Whatever Blizzard did to make WOTLK, it was a masterpiece.

[Daffan]

This is not completely true, dungeons were already a AoE rushfest since the middle of TBC. But the LFD tool in wotlk made it worse. I also still miss the old vanilla non-linear dungeon style where cc was needed. I played a mage back then and it always made me feel more important in a party as a dps to keep a mob cc'd.

This is such roflmao. As a casual in TBC it was a never an AoE fest like it was in WOTLK or MOP/WOD. 99% of players thesedays can aoe down heroics, back then you had to actually have raid gear, which wasn't handed to you on a platter.

I was pretty casual in BC, not raiding much beyond Karazhan.

I went into Wrath with a firm promise to myself that if it were BC all over again, I'd walk away from the game.

Fortunately, that didn't happen until Cataclysm, where I did walk away in Feb 2011 and stayed away until they cried uncle in 4.3.

BC was a ripoff for casual players.

Casual means doesn't play much. Not horrible.

I think your categorizing yourself wrong rofl

[Deficineiron]

This is such roflmao. As a casual in TBC it was a never an AoE fest like it was in WOTLK or MOP/WOD. 99% of players thesedays can aoe down heroics, back then you had to actually have raid gear, which wasn't handed to you on a platter.

overgeared parties with paladin tanks could move very quickly through some pulls in some instances and use aoe. that was a pretty exclusive subset of players doing heroics, though. As time has passed, I am seeing more and more 'TBC Heroes' who just mowed down heroics, ran all 15 in a single lockout, etc.

[Osmeric]

Casual means doesn't play much. Not horrible.

I think your categorizing yourself wrong rofl

Generally, when someone resorts to an ad hominem argument it's an implicit confession they don't have any real argument.

Casual, as I use it, means someone who doesn't consider the game worth devoting a great deal of effort to. This doesn't mean TIME is devoted to it. A casual player will not sacrifice to achieve, and in particular not have the attitude of "this isn't fun, but I'm going to do it, in order to achieve goal X".

[roahn the warlock]

I feel like everything in that expansion had it right. The soundtracks were spot on, game content, SPOT ON, final boss, SPOT ON. Everything seemed to mesh really well together in it, and I just haven't felt it with any other expansion so far. I'm not sure exactly what it was, maybe the lore? The dungeons? I'd really like to know. It cannot be that hard to replicate it's process into another expansion with similar aspects. MoP's soundtrack was alright at most, but WoD's and Cata's soundtracks just seemed to bland and didn't have any theme or feeling to them.

Thoughts?

Wanna know what's funny? Wotlk has less content than WoD.

If anything they got it right with MoP. Story might of been lame (Which is why everyone loves Wotlk) but it had the most content.

[Kahmal]

Masterpiece? I disagree. I always say WoTLK is where Blizz shot themselves in the foot. They gave us more accessible raids which is what many asked for.

What we didn't ask for is piss easy Heroics 5 mans, Professions being streamlined thus causing massive inflation. Make world mobs extremely easy, thus making leveling very easy, including most Elites. All of that just covers the initial problems with WoTLK. That bled into many problems resulting in future xpacs. Now if Blizzard tries give us something challenging or it take some time to get epics the Wrath Baby Syndrome kicks in. Getting fully epic was just far too easy WoTLK since Naxx was just that easy and their was no attunement process I suppose....However while TBC was too alt unfriendly I'd say WoTLK was too alt friendly. These days it's almost as if people don't even have a main since they can gear each of their toons up to the same ilvl simultaneously.

Regardless the first half of WoTLK was awesome despite those problems I mentioned. Naxx provided a 25 man entry level raid that TBC did not. And Ulduar was just awesome. It was the second half where Blizzard started doing questionable things. ToGC was awful, it's hear they start dabbling in all these forms of difficulty. Ulduar's HMs were awesome because not only were they optional but they felt fluid in activating most of them. It was as if the boss on normal mode wasn't taking you seriously, but on HM the gloves were off. Your reward was simply a few additional pieces of better loot.

ToGC you just flicked a switch, worse was HMs had entire sets of higher ilvl gear. This became the start of the absurd ilvl inflation that we still deal with. Then we have the LFG tool which we all loved initially. However clicking a button then getting ported into a dungeon with randoms really hurts the 5 man experience especially when the dungeon's become challenging.

A lot of the problems in WoW right now stem from the design choices made in WoTLK. Where TBC took the Vanilla formula and improved it, WoTLK shook things up a bit too much.
I go into more detail in this old thread here.
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...ot+in+the+foot

[chooi]

This is not completely true, dungeons were already a AoE rushfest since the middle of TBC.

Only up to a point and under very specific conditions.

To effectively rush heroics you needed a decent Prot Pally (that were fuckin' rare), few specific classes that could deliver good AoE damage (namely Mages and Locks) and on top of that at least T5+ gear (not many players got that) - so only a tiny minority of players could bring parties like that into heroics and even then a fully geared T6 tank could easily be instagibbed by certain trash packs or mechanics.

Anyway, it's just wrong to compare heroic dungeons in TBC to 'heroic' dungeons in WotLK (which were faceroll from the very start of the expansion) in every way because overall gameplay in TBC was a lot different to WotLK's:
- no 1-button AoE-tanking
- threat management actually was a thing for both Tanks and DPS (even Healers)
- the need of CC
- 'spikier' tank damage taken
- different heal concepts
- lower DPS:mob health ratio
- classes/chars overall were not that powerful
- slower gameplay in general (mana breaks, yay!)
- a lot lower ilvl difference from low-end to high-end gear
- ... (the list goes on)

I don't want to judge which one was better. That's totally up to personal preference. Though I enjoyed the concept of TBC a lot more than WotLK's.
(I was also quite disappointed when they nerfed Cata Heroics that were really well tuned at the start of expansion.)

[Khalus]

I enjoyed WotLK for the story. Arthas was awesome, and nothing yet has been a fraction of how great his character was!

[Deficineiron]

Only up to a point and under very specific conditions.

To effectively rush heroics you needed a decent Prot Pally (that were fuckin' rare), few specific classes that could deliver good AoE damage (namely Mages and Locks) and on top of that at least T5+ gear (not many players got that) - so only a tiny minority of players could bring parties like that into heroics and even then a fully geared T6 tank could easily be instagibbed by certain trash packs or mechanics.

Anyway, it's just wrong to compare heroic dungeons in TBC to 'heroic' dungeons in WotLK (which were faceroll from the very start of the expansion) in every way because overall gameplay in TBC was a lot different to WotLK's:
- no 1-button AoE-tanking
- threat management actually was a thing for both Tanks and DPS (even Healers)
- the need of CC
- 'spikier' tank damage taken
- different heal concepts
- lower DPS:mob health ratio
- classes/chars overall were not that powerful
- slower gameplay in general (mana breaks, yay!)
- a lot lower ilvl difference from low-end to high-end gear
- ... (the list goes on)

I don't want to judge which one was better. That's totally up to personal preference. Though I enjoyed the concept of TBC a lot more than WotLK's.
(I was also quite disappointed when they nerfed Cata Heroics that were really well tuned at the start of expansion.)

nice articulation of difference between tbc and wotlk 3.0.2 heroics. as you have no doubt noticed, there are more and more tbc heroes here as the years go by who just blew threw it all.

[Deleted]

Wrath wins every expansion poll ever done in Wow... so i think its safe to say that Wrath was the best ever expansion.

If u dont believe that then run a poll and watch Wrath win it...!

I think a lot of people started playing in wrath and it holds a lot of nostalgia for them. Like wise for TBC. I think peak numbers were at the very beginning of cata but most people had joined from wrath. Just a thought.

Also, I really liked wrath probs joined with mop for my 2nd favourite expansion. I enjoyed easy mode naxx but ended up LOVING ulduar and icc was great aswell. Just TOC was a let down

[Deleted]

I agree on Ulduar, hardmodes are amazing, though the 10/25 was bullshit also. And don't forget ICC got multiple difficutlies aswell.
Having 10 man only for casual guilds like ZA /KZ and 25 man for more hardcore is a thing, but 10/25 of the same it's not.
Actually the flexible number is a great thing they have made to help guilds.
I recon they said that if they had the flex tech back in the days there' woundn't have been a LFR. Le sigh =/.

You want to hear something ironic? I had suggested the flex mode here in this forum before it was announced. Most here were accusing me of talking nonsense because it would be supposedly impossible to balance for classes and roles.

It apparently wasn't that hard, unless maybe it's mythic for the hardcore race.

[Ryme]

I enjoyed WotLK for the story. Arthas was awesome, and nothing yet has been a fraction of how great his character was!

I'll get you next time hero, next tiiiiimmmeee.

[Shraug]

I think the soundtrack is what impressed me the most of the expac tbh.

[Celarent]

I was questing in Grizzly Hills yesterday. Chain structure felt a little dated but I enjoyed every minute.

Wrath was just a labor of love. Devs wanted to tell that story, provide that gameplay, create that experience.

[Shraug]

Grizzly Hills #1 dude. GRIZZLY HILLS 4 EVA.

[blackblade]

Don't get the Naxx hate. It was completely undertuned but also atmospheric and a fine intro to raiding. Flex mode, sort of.

problem was that there was very little to juxtapose it outside of OS3D (which, ironically was harder on 10 than 25 despite 25 having higher ilvl loot).

[sam86]

1) Heroics took time, were actually hard and had a small gate. Not to mention the badges only redeemed for certain quality, Zul'Aman i believe upped the quality of items (25 badges - 133 Ilvl wand, T5 was 141+), like Sunwell did. You could only do a heroic once per day due to lockout, not 24/7 IIRC. You couldn't get t5/t6 quality items from badges before Sunwell and MGT Heroic.

And how much time does it take exactly to do most TBC hcs? Yes back then groups were made to make all hcs, not just one, u can do 1 hc only once a day, but u can do all hcs in game 'once' a day, it was normal to chain hcs from botanica to mechnar to underbog etc
Also Zul'aman items are far lower than BT, then again i didn't use 'wands' at that time but as paladin i don't remember i needed an item - or relic - from zul'aman, just badges

2) You could say that about any dungeon going back and roflstomping it.

Some fights u could 'roflstomp', but i wonder what gear makes u able to do that for most raid achievements during wrath era, u can only roflstomp the default fight but forget it about most achievements

You have to be kidding me. I played a priest for the start of TBC and a Mage for the rest. You could easily make your own groups as well, why did you have to rely on SOMEONE else to make the groups?

I played on Ghostlands europe, and i can easily say what u saying is bullsh8t and if forums stayed and blizz didn't wipe them i bet u could find 1502 complain of how ppl can't get to hcs unless they play tanks or know tanks irl, i lvled a paladin specifically because i couldn't get to do anything in-game

What do you mean about Wrath needing a tank? There was LFD...

the first 9 months, pre-ToC, what did u use to 'tank' even hcs ? ponies? why seriously ppl forgot u actually needed frost trap and corridor run etc early wrath days? when average gear was less than 300 ?

Nope you are wrong sorry in fact badges gears and even the mighty hc MGT (one of my favorite 5 man dungeons in TBC specially the heroic difficulty pre nerf) was equal to tier 4 or 5 at most, which is lower than BT/Hyjal gears and Sunwell gears.

i know most ppl didn't have addon to check ilvl, but ilvl wise, badge items introduced in 2.4 were up to 146 ilvl, only illidan drop higher ilvl rest of BT was 141, not to mention the 'effort' to do an entire raid vs hcs is no question which is easier

I wonder why there was a lot more guilds back then? Maybe it has something to do with guilds actually being more relevant. Because you couldn't just skip everything therefore removing the requirement for those "lower level" guilds.

Many ppl like to ignore that TBC sub numbers was europe + china, Wrath was banned from china until almost cata was out
During wrath europe + us servers gained over 5 million, but sub stayed 'same' because blizz lost access to china, check mmo-champion, they have a long thread on wrath ban in china
It is why we all feel - because it was real - that wrath was most crowded, it was 12 million of europe/us players, zero china, and china alone provided during tbc around 4-5 million players