Why did people love TBC?

[Yizu]

Anyone saying raid bosses in TBC were so much better than anything cata+, obviously does not do heroics or did not raid TBC.

[Phuongvi]

I love the way of thinking, that people loved TBC because and it's only pure nostalgia

Panda theme is lame, I prefer Illidan and Lady Vashj, Karazhan, is that simple ?
Cataclsym was a load of shit
Wrath was okay but ... it has ToC the most crappy raid ever made and a remade of Naxx, so TBC was better than Wrath. But teh 10 men and 25 men models was the best, better than TBC

Now, we have nicer UI (weeeeeeeeeeee nice UI) pet battle and scenario, wich I don't care
We also have lame instance 5 man since Cataclysm


Yeah, pure Nostalgia and I don't like changes

[ro8ter]

People love what they started playing on, vanilla, TBC, WLK, etc.

Dr Who TV show is the same way, your favorite Doctor is the Dr who as on when you started watching.

[Ishana]

Loved the war in Blasted lands on launchday, and how it grew in intensity as the opening came closer, until the whole server was engaged in PvP. Laggy but legendary!
Loved exploring Hellfire, getting stomped by Felreaver and reading LFG to Ramps etc. Figuring out heal-tactics for SH hc to avoid aggro on the widespread packs before they reached the tank. Loved the feeling of accomplishment over completed attunements, over every boss (some more than others). Some really fun fights like High king Maulgar, Magtheridon, Leo the blind, Archimonde, Illidari council etc. The 5-man quests in Shadowmoon valley. Arenas.
But most of all the community. Loved the forums and the chat channels.

Simply a view on the topic question, and not a comparison of expansions, or what was bad about TBC

[Deleted]

Nostalgia, nothing else. If Blizzard would make TBC servers today there would be less than 2.000 people playing it.

[Darkstrike]

Nostalgia, nothing else. If Blizzard would make TBC servers today there would be less than 2.000 people playing it.

i would play but only for raids , pvp in tbc was crap (world of arenacrap )

[Deleted]

Nostalgia I think plays a huge part, I loooved wotlk because is my first expac for example

[fromis]

Cause it was hard and actually provided a challenge unlike the game does today.

[Dakara]

Because it wasn't World of "Second Life" Craft.

All there was in TBC was raiding and PvP with a bit of dungeon grinding gear later on.

The game is so tremendously bloated right now, and I personally don't believe more = better. In TBC/Vanilla you could be a Tier or more behind the top guilds and still feel like you were accomplishing things on progression nights. There was no magic gearing catch up each patch completely negating all the previous content.

The problem however, is that it was near impossible to catch up "solo" if you decided to re-roll or if you were just a new player. Those of us who were in raiding guilds from day 1 had a blast, those who got behind (especially attunements) needed a guild to catch them up. Also, for "casual" players, there was nothing to do other than pug Kara and run Heroics.

Admittedly, MOP suits my current lifestyle more than TBC would. But, back when TBC was current, and I was able to raid "Hardcore" I would have hated the MOP model. My biggest gripe really, is that Blizzard is just adding too much to the game, and many aspects feel diluted while others feel forced with artifical gating.

Vanilla/TBC and to an extent, Wrath, I felt immersed in the game. Cata the wheel started to fall off, and now in MOP, I don't feel immersed in WOW, it's merely the backdrop for a series of "mini games" we get to choose from. If it weren't for the cutscenes, I've have no clue as to what the story was doing.

[Joey Ray III]

If Blizzard would make TBC servers today there would be less than 2.000 people playing it.

most likely. those who were around then would quickly realize they don't want to go through it again, those who weren't probably wouldn't be able to cope with the lack of 'quality of life' and 'inaccessibility'.

that doesn't mean TBC wasn't great. for its time it was fucking awesome. completely different game though, different playerbase with different mindset. that changes EVERYTHING.

[koimagheul]

sense of progression
dungeons were not just pack-aoe-rinse-repeat
questing was less linear

[Kaynot]

Lots of good reasons.Class specs mattered, and everyone had some kind of role in the raid. Community was miles better than today, asshats and ninjas were well known and had very hard life, dedicated raiders and pvp players (esp. "gladiators" but also bg players) were recognized and respected by everyone who raided/pvped on the same server.There was a healthy rivalry between raiding guilds,i mean everyone wanted server first kills, and when some guild has achieved it, they received congratulations from lots of other guildleaders over mic and ingame PMs.People, who couldnt commit to 3 days/week-raiding usually did 10-man raids, and thanks to famous Amani bear-runs even those people could earn themselves respect from top guilds.You could say, this kind of things exist nowadays as 10-man heroic,but its completely different.In ZA you had to rush through 6-7? bosses almost without wipes in order to get the mount,and those fights were pretty hard.
Professions played bigger role.Instances and bosses were great, esp. if you have previously played WC3 campaign,and some of them required way more effort than any post-TBC bosses (Kael,Vashj,Muru f.e.)

[Deleted]

The gear looked GREAT, the zones were awesome, I still play them a lot, I don't like the new linear zones.
The raids and instances looked great, had great bosses, and where a lot of fun.
The factions where more fun to grind for than the newer ones, and I like the more balanced PvP, world PvP and class mechanics (Hunter with mana for example, being cooldown based)
Also the new mounts looked awesome and not overused like today, every model is used 10000 times before they make a new one, so yes, TBC was also new and refreshing

[rebecca191]

Because it wasn't World of "Second Life" Craft.

All there was in TBC was raiding and PvP with a bit of dungeon grinding gear later on.

The game is so tremendously bloated right now, and I personally don't believe more = better. In TBC/Vanilla you could be a Tier or more behind the top guilds and still feel like you were accomplishing things on progression nights. There was no magic gearing catch up each patch completely negating all the previous content.

The problem however, is that it was near impossible to catch up "solo" if you decided to re-roll or if you were just a new player. Those of us who were in raiding guilds from day 1 had a blast, those who got behind (especially attunements) needed a guild to catch them up. Also, for "casual" players, there was nothing to do other than pug Kara and run Heroics.

Admittedly, MOP suits my current lifestyle more than TBC would. But, back when TBC was current, and I was able to raid "Hardcore" I would have hated the MOP model. My biggest gripe really, is that Blizzard is just adding too much to the game, and many aspects feel diluted while others feel forced with artifical gating.

Vanilla/TBC and to an extent, Wrath, I felt immersed in the game. Cata the wheel started to fall off, and now in MOP, I don't feel immersed in WOW, it's merely the backdrop for a series of "mini games" we get to choose from. If it weren't for the cutscenes, I've have no clue as to what the story was doing.

I can't speak for MOP, but unless my memory is faulty I killed Kil'jaeden pre 3.0 patch with a much smaller time commitment than what I needed to do in Cata. I might have time now to just raid, but not to do LFR, flex, daily quests, five mans due to not being able to cap points from raids, etc. I feel Blizz has made it even more time consuming to maximize a character for hardcore raiding. Maybe I'd come back if I knew I could raid, just raid my chosen size/difficulty level after initial new expac process. But I'm a parent now and don't have time for extra "required" stuff like that. Ugh.

[Wilian]

Nostalgia, nothing else. If Blizzard would make TBC servers today there would be less than 2.000 people playing it.

Considering the fact that the current TBC servers have playerbases that can be counted in many thousands this statement wouldn't really hold true. The amount of people would probably quadruple just due to simple fact that private servers are typically considered a big no no.

[vesseblah]

Considering the fact that the current TBC servers have playerbases that can be counted in many thousands this statement wouldn't really hold true. The amount of people would probably quadruple just due to simple fact that private servers are typically considered a big no no.

I did a little google survey about month ago into pirate servers, and quick statistics looked something like this:

- 10% vanilla, 15% tbc, 40% wlk, 25% cata, 10% mop
- about half of the servers across all expansions had accelerated xp or other tweaks


People play on pirate (not private) servers because they're cheap bastards and don't want to pay. Out of the few thousand pirates who are in TBC serves today probably around 90%* would not want to pay $15 month for their nostalgia tripping with fucked-up class balance and bugged raids that pure and undiluted TBC experience would have.

*Number pulled out of my arse, based on the small numbers of "yes" votes all TBC realm polls have got over the years

[Vorticough]

I'll take that orc any day over this.

I'll take this over that Orc any day.

However, I enjoyed TBC for a fair number of reasons, I also remember loathing a fair bit of it.

-I enjoyed the friends I made and the experiences I had with them. It's kinda rare these days, and I'm only really in touch with one of the people I used to tromp around with.
-I enjoyed PvPing a ton back then. I don't know if that's me being more tolerant than I am now, however.
-I liked that things felt simpler, all the roles seem less stuck on themselves, and generally seemed more patient and felt better behaved.
-I didn't necessarily like flying mounts, seeing as how I was mostly poor and once I had the gold, I was ashamed of the fact I paid 1000g for 60% flight speed, so I spent a majority of my time ground-bound cause I thought "What's the fuckin' point of this shit apart from the token needing to get somewhere high?"
-I hated Elves at the time, particularly Blood Elves. Back then they were 95% of anyone on the server. I completely resented that fact and I hated most of the story behind TBC, considering a ton of it seemed centered around Elves.
-Zul'Aman similarly sucked, mostly due to the fact I was killing one of the biggest names in Troll-kind.
-Half the zones I hated, the only ones I liked being HFP and Blade's Edge.
-I have a love/hate with the gear's looks, most of the shaman matched sets looked fantastic to me, but I loathed most of the mage sets. I still consider a lot of the gear as a cohesive whole to look like garbage.

Compared to now, I've issues with a lot of things still (Most of it being problems with me, the player), but a lot of things feel quite a bit better.

Regardless of my qualms with it, I enjoyed my time then quite a bit. Wouldn't wanna do it again though.

[iggie]

Nostalgia, nothing else. If Blizzard would make TBC servers today there would be less than 2.000 people playing it.

Everything gets older after a time. Just like in two years no one would play on a MoP server. Nostalgia for a good reason as well, TBC was the golden age of WOW and it was a significant upgrade over vanilla in every way. WOTLK expanded on that in a casual way until ICC was drawn out and Cata just lost it all.

[vesseblah]

Everything gets older after a time. Just like in two years no one would play on a MoP server. Nostalgia for a good reason as well, TBC was the golden age of WOW and it was a significant upgrade over vanilla in every way. WOTLK expanded on that in a casual way until ICC was drawn out and Cata just lost it all.

Topic of this thread ("love") should be good enough hint of what's going on. Nostalgia by definition is based on feelings and subjective view of the matter.

Objective view of the game and making a list of pro's and cons shows that in the big picture TBC was pretty bad in comparison to what we have today. Yes, TBC was improvement over vanilla, but so was WLK improvement over TBC and so on.

[logintime]

People play on pirate (not private) servers because they're cheap bastards and don't want to pay.

That's complete bollocks. I play on a private vanilla server, because I liked the game during that time period, when it was still an open sandbox MMO and not a linear rush-to-max-level one. I'd gladly pay $15 a month if Blizzard were to ever offer legacy servers, but since they don't my only options are private servers.


Back to the topic though, I didn't love TBC. In fact, I left the game for close to a year during that expansion. It was a great time to be a raider, to be sure, but I wasn't one. Otherwise, TBC's storyline and lore were godawful, the environments grew old after a while, I hated Arena and it took serious prominence as the non-raiding way to get gear, and the Draenei were lorelol. Wrath was the expansion I loved, and probably the highpoint of WoW for me.