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

[Candy Cough]

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

[craigw]

only factor on whether an expansion sucks or is successful is raw sub data. subs went up gradually from vanilla to wrath. id say that was successful regardless of opinion. when did blizzard stop releasing sub numbers? if subs were still going up id bet blizzard would still track it. but as long as it drastically is going down they never will. you could give someone thousands of dollars and they would still bitch. couple years ago here in the st louis area a man won a 15 million dollar lottery prize. on tv he was bitching about it taking up to a week to get his money deposited, and how he had to go to his bank to deal with the issues of having 15M deposited. guy had a disgusted look on his face the whole time while speaking on tv. like come on man you won 15M dollars and he was bitching..... doesnt matter the expansion/scenario you arent pleasing everyone. some people just hate life.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

No, each one was.

[Khaza-R]

People have always complained since before the game even launched. That much is true.

However, its also disingenuous to pretend all these complaints are equal. There's a massive difference between someone saying they don't like pandas and someone complaining because the game has become an unfun chorefest.

[Candy Cough]

only factor on whether an expansion sucks or is successful is raw sub data. subs went up gradually from vanilla to wrath. id say that was successful regardless of opinion. when did blizzard stop releasing sub numbers? if subs were still going up id bet blizzard would still track it. but as long as it drastically is going down they never will. you could give someone thousands of dollars and they would still bitch. couple years ago here in the st louis area a man won a 15 million dollar lottery prize. on tv he was bitching about it taking up to a week to get his money deposited, and how he had to go to his bank to deal with the issues of having 15M deposited. guy had a disgusted look on his face the whole time while speaking on tv. like come on man you won 15M dollars and he was bitching..... doesnt matter the expansion/scenario you arent pleasing everyone. some people just hate life.

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.

[muto]

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

[Tyris Flare]

You have to define community. Any group of sufficient size is always going to have detractors.

The question is really the percentage of the community and what parts.

[Argorwal]

I’ve been on the forums since late vanilla and it’s always been a shit show of crying and complaints that the game sucks.

Other than raid loot being too low and patches being too slow I still feel Shadowlands has overall been solid.

It’s sucks they are cutting it a patch short.

[Relapses]

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.

[Kralljin]

I wish we could go back to the days where my biggest gripes with the game was something like class balance.

[Toybox]

I wish we could go back to the days where my biggest gripes with the game was something like class balance.

I remember thinking Ambush on Rogues getting buffed from 280% to 310% during TBC was a huge mistake as they kept killing me in 2v2. Simpler times

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

By some faction of the community? No and there never will be.

By a majority while the expansion is ongoing? Yes, most of them actually. I can think of only three that fit that bill and they're 3 of the last 4.

[Candy Cough]

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.

I remember people calling legion for World of RNGcraft

[pahbi]

There has always been griping and complaining for each expansion, thats just the nature of wow players.

I played every expansion, and had a great time, Shadowlands is the first expansion that caused me to unsub.

Hopefully the next expansion will be more fun.

[craigw]

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.

returning to the peak is irrelevant. having huge sub numbers is a real good sign that an expansion is successful. subs were going up in BC and thru wrath. people bitching about them is pointless as raw numbers say they are popular. numbers started to go down after....id look for a problem within that. there really is no justification in flat out shitting on an expansion when raw numbers are thru the roof. criticizing things in an expansion sure, but flat out shitting on them during its peak is not credible.

[Relapses]

I remember people calling legion for World of RNGcraft

Early Legion was pretty shit with Legiondaries but it got a lot better by the end. I wasn't a huge fan of it. I quit in Nighthold and it remains the only time I quit the game because I just wasn't having fun with it.

[craigw]

only 3 expansions i can recall were flat out shit on. the rest seem to have overall positive comments from the community.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

MoP and Legion. At least, they had far less vocal hate for them as compared to Cata/WoD/BFA/Shadowlands. Most of the hate for MoP came before the expansion actually came out, with people being turned off by the Pandas (at a time when the Kung Fu Panda movies were coming out and had your stereotypical Dreamworks slapstick humor) and the colorful asian setting (at a time when lots of asian MMOs were coming to the West and getting a bad rap). Once the expansion launched, people who checked it out where overall pleased (with some people complaining about feeling like they were forced to do dailies). For Legion, it seems that most people enjoyed it (I didn't) with their only major gripe being the RNG and the artifact grinds.

[StationaryHawk]

I remember people calling legion for World of RNGcraft

No expansion was perfect, but some were received better than others.

If you're only looking for "did someone complain about every expansion," then you're obviously correct.

[Tojara]

Legion whining came at the start of the expansion, but almost exclusively with legendary items.

The hate for WoD came in strong after a couple months, when people realized there wasn't much to do. It was a raid logging heaven with good leveling zones though.

Most of MoP was pretty well received all things considered, with the only real whines I can remember being the absolute shit ton of dailies at the start of the expansion, and requiring you to win 2 BGs for the legendary quest later on. Outside of that, all the shit about the expansion came prior to it even coming out "As if an expansion based on Kung Fu Panda could ever be good".

Cataclysm was a huge amount of whining about launch heroic dungeons being way too hard (this happens when you flip the switch from TBC > WoTLK and then back again) and Dragonsoul as a whole.

WoTLK whines almost exclusively came from 'sparkle pony' at the very end of WoTLK. I believe it was the first mount you could buy from the store.

TBC whining came almost exclusively on the forums, with lots of people threatening to quit because the tuning was way too high and still required world buffs. They had to rebalance almost all of T4/T5 because of incredibly buggy bosses, stupid respawn timers on trash, and gear that had to be bumped up because pretty much every blue wasn't rewarding.

Realistically everything has been shit on to varying degrees, but a lot of it's retrospective at this point. I look back at expansions like WoTLK and Legion with contempt because there were truly terrible decisions in those times that made me hate the game, and nearly made me quit in each expansion. WoTLK difficulty at the start was awful, and the way you geared in Legion made me hate the game (AP, random legendary items and TF in general). Which is funny, because based both of these are generally seen as great expansions by a lot of the player base, but it wasn't for me.

The worst expansions for me was BFA, WoTLK and Legion (starting with the worst). Jury still out on Shadowlands, but it will likely usurp or tie BFA at this point.