What was the absolute peak of WoW? The point it could never be topped again?

[shise]

Depends
Lore Wise I think WotLK was probably really the high point
Gameplay, systems and lore combined? Legion. Overall, best expansion for many many players.

Legion was the best after MoP. Doesn´t make it better than everything before MoP or MoP.

I´d say, all in all: BC = WotLK > Classic >> MoP >>>>>>> Legion >>>>>>>>(x3) WoD. The rest comes after.

[deenman]

unpopular opinion,but i think midway cataclysm was the peak of wow

-it introduced many qoL changes like spells actualy displaying the actual damage they would do etc etc
-raids started having a set bar difficulty across the board,no more crap like wotlk shit swings that had naxx being a -2 difficulty wise and ulduar hardmodes a 6 or 7
-the tank changes to block were awsome and how mitigation became far more important than wotlk's stamina stack
-dungeons were awsome until they nerfed em again,but still they always remained huge upgrade over shitolk
-deathwing attacking different low lvl zones was a brilliant idea,and just the fact he left a huge change to the world
-transmog and reforge
-pvp gearing was proly at its peak,the cataclysm iteration of resilience felt like it reached its peak,i dont like how in tbc it only affects a few stuff
-the talent tree in cata was at its beak,no more bloated huge booring stuff like at 80 with 5 points for 3% incrases in stuff
-the way you got to pick your specializaiton at lvl 10 and gain immediate spec specific boosts was amazing,i cant believe they completly abandoned this concept

[erifwodahs]

Legion was the best after MoP. Doesn´t make it better than everything before MoP or MoP.

I´d say, all in all: BC = WotLK > Classic >> MoP >>>>>>> Legion >>>>>>>>(x3) WoD. The rest comes after.

That is subjective and that is why I said it's not absolute best, bet it's very popular with very significant amount of players.

[FuujCraft]

5.4 in MoP

[korijenkins]

Depends
Lore Wise I think WotLK was probably really the high point
Gameplay, systems and lore combined? Legion. Overall, best expansion for many many players.

The systems of Legion, specifically relating to PvP, were so horrendous that it simply cannot be number 1 ever.

[Axxy]

For me, different stages of the game. Coming off the back of playing online FPS games back then...

Vanilla - The game sucked you in. Personally, I enjoyed the journey of Vanilla, it surprised me compared to playing fps games all the time.

TBC - Although I didn't raid until late Kara, I also enjoyed everything in TBC that I did as content

WOTLK - My favourite time in game. 10/25man Raiding every week, plenty to do..

CATA - Beginning of the end for me

MoP - The end of playing WoW

[Mendzia]

Time between Ulduar and killing LK for the first time... sadly meanwhile we had this dogshit ToC too...

[erifwodahs]

The systems of Legion, specifically relating to PvP, were so horrendous that it simply cannot be number 1 ever.

Lol, it was actually good because it was skill related and gear did not matter. Also PvP is not that important in WoW.

[Doffen]

not to be annoying but i have to tier list the high points of wow-there is an S-tier that's all tied, and an A and B tier that are still real good. the absolute peak though? has to be legion first 9 months.

the B-tier: 3.1, first month of wod, 5.4, 8.2, 7.2
the A-tier: SL first 2 months, cata launch, 5.1, 2.1
the S-tier, the untouchables, the best: 3.3, 7.0/first 9 months of legion, 7.3, 5.2.

legion legion legion. wrath and mop of course are equally regarded as the best expansions, along w legion, but legion is the only one where i can't choose between launch and 7.3. even though 7.2 was like, slightly less good because broken shore wasn't as amazing as the other legion zones and tomb was bad raid, it had MAGE TOWER. legion dude. i love legion.

The first 9 months in Legion was buzzing. I have never seen that kind of excitement and that amount of players all over the place. It was amazing. 7.2 wasnt that great, but as you mention, it had the Mage Tower that made up for anything else the Broken Chore was lacking.

In my experience looking at what happened in game and the amount of buzz and players through all the expansion, Legion launch to 7.2 were the time the last 11-12 years the game was at its peak.

[Kokolums]

WoW peaked somewhere mid-BC. There was a point in time where Blizzard felt social play was THE enemy. The precise moment was when they removed global LFG and made a post swearing up and down that such a channel would NEVER exist again. They felt the future was no communication between players and automating matchmaking with the LFG tool. They also carried this attitude into SC2 and D3, where they swore they would have ZERO chat channels. The original model for D3 was to silence the playerbase and multiplayer interaction was chiefly through the real-money auction house.

There was a tremendous backlash to all of this and they started to back track some, but never relented fully. A lot of people started quitting because Blizzard was defined back then as THE social gaming company.

The peak of Blizzard was somewhere around 2001-2002. Battle.net was effectively a gamer streaming site that was invented by Blizzard in the 1990s. You would watch people stream video games live and comment on them live, just like Twitch is today. But it was 10-15 years before Twitch existed. It had more features than Twitch does today, because you watched the stream from inside the game itself. That meant a viewer would interact with items on the game board and move the camera where they wanted it personally while the streamers played. Streams were saved not in video format but a proprietary Blizzard format that could be loaded and replayed (at various speeds) inside the game. These files were super small and could be traded amongst people on modem connections.

You could only stream Blizzard games though, so if you wanted this amazing futuristic service you had no choice but to play Blizzard games.

For some reason, Blizzard decided this amazing leap in technology was trash. They refused to iterate on their streaming service and scrapped it. They shuttered chat channels all over the place. Battle.net was converted into a launcher instead of a streaming service. They seemed to think the secret of their success was not this incredible software but the writing of Chris Metzen. As Twitch arose to fill the need, Blizzard shrugged. Very odd business model.

[starstationprofm]

Vanilla. No MMO has managed to make a world so immersive, with so much pre-established lore, with such good ( for the time ) gameplay, PvE, PvP.

Vanilla WoW revolutionised gaming.

Don't get me wrong for 17 years WoW has still been the best but 2004 WoW was spectacular. I remember the good ol' days as a noob, carefully stalking through Duskwood, learning about the story of the Dark Riders who sounded a lot like Nazgul. The theories about the Old Gods, the giant naga skeletons in Desolace, that dead Faceless One in Darkshore everyone thought was the dead Old God the Titans killed.

WoW was something else entirely back then.

[Wazooty]

WOTLK from the pre-patch TBC to my guild killing heroic LK was the greatest gaming experience I'll ever have. The guild I found, the lifelong friends I made, the journey we had, the story of Arthas in WC3 coming to its conclusion, all the new titan lore that I loved.

You might have a gaming experience that's as good as what I experienced, but I don't think it's possible to have a better experience.

That being said, the raw adventure and new, mystery of exploring the world in vanilla will never be recreated.

[enigma77]

Patch 7.3 "Shadows of Argus" felt like the natural culmination and conclusion of the long storyline set up back in WC3. The return of fan-favourites like Alleria and Turalyon and the introduction of the Army of the Light and the Pantheon of Titans only reinforced the climactic aspect of this patch. As well it was the first time that Sargeras fully appeared on screen, before that he only appeared as a generic Fel flame.

This will undoubtedly be topped in the inevitable content patch featuring the Void Lords, who have been set up as the main antagonist behind even Sargeras back in Chronicles Volume 1 (Sargeras started the Burning Crusade because he was driven to desperation by the Void Lords).

Bolded part is getting retconned.

Now every force was created by the First ones.

[Ryzeth]

That point has yet to happen.

[Ulfric Trumpcloak]

Objectively

[masterjc]

probably all expansions had something worth mentioning
I started game on private servers. so all comments ofc are my POV

TBC had nice vibes. good quality and balance
WotlK was when I moved to official games.

TBC - good quality and balance. gavr us flying
WotLK -allowed casual players to go raiding. added phasing and it felt great during questing. great story

Cata - introduced more ingame scenes. transmog. changed world. had lots of loopholes. one of the best dungeon experiences for me.
MoP -one of the best story arcs and beautiful landscapes. great raids.
WoD - best leveling experiences. story and endgame content were pretty meh
raids and dungeons were ok
cinematic became better in each expansion
Legion - also one of the greatest stories. felt like most complete expansion storywise.
lots of lore. amazing Suramar. argus zones really sucked. nice balance. lots of stuff to do and it didnot feel forced. really enjoyed one of the best

BfA - while cinematics and zones were great story really sucked
I do not understand stupid idea of gating certain zones beyond factions.
more grinding and it felt bad.
weekly raids
expansions.mission tables
profession CDs
profession grinding to get better gears and so on.
I liked profession quests in Legion and BfA. rest really sucked

SL - worse part is gating zones beyond factions again. technicaly player has no idea why to go in any of zones tgat are not part of their covenant

maw really feels boring and i do not like zones that force players stay on foot for absurd reasons

[Kantoro]

Heroic LK kill.

Cata and everything since has just been ...not as good.

[Biske]

I don't know. I really liked pve in Wrath, and pvp in BC (especially in the Isle of Quel'danas. Had some crazy shit go on there), and I loved Legion's story and doing shit solo on my own time in it (I don't really like playing with people anymore, but I do enjoy seeing people around and occasionally helping/saving them).

[MoanaLisa]

Personal best moment: ICC raid and LK fight. It was the right combination of things at exactly the right moment for the game. The story telling was great. The shock of the wipe at the end was a real moment (if you were not spoiled). It was just the right ending for the expansion (later ruined by the Ruby Sanctum catastrophe).

[epigramx]

WoW peaked somewhere mid-BC. There was a point in time where Blizzard felt social play was THE enemy. The precise moment was when they removed global LFG and made a post swearing up and down that such a channel would NEVER exist again. They felt the future was no communication between players and automating matchmaking with the LFG tool. They also carried this attitude into SC2 and D3, where they swore they would have ZERO chat channels. The original model for D3 was to silence the playerbase and multiplayer interaction was chiefly through the real-money auction house.

There was a tremendous backlash to all of this and they started to back track some, but never relented fully. A lot of people started quitting because Blizzard was defined back then as THE social gaming company.

The peak of Blizzard was somewhere around 2001-2002. Battle.net was effectively a gamer streaming site that was invented by Blizzard in the 1990s. You would watch people stream video games live and comment on them live, just like Twitch is today. But it was 10-15 years before Twitch existed. It had more features than Twitch does today, because you watched the stream from inside the game itself. That meant a viewer would interact with items on the game board and move the camera where they wanted it personally while the streamers played. Streams were saved not in video format but a proprietary Blizzard format that could be loaded and replayed (at various speeds) inside the game. These files were super small and could be traded amongst people on modem connections.

You could only stream Blizzard games though, so if you wanted this amazing futuristic service you had no choice but to play Blizzard games.

For some reason, Blizzard decided this amazing leap in technology was trash. They refused to iterate on their streaming service and scrapped it. They shuttered chat channels all over the place. Battle.net was converted into a launcher instead of a streaming service. They seemed to think the secret of their success was not this incredible software but the writing of Chris Metzen. As Twitch arose to fill the need, Blizzard shrugged. Very odd business model.

Wat. Is that actually true?