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

[Bakis]

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

What you endorse, without being aware of it I suspect, is the core of why WoW fail nowdays.
And yes, the subs, the hype, the turnaround of longtime vs new players all make the use of the word "fail" a valid one.

Let me put it this way.
Why do you (as well as me, all of us I dare to say) consider WoW to have been such a fantastic game?

• A fluke?

• Picking the good bits from EverQuest? Doing some magic with the rest.

• Pure luck in terms of timing getting the legendary ID Software network programmer that made things EQ dreamt of possible in terms of network code?

• Anything else?
  A mix of the above an anything else?

WoW became a mix of those. Not due to sulking about afraid to push the boundries (lets rememember how delayed Vanilla got).
What would have been a parameter that would have killed the project is mediocrity and again lets remember WoW was about to get canceled more than once to the point of Devs bullshitting leadership in order to get it going.

And mediocracy is what your post reek. WoW is utter garbage compared to what it has been (my personal view yes... but it being garbage is shared by every metric one want to throw at it: subs, turnaround of players, #players doing raids/M+/BG/Arena you name it.
A slight correction, only metric it thrive more at nowdays than before are bots and said bots are due to the decision of making WoW microtransaction game (WoWToken if anyone need a hint). A Pay2Win game is also a valid assertion.

I dont have high hopes for WoW. But not in the sense that one might think.
The executive branch of AB got a decision to make. A long term or a short term.

• WoW 2 (lets rule that out first of all, WoW this flawed cant be the foundation to a successful WoW 2

• Keep on running as of now with a desync between all levels of devolopment and business management.

• Dial back towards a more passion driven development, to simplify (simplify) core values.

Time will tell.

I can say one thing though. The last option is probably the hardest one, pretty much the entire BLZ has been drained of the enthusiasts needed for that to happen. Today WoW teams are much made up of contracters with no investment in the game other than to get their paycheck and adding something to their CV. It wasnt much difference back in 2002-2004 in terms of contracting but the key difference being that the company was tiny compared to today so anyone with a great(or bad) idea could lobby it fairly easy up the ladder to Morhaime or someone else. And it was contagious, most of them came from the DnD background.

For me I'll look at to see if BLZ try to at least pretend they combat bots. If there is an improvement I will give the next xpac a chance to at least enjoy the lovely new Dungeons during leveling.
Some things even BLZ cant fuck up, probably cos dungeons design is so compartmentalised from the game that it cant be hurt by the rest of the bullshit.

[Vakir]

Every expac has been shit on by the community because they've all had some manner of flaw to pick at, like any product has, and discussion forums and the like are very good at amplifying extremes.

Still ridiculous to have the idea some posit, though, that there's no legitimacy to the belief that some are more deserving of it than others simple because people have always found a reason to be negative.

[beratish]

WoW changes the game drastically ever expansion. Even TBC drastically altered the games skill ceiling and put far more focus on endgame. There are to many people for the "perfect" expansion.

Take the mage tower. People are unhappy with how hard it is despite it only being a cosmetic reward.

[EntertainmentNihilist]

This community is toxic negativity at it's extreme. Not to say there aren't many legitimate criticisms, but it's easy for a few things you don't like to get you phytologically stuck in a negativity feedback loop where you end up (subconsciously) looking for any reason to hate anything Blizzard ever does.

[WowIsDead64]

Blizzards' biggest mistake - is constant assumptions, that they know better, what players want. All problems started in Cata, when they decided for the first time, that players actually wanted Vanilla/TBC, not WotLK. Problem is - majority of playerbase started to play in WotLK and so drastic change of game design alienated these players. May be if Blizzard would implement Classic/TBC servers back then, they would realize their mistake.

And WotLK design was about making game super-casual-friendly and allowing casuals to play content, that had been available to hardcores only before that - heroics and raids. This was so big improvement vs something like leveling alts and doing dailies, that many players started to play this game immediately. Imagine, what happened, when Blizzard attempted to take this content away from them, because they decided, that it's better for them to make "true MMO for true MMO players", than successful game? For example GC's biggest mistake was assumption, that players actually liked hardcore group content and so he could change players and force them into guilds.

- - - Updated - - -

That is starting to sound like L2P. LoH is not usable in arenas, freedom and BoP are purgeable. Back then you could not attack when you had bubble. That was later returned. The armor is offset by some of the lowest max hp in the game. I don't recall any one shots outside of Wrath, not anymore than every other class. Not unless the target is under geared but everyone does that.
Before you say Execution sentence... it's dispel-able.

Again, players tend to remember last patches of xpacks only. All this things were introduced LATER. Initial design was - Bubble being just plain god mode, plus LOH allowing Paladin to have 2 extra lives against any other player, who had only one.

[Kikazz]

No, only LFR came with the Dragon Soul patch. Dungeon Finder was added in Wrath.

thats fine, but it wasnt a hated feature,

like it is now

[Luxeley]

Saw a thread on Reddit back during WOD. The post ripped WOW into shreds without really going into detail. Turned out the xpac under fire wasn't WOD, it was an old thread from TBC. Wow represents different things to different players, some may indulge in the lore, others M+, others Pvp and some banter about leveling one alt after another. Whenever WOW is criticized or brutalized it's rarely judged as a whole, it's judged of the part dearest to the individual player. Here's a crude example: WOW is a bacon cheeseburger and something is always going to be less than whether it's the cheese, the burger, the bacon, the bun or how it's cooked.

[saintminya]

Every xpac has been shat on by people who hate it to the extent that the forums for current content look like hatefests.

About 2 xpacs later, the forums look back with nostalgia over the past expacs.

I never EVER thought I'd see the day when people looked back at Cataclysm or WoD fondly. But here we are.

I for one never had to wait an expansion or two later to offer praise to Cata or WoD, as despite what some people elect to believe, Wotlk ain't the gold standard to everyone. I first attempted to get into the game during Wotlk, but having been a far bigger fan of WC2 than of WC3 I wasn't able to fully immerse myself into the world until Cata. What a great time that was, with active threats from Deathwing and the Twilight's Hammer, and Goblins back at home with the Horde. Mage, especially Arcane, was more fun to play and solidified itself as my eternal main. Zones weren't exclusively cold or filled with excessive time wasting space. Another significant change came with Cata that gets an awful lot of unjust hate: LFG and later on LFR. Some of it is justified, as with every passing expansion it seemed that more and more players were just phoning it in after the queue popped, making players who actually gave a damn seem rare. Back in Cata such cheesing wasn't rampant, or even tolerated, as group leaders would actually pay attention to their role and not hesitate to initiate a vote to kick or two. LFG was just a convenient way to run a dungeon or two when you didn't have four friends on just yet, without having to sit around depriving yourself from engaging in any content until/if you found a group in chat. One method had a higher potential to take longer than the other, but neither guaranteed that you would ever willingly interact with the same players again. LFR opened up raiding to many players, such as myself, by functioning as something of a tour guide. After getting a taste of raiding through Dragon Soul, I chose to put in the effort and find a steady crew. So I raided through MoP and well into Bfa, with some of my fondest memories stemming from WoD and Legion. To quickly defend WoD, it nailed leveling, zone design, dungeons, and raids. The garrison could've been more than it was, but I had a good time with mine and ultimately never got bored with the expansion. I can't say that for MoP, Legion, Bfa, or especially Shadowlands as I took an extended break at some point during all of them. I always came back though, which is looking seriously doubtful for SL.

Just as all expansions had shit flung at them at some point by one group or another, they also all have some group sending their praises its way. I may not be a fan, but even SL is no exception. There are flaws and merits to all of them, with each serving as an entry point or an exit for some player. Given how Blizzard continues to double down on systems and features exclusive to a single expansion, I anticipate the shit-kicking to only increase in volume while proponents of one expansion over an other find themselves sharing less and less common ground.

[Villager720]

Every expansion has issues, many obvious even during Beta - and thus the community will and always has complained and whined.
MoP valor gear shouldn’t have been tied to rep/dailies.
Legion legendaries acquisition at launch was a comically horrid design.
Etc, etc.

I think what’s always been more important to look at is if the content, not the system flaws, are being well received.
People liked Suramar, Artifacts, Mythic+, Mage Tower, and class halls/campaigns in Legion. They mostly whined about system issues like AP and legendaries.
Meanwhile : People hated Warfronts and Island Expeditions in BfA. AND they hated azerite armor. The biggest hit for that expansion were allied races that primarily utilized ~old content via leveling.

I think this approach gives a better indication of how an expansion is actually being received. If the complaints are mostly about easily iterated/fixed systems - it’s probably being received fine. If people hate the content and the systems - that’s when you’ve got a bad expansion.
Shadowlands is interesting here in that I think the overlapping and inane number of systems actually hamstrings the content in such a way that people come to resent content that might have otherwise been well received.

(Btw WoD is still the worst expansion and anyone saying “but class balance/raiding was at its best then” is an unreliable narrator.)

[Venziir]

The levelling experience was nice... What Draenei lore and zones there were were nice... Pity so much was cut out that this was gutted and it became all Orcs all the time.

Ironically what was cut, was basically all of Gorgrond - which was even more orcs. Which is why half of Talador made no sense.

[Coldkil]

Every expansion had complaints but the first one where I felt the general community sentiment was controversial was Cataclysm. The first one that felt overwhelmingly negative was WoD. BFA and SL are both on a negative end but I don't think WoD has been topped yet.

Legion had complaints as all things do, but everyone seemed really into game at the time.

Legion worket out well beacuse it came out after WoD which was a negative record in quality for Blizzard. Plus, and incredible amount of stuff was added (WQs, M+, legendaries and artifacts). What i find "strange" is that the exact same systems we have in BfA/SL are being shat on only now (for a reason imho - never been a huge fan of Legion aswell because of the underlying design of the game itself).

My educated guess is that a lot of people realized that most of the stuff is just designed to keep you online more time, as if Blizzard is trying to fight the natural fact that people play until they stop having fun and nothing will change that. Making people spend 10 hours instead of 2 to reach the same goal they had some expansions ago got old really fast apprently.

[Kalisandra]

Again, players tend to remember last patches of xpacks only. All this things were introduced LATER. Initial design was - Bubble being just plain god mode, plus LOH allowing Paladin to have 2 extra lives against any other player, who had only one.

The joke was that "Paladins are too hard to kill - you kill them once and then they bubble and heal up, and then you kill them again and they LoH to full, and then you have to beat them down all over again." However, the real joke in that statement is that the person complaining is complaining about how long it takes, not that the Paladin might at some point win. What Wrath did was upset that by making it possible that a Paladin might actually kill you somewhere in that, and a lot of players (particularly of Warriors) found that offensive. Note that a non-braindead Mage still could, and did, kite Paladins all day.

- - - Updated - - -

Ironically what was cut, was basically all of Gorgrond - which was even more orcs. Which is why half of Talador made no sense.

They also cut a chunk of Shattrath (more of why Talador makes no sense), and Karabor Temple as the Alliance home city (I think they cut the Horde equivalent too), and that wiped out an opportunity to see the heart of Draenei settlement on Draenor.

[Johnjohn]

No it fucking isn't. There's tons of reasons subs will fluctuate that have no importance on whether the game is good or not. WoW's numbers began to decline after the subprime mortgage crisis hit in America and I knew plenty of people during late-Wrath who had to quit because money got tight and either they or their parents couldn't afford to keep them subbed. That's about when subs began to drop.

Cataclysm also correlated with many of the Vanilla players entering college at the same time, so sub numbers dropped.

Shadowlands is also the fastest-selling WoW expansion of all time, with more than 3.7 million copies sold in one day, which happened to be in 2020. In the middle of a fucking global pandemic.

None of these mean anything in terms of how good the game is.

Not even sure what to say to a post like this. So much arrogance, yet so much bullshit. And I also seriously doubt a 15 dollar a month game was affected as much as you say it was in the above examples.

In fact I would argue that for everyone person that quit during those times due to not being able to afford 15 dollars a month which is peanuts, people would have joined precisely because it was such cheap entertainment.

Some of you people are way too black and white. You have a strange way of looking looking at things. Maybe it's cultural.

Complaints about every expansion = throw out all complaints they are pointless.

Subs having some fluctuation because of external factors = 100% unable to gauge a games success and quality by it.

It's bizzare.

[Adamas102]

That is only if you ignore the amount of people that stumbled upon it but decided its too late to join. Because current retail actively pushes out new player as early as in very first step.

Well the guy I responded to only wanted to look at raw numbers so yeah ignoring those sorts of details and subtleties is what makes his argument a bad one. A lot of those people who tried the game out because it was the hot new thing and left early on probably did so because they thought the game was dumb/boring/not worth the money, but again that doesn't necessarily speak to the overall quality of the game.

[Holdodlig]

Except pretty much every expansion at one time or another was considered the worst expansion...people even shit on Legion even though it's one of the more favored, best of the modern game

Because at the moment they've been released, almost all expansions had major flaws that were fixed by time and Legion was no exception. Most people don't usually remember what was their early game experience during some expansion but I do. I remember being stuck in the worst spec (fury) with the worst legendary (being Sephuz) at the beginning of Legion. I remember the sorry excuse of content that was Broken Shore or how shitty it was to navigate in Argus without Prydaz / any constant absorb shield because there was monster everywhere.

But most of this content is irrelevant today since Fury was fixed to the point it became the best spec or eventually our character growth outclassed the monster stat scaling introduced in Legion.

So yeah, people tend to forget about this kind of thing. I already have friends saying BFA was the best expansion and corruption was a great thing and they were kind of right as it was refreshing. But they tend to forget about how scaling the same corruption made PvP a boring mess, how it was RNG at the beginning, how shitty it was to get azerite stuff. Even essences I used to love because they were neutral spells were flawed because of how you had to farm them and how PvP essences were more powerful in PvE.

[ro9ue]

Legion worket out well beacuse it came out after WoD which was a negative record in quality for Blizzard. Plus, and incredible amount of stuff was added (WQs, M+, legendaries and artifacts). What i find "strange" is that the exact same systems we have in BfA/SL are being shat on only now (for a reason imho - never been a huge fan of Legion aswell because of the underlying design of the game itself).

My educated guess is that a lot of people realized that most of the stuff is just designed to keep you online more time, as if Blizzard is trying to fight the natural fact that people play until they stop having fun and nothing will change that. Making people spend 10 hours instead of 2 to reach the same goal they had some expansions ago got old really fast apprently.

Yes definitely plus we didn't yet know they were planning to reset everyone to 0 and make us recollect the same/similar powers over and over again in BFA and SL. I think WoW desperately needs a permanent, evergreen end game progression system like ESO CPs or EQ Alternate Advancement with a way to stem bloat by having a limited slot system. So more and more can be added but you can only slot X things or something.

[Relapses]

Well the guy I responded to only wanted to look at raw numbers so yeah ignoring those sorts of details and subtleties is what makes his argument a bad one. A lot of those people who tried the game out because it was the hot new thing and left early on probably did so because they thought the game was dumb/boring/not worth the money, but again that doesn't necessarily speak to the overall quality of the game.

One could argue, too, that with the recent popularity of things like review bombing that it's hard to gauge the quality of the game with reviews as well. People are no longer interested in the many shades of grey... it's either all good or all bad.

[uopayroll]

it's an internet thing, not expansion related in the least

[Coldkil]

Yes definitely plus we didn't yet know they were planning to reset everyone to 0 and make us recollect the same/similar powers over and over again in BFA and SL. I think WoW desperately needs a permanent, evergreen end game progression system like ESO CPs or EQ Alternate Advancement with a way to stem bloat by having a limited slot system. So more and more can be added but you can only slot X things or something.

Honestly all that comes to my mind would require changed at a fundamental level that imho would just alienate most players from WoW altogether. So it's not easy to make changes without changing the game too much.

There are some really good things rolling in WoW like raids, M+ and generally the world/zones flow isn't bad at all - just open world is basically used only as a grindy way to unlock some minor power increases and badly as a catchup system for alts. Such unlocks should be basically just account wide with optional story skips - if i want i can replay it on an alt or just not. But again, if it takes 12 hours per chars players will stay on more time (not)!

I'm playing GW2 now and the gearing/content system really appeals me - but because at a core level it's full horizontal progression. BiS gear comes from a multitude of activities, even crafting. Any piece with the same quality and same affix will have the same exact stats - so once you're in possess of the right pieces, it's literally ALL XMOG. Which puts down a lot of people aswell. As a casual/solo though you have so much to do and everything is relevant. You have masteries which are account-wide long grinds. You have Legendaries from raids which are basically skins and can be infinitely rerolled into other stats if you change builds (so basically QoL).

Does it click all my good buttons? Totally. Would a thing like this work in WoW? Not at all. It's simply not WoW. It's another game.

Only real thing i would change that's pretty significant is loot distribution in M+ and Raids. I have two options only actually:
- M+ and raids have two completely separate loot tables; there's a tier set for each content (m+ has a role/season based one, raid has a class/spec based one) and together with trinkets they don't work in the other content (open world is fine).
- M+ and raids have the exact same loot table. Doesn't matter what you do, that's the loot you would get.

Also, i'd make HC raid reward the same ilvl as 15s, and as m+ has no more gear scaling up after that, also Mythic raid shouldn't have increased ilvl. 15s are pretty easy compared to Mythic raids yet they rewards the same ilvl gear. We have a lot of gear bloating in the game that slows down gearing characters too much (mostly because your BiS items are scattered through all different content types).

[ro9ue]

Does it click all my good buttons? Totally. Would a thing like this work in WoW? Not at all. It's simply not WoW. It's another game.

Not sure if true... but I can see why the WoW devs wouldn't want to take the risk.

I can say as a long time ESO player, I saw it start out the same way as WoW with the constant power upgrades, then they capped it and left it that way ever since. It's been much better and has allowed for other innovations like the item stickerbook where you basically can collect every item at end game power level. Their situation was much different, they had a smaller playerbase and the game wasn't in a good state anyway.

But I think about how much that would bring to WoW. Every tier set in the game is now at max level and can be selected as a gameplay choice. Every trinket can be relevant. Shit I'd like to use Soul Capacitor again on my rogue, that was a really unique gameplay effect that was just rendered obsolete. /shrug