Why did people love TBC?

[Aleksej89]

Outdoor world was very dangerous, even low level mobs could overwhelm a max level.

Instances and raid were respectably tough, and there was a lot of class diversity - even though this caused massive balance issues.

PvE and PvP sets were one of the most beautiful in WoW, and overall the zones in Outland just looked amazing.

Whatever you wanted to do in TBC WoW, even just level alts, you met a lot of challenges and difficult experiences - you really had to work for your success, and it felt very rewarding.

The outdoor world pvp objectives were quite fun, and the quests and various factions and pre-raid dailies were quite difficult and required effort.

In my opinion, most of the interesting lore and stories happened during TBC - WotLK was fine, but nowhere near TBC in terms of immersion.

Raids had a good mix of various content, i did not feel the same boredom as i did during WotLK by constantly fighting undead or during Cata where i was always fighting some Old God stuff.

[psychok9]

This won't end well... Anyways, to summarize;

Their first expansion, their first MMO and/or nostalgia.

3, 2, 1 - LET THE SHITSTORM COMMENCE!

This! Is old... new game... new expansion...

[Sj]

TBC reintroduced us to playable characters from Warcraft 3 and saw the continuation of their stories. The overall storylines in TBC weren't extremely complicated or convoluted, but there was a lot of substance in the small details. It felt like a legitimate story. Everything went back to Illidan, but it wasn't ALL about Illidan.

[mistahwilshire]

Frankly I don't know. TBC was mediocre at best.

[Vongimi]

I paid attention to every moment and WC3s story was very close to me. I was in awe of seeing those same characters in game and actually fighting them. I had no problems lore-wise with the happenings of TBC, and I think it was implemented wonderfully. You want bad lore, inspect the current MoP lore and virtually everything from cata, it's the most pathetic drivel to ever come out of Blizzard.

PERSONAL NOTE: Space themed legion demons in outland did not sit well with me I really disliked that portrayal of the legion. Sunwell portrayal was good though.

And to explain why in detail could take a while, but here's a few reasons.

Acquiring epic items felt cool and it wasn't as faceroll/masturbation easy to come by as it is now. Pvp was FUN, and not a slow, boring process of spamming all your CDs on a healer and flailing your arms at him until he after 20minutes dies (Another note: It was whoever had the PvE gear from Sunwell/BT). Raids and dungeons were COOL, not ugly china-themed treehugging, comic relief trash. There was real progression and old content wasn't discarded when new content was introduced. (small violin plays for people whining about alts) The raids were twice as fun, and NOT easy, the time it took for world wide boss kills should give you the proof you need of this.

Classes were unique, and not homogenized drivel to please every whining forum-dweller (Which meant certain classes were required when others were useless, which system would you prefer?). Talent speccs could be built in creative and personal ways unlike anyone else and still yield good results on a high level of play. The game was overall more social and required players to cooperate from early levels to form parties, for instances, elite quests or raids, as opposed to never leaving the city from zero to max level and full "epic" gear.

There's about 900 other things too, but that should give you some idea.

There's a lot in your rant that was no where near true. Especially the talent part, holy crap dude. That is NO WHERE NEEEEEEEEEAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR true. You had the exact mathematically best talent spec with MAYBE a few extra points to put in some random crap that did pretty much nothing for you or you were never taken seriously. I'll give you some of the other points you made, but again most are up for debate whether they were actually better or not. The silly talk about raids were harder back then is beyond me... That line has been repeated time and time again despite the fact it hasn't been true except for ONE TIER (t7). Under-tested fights that are bugged to the point of being harder than they should be does not mean they were hard, it means they were bugged (see: C'thun). Illidan was downed in 2 weeks from BT's release. The crowning achievement of every "Wow is so easy now" ranter, Mu'ru, was downed in FOUR DAYS after the gate barring him opened. AND THAN nerfed massively. And mind you the insane amounts of extra time top guilds raid these days as opposed to those days. What took them 4 days back then would probably take top guilds 1 day today.

Top reason people loved BC: It's when most people actually learned to play because Vanilla's raiding was terrible and required FAR more of a time investment (notice: does not mean its harder, just more time). So in essence, it was people's first time playing the endgame, where vanilla was people's first leveling experience. I loved BC, but I enjoyed WOTLK far more, and MoP is pretty up there with WOTLK, if not better (Cata was crap, I'll give you that).

[Yizu]

Only raids to "crush" tbc raids imho was Ulduar. Best raid in wow.

Have u actually raided in TBC? LOL if you actually think sunwell boss mechanics are more complex are better than the MoP boss mechanics i don't know what to say. Seriously. Even the earlier raids, if you actually put SSC and TK bosses inside Heroic ToT, would you praise ToT?! I doubt it

[Thrive]

Why did people love TBC? Look at this. LOOK AT IT...

TBC had some of the most creative dungeons, pre-sunwell. The atmosphere of each zone was different, unique and fit well and there was things to discover in each area, more so than that in MoP and Cata.
I think Wrath was better, and vanilla the best personally, but Vanilla, BC, and Wrath had a much more grand and mysterious feel to it.

[Sand Person]

nostalgia. pure and simple. tbc wasnt all that great. just many peoples join during tbc. thats all.

[Pantelija]

nostalgia. pure and simple. tbc wasnt all that great. just many peoples join during tbc. thats all.

Nostalgia argument/buzzword is getting really old by now

[Pebrocks The Warlock]

Nostalgia argument/buzzword is getting really old by now

So is the "fanboy" argument. Just sayin

[Pantelija]

So is the "fanboy" argument. Just sayin

I dont see many people spamming "fanboy" at people who played Wotlk,Cata and MoP while i do see people spamming nostalgia without even reading the posts from people who played TBC and listed the reasons why they liked it

[rebecca191]

How is it nostalgia if I also remember the bad things about TBC? The good just outweighed the bad by a lot for me.

[Pebrocks The Warlock]

I dont see many people spamming "fanboy" at people who played Wotlk,Cata and MoP while i do see people spamming nostalgia without even reading the posts from people who played TBC and listed the reasons why they liked it

Um...then you don't read many threads that are discussing content/expansions/anything that make people clash. There are at least 10 people I can name that always scream "fanboy", but not to make this off-topic, I agree both arguments should be banned here. Nostalgia and fanboy.

[panterarules]

If all the people who say that the people who loved it are just suffering from nostalgia and that TBC was terrible, then surely they're just suffering from the opposite of nostalgia and we should disregard their opinion as well?

What i liked about TBC was the dmg/health ratio for players, i liked that mana was a defining resource of gameplay and i felt a lot more immersed in the world/dungeons/raids (the soundtrack was great as well).

[Mammoon]

nostalgia. pure and simple. tbc wasnt all that great. just many peoples join during tbc. thats all.

Yes, nostalgia is the reason a new thread pops up every week about how good TBC was... and why you hardly ever see these threads about other expansions.

If people don't share the same viewpoint as you then obviously they are wrong and it is just nostalgia.

[Pebrocks The Warlock]

Yes, nostalgia is the reason a new thread pops up every week about how good TBC was... and why you hardly ever see these threads about other expansions.

If people don't share the same viewpoint as you then obviously they are wrong and it is just nostalgia.

Actually, lately Wrath has been winning the "best expansion"/good expansion polls, with MoP having a good bit for a expansion not over yet.

[Beergod]

TBC was the best expansion hands down simply due to the way progression was set up, leveling was perfect because it still took a little bit instead of zooming through content, the gear was the best looking, the numbers were perfect (no 100k dps or 1 million crits or insane amounts of health and mana), the raids were amazing.

It was the first expansion, it brought players to the game, 2 new races were added for the first time, 2 new starting zones that were pretty well crafted, new profession for the first time, didnt have to worry about "leveling a guild", there was actual travel involved in the game due to no LFG or LFR, the functions were there but they were server wide and you had to manually invite people to your group or whisper people for an invite, you had to have a brain to defeat raid bosses or defeat a heroic dungeon, attunement gave you a sense of accomplishment to where you're doing a raid/heroic that other people can't even access, flying mounts were introduced, 5000 gold actually was alot of gold, first time a brand new story line got introduced, going through the Dark Portal felt really great after looking at it for all of Vanilla wondering what in the hell it's going to be used for, there was world PVP.

Nagrand, Halaa, Shattrath city was the first neutral city introduced, more factions were introduced, killing new monsters that looked a lot different from what you saw in vanilla (killing boars with spikes was a blast), a new battleground was introduced that was really fun, the economy wasn't nearly as bad as it is today (depending on your server), people had stuff to do, daily quest hubs were introduced, less button bloat, interesting mounts, and last but not least, Isle of Quel'Danas.

/thread

[tiporispit]

Reading through all the posts defending TBC raids makes me laugh, remembering the difficulty and novelty of Naxx40 before TBC. Most people heralding the "challenging endgame content of TBC" simply blot out or never attempted (or failed at) the harder content that came after and even before.

In my opinion, Naxxramas40 was the real revolution in raiding and to his day I consider it one of the hardest and most engaging raids overall. Nearly every single boss had (at the time) completely novel mechanics and only a tiny number of people even cleared half of it before TBC was out, sadly due to time constraints as well (it was released only a few months before TBC which was madness at the time).

TBC raids had their moments and unique bosses, but overall did not deviate much from the Vanilla concepts of encounter mechanics, and sported at times absurd amounts of trash to boot.

To those people clamoring about the difficulty of TBC raids, show me your:
Ulduar Meta achieves, or Alone in the Darkness. Show me your Naxx 40. Show me your Tribute to Madness, your LK HC kill from back then, your Ragnaros HC kill from when it was current. Show me even your DS HC kill for Pete's sake. Or try chewing on something fun like Dark Animus HC or Challenge Mode gold runs.

All this content is pretty much lightyears more difficult than TBC actual content ever was. Having to grind more, unlock absurd gating (the infographic made me laugh and remember it again) and only actually often fail due to gear and not an actual skillcheck does not "challenging endgame" make. Take your rose-coloured glasses off and sit down.

95% of players in TBC never even stepped foot in Black Temple. That's kinda the point. There was no such thing as "when it was current content", because there was an expansion-long progression that made the term meaningless. SSC, TK and even KZ were "current content" for many guilds, even though others were laboring in BT. At the time, what the other guilds were doing was irrelevant. The only people jizzing themselves for a new expansion back then were the handful of guilds who had cleared BT and/or SW.

The current expansions create a sense of urgency that didn't exist before. You HAVE to rush through and stay current, otherwise the next steps in your progression become meaningless and should be skipped. It was no longer linear. When a new expansion is announced these days, you have to ask yourself "where do I stand in progression?" Oh, I'll never finish in time. Why bother? I think I'll go make some money in the AH so I can buy better gear at launch. It's about money and profit to Blizzard. Releasing expansions for the sake of releasing expansions, not because the majority of players have finished the content. TBC had TONS of content still to be enjoyed by 95% of the players when WotLK was announced. By the end of WotLK, the opposite was true. The raiding community had finished everything, except a few bosses on Heroic. so, unlike TBC everyone was bored and waiting for new content.

The company streamlined its business model and found better ways to increase the bottom line. From a business perspective, that's impressive and commendable, but from a player perspective, being able to chug along through content at your own pace and not caring where others were was part of the allure of Vanilla and TBC. I played WotLK a couple months at release and stopped playing. When I came back near the end of the expansion, I was able to jump right into ICC after a week of grinding badges and tossing out some gold in the AH. No Ulduar, no ToC, no nothing. Now, take that same player in KZ, badge and AH gear in TBC and have them jump right into BT. Nope. Not going to happen. That's the difference. Some may like it. Some may not, but THAT is the difference.

[worsthitmanNa]

Um...then you don't read many threads that are discussing content/expansions/anything that make people clash. There are at least 10 people I can name that always scream "fanboy", but not to make this off-topic, I agree both arguments should be banned here. Nostalgia and fanboy.

Don't forget wotlk and cata baby comments or the "lol pandas".

[Ceece]

The one thing I miss the most is the socialization, and how bright each and every server had become. While some may not agree, everything seemed wonderful. For those that didn't play during Vanilla or Burning Crusade, avoiding certain grinds both expansions may of had, you missed out on something amazing.

Watch, love and enjoy it. I'm sure it will bring back many memories to some. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UpUxdhPMck