to me.

[Necromantic]

Uhhh yeah they did. "Have a higher gear level than the dungeon" has always been a thing.

No they didn't. Why blatantly lie?

Not to that extreme but it wasn't unusual for PuGs in WotLK to expect people to be fully geared for that tier of content to make the run for badges easier.

For that tier, yes, which was still a little silly but it happened. My point was people back then didn't expect you to grossly overgear the content before they let you into it like they do now. It's idiotic, counterintuitive and just reinforces the negative comments people make about it.

TBC had dungeon tokens that gave raid lvl gear. Hell some really strong weapons came from the Isle of Quel'Danas vendors.

Too bad the tier tokens from heroic currency didn't start until WotLK. It was cool to be able to get tier gear as a casual player at the time.