Has there ever been an Xpac that wasn't shat on by the community

[tomten]

Not every expansion makes me cancel my sub out of boredom and frustration though.

This. This a lot. Wasn't until WoD that i cancelled my sub the first time.. And I still enjoyed cata quite a lot. But yeh, raiding has almost always been top notch for me.

[kaelix1]

Yes... TBC and WotLK. Activision bought Blizz during WotlK and turned the game to shit after that.

Waa? both TBC and WOTLK was shat on big time by the community, both were called the 'expansion that killed wow', i don't remember an expansion where the community didn't claim that wow is dead because of it

[Revamp Man]

Everyone memed the " I AM MY SCARS " cinematic. They were also mocking Blizzard for using Illidan, accusing him of being a ''Break glass if subs are low'' emergency button. Same with the Legion.

They were also complaining about all the volcanic land and the green.

I remember the break glass meme

Mint

[Nathreim]

Yeah, you haven't played during this expansions. Wrath was hailed as basically the death of "hardcore" wow and the game going full casual and players who started with Wrath of the Lichking were bullied as Wrath kiddies for years. There was a sentiment of classic and to a lesser extend Burning Crusade being the most hardcore and difficult stages of the game and the changes made to increase accessibility during Wrath were considered as catering towards casuals and making the game too easy, as well as giving off free epics.

I started playing in Vanilla for one and they started giving away epics long before Wrath. You could get whole sets of gear just doing BG's in BC. The "catering to casuals" and "death of hardcore" complaints started when ZG came out it was hardly a wrath only complaint.

[WowIsDead64]

Yes, it was. One shots were nerfed after the first patch, but Ret was still strong especially paired with the also OP DK in 2's. They further gutted paladin in Cata, yes. I know, i was there and played Paladin.
Anyways, back to the point, the game has always had balance issues. That never stopped and i assume never will. It's not reason for any one expansion to be bad. It's just a bad aspect of the game as a whole.

No, things like Forbearance and dmg/heal reduction under bubble, if I remember it correctly, were added in later patched. And yeah, Paladins were balanced in Cata. It was only guys, who exploited their OPness in WotLK were whining, that they were nerfed to the ground.

[Shuttle]

Wotlk: Introduction of LFG and the first store mount

You're forgetting the awful tier 7 (lol naxx and EOE), all of TOC patch, the majority of ICC awful bosses and heroic raid mode. Yuck!

One of the worst expansions.

[Mysterymask]

You know I take back one of my prior wrath complaints no one bitched about Ruby Sanctum cause no one actually did it

[Biomega]

Few if any products are ever perfect, and games designed for a highly varied audience have practically no chance of NOT pissing off SOMEONE.

That being said, it's a matter of degrees first and foremost. People can still find something to complain even about the most polish of products, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's not a binary between "zero complaints" and "everyone hates it", there's an entire universe of space in between.

There's ups and downs, and it varies not only between expansions but also within the span of one expansion - Legion, for example, was derided early on for the laughable opening raid, the AP grind, and for making people roll 10 alts to hope for the right legendary. Once they addressed some of the issues, opinions improved markedly; now it's regarded as a contender for best expansion of all time.

What's happening over the last few expansions is effectively a battle of corporate game design trying to see how far they can push players. Now they've been pushed too far, and we'll see what happens as a result.

[Lamoth]

We all want different things.

For example, I hate that they backed down on covenants, mostly because they are much less likely to go into the direction of hard choices in futures. Hard choices are fun.

And no, 'if you don't want to change, then don't' is stupid argument on the level 'if you don't want to wear high ilvl gear then don't'.

[Neuroticaine]

I suppose but at the same time, Wotlk was the peak and any brand rarely ever reach or suprass their peak. Look at Pokemon GO and Fortnite. Those were game legitimately EVERYONE played. Now no one is talking about them but they still have millions of players. I don't think returning to the peak is that important, just that the product is still good.

Really weird choice putting Fortnite in there.

By all metrics, the game is still growing in popularity and has massive competitive prize pools. The only games that edge it out are Dota 2 and CS:GO, which had been well established long before Fortnite even came around.

On topic - no, there was never an expansion that didn't get shat on when it was current. Even TBC and Wrath were heralded as the death of World of Warcraft by a loud portion of the community when they came out.

[cozzri]

After BFA and Shadowlands it got me thinking. Has there ever been a WoW expansion where the community didn't shit on it? Its always whining. Some of it is deserved absolutely, but I feel a lot of it is just ridiculous. Like I can get why Metzen quit because of negativity

Wotlk: Introduction of LFG and the first store mount

Cata: Heroics too hard, Dragon soul

MoP: "Kung fu panda and too many dailies!!"

WoD: Nothing to do, worst expansion ever

Legion: World of RNGcraft. Legendary system is terrible.

Bfa: No explaination

Shadowlands: No explaination

At this point I almost feel like Blizzard could have made the perfect expansion and people would still find a way to complain about it. Not saying that right now its not deserved, but if you think about it, there has been whining about every single expansion ever. People may even have complained about TBC and Vanilla IDK I didn't play then

I don't know, it kinda pierces my heart. I know deep down, we all love WoW and want it to succeed so why are we so hard on it? I still dare say that even during Shadowlands, its still the best MMO out there. The systems are whack, but the gameplay, the lore, the everything is just so many miles better than anything else.

Then again there is no excuse for people like Danuser and Ion

Subs started to go down in WotLK after ICC, but as a direct result of ToC; let me explain. ToC introduced normal/heroic raid tiers for 10/25 man dungeons. Most casual raiders didn't experience ToC, if at all; they were busy with 3 drakes and dabbling with hard modes in Ulduar. Most casual experiences with ToC were "what's a gear score and why do I need it to do this raid?".

The item power split between difficulties introduced a huge rift in the community and fostered elitism and guild splits. Raiding a dungeon and getting powerful wasn't enough, you had to raid the same dungeon on harder difficulty, or risk falling behind in Wintergrasp, BGs, etc.. Blizzard created this huge rush to get to the top, and through their systems, facilitated people abandoning their core groups of friends and family to push higher difficulty levels of the same dungeon.

I've been saying for year, the gear divide needs to get toned down. Noone wants to raid the same dungeon on different levels over and over, doing the raid once per week is repetitive enough, then add layers of power growth; its obnoxious and leaves you no time to enjoy other aspects of the game and alts, its too much. Furthermore, there's expansion long power progressions now, so on top gear progression being as it is, you are punished for taking time to play alts.

The game has become so player unfriendly, socially unfriendly, that it honestly doesn't feel like a game at all once you finish the main quest campaign for the expansion.

Best-in-slot needs to be a thing again, and only 1 version of the item; not 7 different tiers of the same item or whatever it is now. Do the raid, get the loot, your character is done, you have time to enjoying being at the top, making alts, bgs, crafting, etc.. This hyper focus on raiding elitism needs to end to bring players back into the game. 2 raid difficulties needs to be enough again; not 4, then 5, then 6...

WoTLK was great, but they introduced some toxic item progression towards the end that just turned players off, then with cata they broke everyones favorite build by forcing you to invest so many points into 1 specialization, but I won't get into how Cata continued this trend...

[shise]

No.

But reasons for the community to complain were always slim/absurd. Problem is that they escalate quickly.

Since WoD there is genuine reason to complain tho.

[Delever]

Legion was the best-received expansion I can remember. But I think that had a lot to do with coming after WoD, one of the worst received expansions. I have a feeling whatever expansions comes after this one will be liked for the same reasons, especially if there's a noticeable change in development direction.

had the same feeling after bfa but here we are

[Relapses]

had the same feeling after bfa but here we are

Early SL was pretty hype. Content droughts killed this expansion more than anything else.

[Bramickias]

When you define "the community" with any number of people complaining on forums, of course "the community" will always shit on every expac.

I'm guessing someone has never been part of any community doing anything, to not realize that a perfect 100% positive concensus is impossible, no matter the subject.

[epigramx]

There are some nuances, but humans are humans, they will shit on anything as if it's the worst thing ever because most gamers are kids (especially back in ~2004 for this game).


Vanilla: nobody knew anything about it so it was mainly fans and confused people

TBC: a minority of vanilla players shit on it as more 'user friendly' but most people were still new to it so they didn't bother to hate on anything yet

WotLk: ABSOLUTE hate against it contrary to popular belief later on because it had a mountain of Vanilla players spamming shit about the "good old days" especially because it had perfected the user friendly features; expansion was very polished though even if VERY overrated today.

Cata: EXTREME ABSOLUTE UNDESERVING HATE against it; the main reason was that since most players subscribed in TBC+WotLk: this is the point in time they started burning out (that will happen again later on but this is the first time it happened); they had excuses like "I liked the vanilla world!" and "the company changed hands!" but those are weak ass reasons compared to the real reason.

MoP: The luckiest expansion of all on that; since most vanilla players are now old and gone and vented their hate on Cata: MoP got a surprisingly good reception; but it didn't deserve it compared to Cata since it wasn't the best expansion ever (no expansion differs that much compared to others in reality at their quality (it's the players lives that mostly change in time)).

WoD: Extreme hate against it mainly because of the same reason Cata got it; it was the time for old players to burn out and they found an excuse to blame the devs again even if the expansion itself wasn't that horrible; it wasn't the best expansion because they overdid it with the mission table game (a mountain of followers to level for example) but it didn't deserve it.

Legion: It got lucky just like MoP because the burn out people of the previous period were gone and had vented their hate on WoD; the expansion is clearly the most overrated expansion ever created; it wasn't that different at that compared to others (most expansions are similar in quality in reality) but it introduced an excessive spam of world grinding.

BfA: I didn't play that much in it but I feel it was underrated again because it got that Wod/BfA cycle again; sure the grand story was totally shit but the art and technical design seemed fine; though in general we had already entered a realm of general decline in the game since most old players of it are now literally old.


SL: too early to be conclusive but I get the impression it might be remembered positively for similar to aforementioned reasons; but in general all expansions are similar quality and players exaggerate about the "best" and "worst"; if you have friends you love in this game: the "worst" expansion becomes the best.

[God Save The King]

Nope. I've been playing from the start.

Each expansion had forums full of people complaining, even back for TBC. Every patch had people complaining too. I remember when they added BGs back in Vanilla, loads were complaining about the death of wPvP. Dire Maul? Made end-game content to easy. Maraudon? Made leveling too easy. New raids? Should be focused on balance and improving leveling.

The reason you don't see current complaints about really old expansions is that the majority of people on forums and still following WoW either a) didn't play during those expansions or b) did and they liked it.

The people who complained about BC/LK/Cata/MoP at the time have all basically quit and after a decade most have stopped frequenting forums. I liked all the WoW expansions so I don't have much negative to say. They've all had their pros and cons, and I've liked more than others, but I'd never say I actively disliked a period in WoW.

[Jabakaga]

I remember player enjoyed LFG in wotlk and only few loud voices about heroics tuning in cata.

[Adramalech]

Lol no. Every expansion has been shat on for one reason or another. All the way from TBC to current day Shadowlands.

I still vividly remember when I first found this very site and started lurking its forums, back during Wrath (not sure what patch, probably between 3.1 and 3.2). The expansion was shit on in every conceivable way, you would never believe that in the future it would be hailed as the peak of WoW by a significant portion of the community.

There will never be an expansion that doesn't get doesn't shit on. People can and will attack every aspect of it, especially now that they feel validated by recent events.

[Doffen]

The expansion that got the most of vocal complaints initually was WotLK as the shift in game design wasn't taken lightly by the vocal raiding community.

It wasn't nice. And for those who said MoP only complaint was "kung fu pandas", stop being disingenuous. MoP is a well received expansion among the vocal minority(forum users where 80% of posts are complaints because we are just humans afterall) because those kind of people want everything to be equal, and MoP did that well as class design was bringing everyone close when it comes to utility and power.

The true story however is that MoP lost as many sub as Cata, and WoD if we go from expansion to expansion. And the massive boost in sub numbers in WoD at launch says a lot about how people actually received MoP. Massive daily grind, none real content outside instanced content after said grind(another reason why forum people liked it) and a homogenized class design, which didn't work so blizz changed it.

So, there is no need to sugar coat your favorite expansion and blame it on people not liking pandas. Thats just another side effect of just reading someones vocal rant.

My favorite is TBC. I mostly only cared about raiding then, so the expansion was perfect in that regard. But it didn't really have more than instanced content outside few repgrinds and class balance was horrible. It wasn't for everyone, and thats a shame.
(I am just kidding of course, TBC was perfect. I just didn't want to be seen as a hypocrite so I made up some bad stuff)