What expansion do you think marked the golden age of WoW?

[Ghostile]

Those that weren't good enough started quitting

Mythic didn't add a higher difficulty.
It turned heroic into mythic, normal into heroic and added an easier normal mode and gave Normal/Heroic a flexible group size.

People who were raiding heroic went to mythic, normal raiders to heroic and those who deemed normal too hard got an easier mode to play.

[Al Gorefiend]

Vanilla but not in a boomer way. Because it was hard, in a way you couldn't opt in or out of. Leveling was hard, world was dangerous, you wanted to be in a group and this shared sense of survival you made friends. You would see injured people run by and heal them or help them out like in hardcore. The game was not formulaic and accessible it was just a virtual tabletop RPG, with Blizzard as the DM.

Nowadays WoW is more of a very well curated and rapid paced video game, your character level is more like a prestige level in a CoD game, and you can just create more and more characters and lose that sense of attachment to one. Better or worse, ymmv

[Echo of Soul]

Mythic didn't add a higher difficulty.
It turned heroic into mythic, normal into heroic and added an easier normal mode and gave Normal/Heroic a flexible group size.

People who were raiding heroic went to mythic, normal raiders to heroic and those who deemed normal too hard got an easier mode to play.

Not true, you obviously didn't raid during MOP and WOD then. If you compare Blackrock Foundry and Hellfire Citadel mythic to any heroic raid from WotLK-MOP the difference was MASSIVE.

[DarkblazerZ]

Absolutely Wrath of the Lich King.

-Every zone's vibes were immaculate. The music from every zone is instantly recognizable and the art direction on every single one of them was fresh, interesting and clever.
-The dungeons were exceptional. Occulus was the one dud, but even it was trying something new.
-Ulduar is easily the best raid in WoW. Innovative encounter design. Great art and design. Storytelling built into the raid. Algalon.
-Icecrown citadel might not be the best raid in WoW, but it's pretty darn far up there. Two bangers in a row.
-The storytelling setups and payoffs vastly exceeded anything from Vanilla or BC, and frankly I'm more and more fond of its casual, show-don't-tell myriad of storytelling beats spread through casual quests than that of the long, stodgy and linear massive quest chains that basically dominate all questing of today.
-Dalaran is the best city hub ever designed. So good they just used it again in Legion. Valdraken is inoffensive but bland. Oribos was annoying. Ashran was boring and an utter letdown from the promise of Karabor/Bladespire. Pandaland was practical but too simple. Dalaran, though? It felt like an actual city. Easy to navigate, every corner and shop of the city was identifiable and had character.

Basically, WotLK marked the point where every point in WoW came together. Art direction, storytelling, zone design, music, raids, dungeons, quests. Honestly, it feels like the last expansion that was truly innovative on all fronts.

True

Also worth Mentioning
10/25 man normal 10/25 Hc ..

I mean everything in Wotlk was a masterpiece..

They messed up after in Cataclysm when they made 10=25 destroying everything they build ..

Guilds went 10-man leaving many people outside .Even the previous 10-man casual couldn't recruit due the enchant difficulty..

At the End the Team Leading Back then Ghost-crawler bring awful ideas and not long he quit... After destroying quite a low of the 1st 3 Expansion

[Bladesyphon]

Wrath, Cataclysm, and Mists of Pandaria were probably the highest points of the game for me, even with Cataclysm having two Raids (Firelands and Dragon Soul) that I wasn't a huge fan of, it's first raid tier, dungeon design, and the Molten Front made up for the low points of the expansion.

After that it's been a rollercoaster of ups and downs, with BFA, Legion, and Dragonflight being the ups, and Shadowlands and WoD being the lowest of lows. The War Within, however, looks and sounds like it's going to be another high point, so I'm hoping that it's a sign that Dragonflight is the start of a WoW Renaissance through the World Soul Saga.

[Varodoc]

Wrath/Cataclysm were the point in time when subscribers peaked and WoW was mainstream, a cultural phenomenon.

Legion kicked off a renaissance of the game which came at the cost of WoD.

- - - Updated - - -

Also, while not technically an expansion, 2019 Classic sparked a second renaissance of the game after the dumpster fire that was the Sylvanas-helmed expansion, Battle for Azeroth. (As Sylvanas is neither popular nor liked, so making her the protagonist of an expansion, BfA, was a recipe for disaster, as the numbers proved)

[ParzivalMcfly17]

The golden age is now. Current content. The ability to, after 20 years, still play a game we love that is consistently updated and loved by millions. Nothing more golden than the here and now.

[VMSmith]

The answer to this question is entirely dependent on the answerer, everyone has their own "Golden Age".

For me, it was 5.2, Isle of Thunder. I've never enjoyed WoW as much as I did right then, it was amazingly fun for me. Others probably hated that time period. What really interests me is that Remix gave me the opportunity to "relive" that time period and I discovered that, for me, it's just not fun a second time around. It was that patch at that time that was perfect for me. Maybe a future version of WoW will compete with that time, for me, or maybe not.

[Beet]

…and what was it that made it that way for you?

Vanilla easily. Best time of the game and best time for the internet in my opinion. The internet as a whole was barely political back then. The only time I’d hear someone talk about politics was to laugh at Dubya. It wasn’t this shit like today where every single forum is political.

This is why, believe it or not the official blizzard forums had an off topic forum! Imagine that an OT on blizzards watch. The internet was so much smaller back then. It made WoW feel unique. Vanilla was just the best time. I don’t honestly know why communities changed so much to where everyone became try hard but it did. I definitely loved classic in 2019 but it wasn’t the same as vanilla because you can’t bring back the 2000s internet to go with it. However, I still had more fun on classic than I did any expansion past MoP.

But trust me I’m not going to claim vanilla wow was the best because it was just a better game. That’s silly. I just enjoyed it more. I miss when blizzard did new things. Anyone remember when they had their website that showed ideas they had in the pipeline? Giving us things to talk about what might be happening down the line?

Mop was the end of WoW as the S tier gaming for me like many. Pandaria didn’t feel like it was even part of the same universe. And I don’t think the fact subs plummeted with it is a surprise.

[irdsyd]

Don't believe in golden ages - it varies by individual depending on how long they've played and what the group they mainly play with are doing. For instance I really liked original TBC because the heroic dungeons were a challenge and I had a group I played with. I redid classic TBC and hardly anyone on the server I was on ran heroic dungeons.

For me individually the expansions I most liked were TBC, Wrath, MoP and Legion.
The expansions I really disliked were WoD, Cata and Shadowlands.
I liked whatever is not included above.

[Triceron]

Wrath and early Cata for me. Wrath was near perfect for me, even with the tuned down dungeon content and hyper burnout dailies. Ulduar remains my favourite Raid of all time.

Cata only began its downward spiral after Firelands for me. Everything leading up to Firelands was all good. A few let downs that they dropped Abyssal Maw and War of the Ancients raids, but the content that we had was still quite good. Fall of Deathwing raid just dropped the ball, and I didn't even bother checking out Pandaria till WoD was about to launch. Pandaria was good too, but I can't say I would have called the one month that I played it a golden age.

[LionSinMaikeru]

If we are not allowed to pick vanilla (it was. Blizzard put off doing Classic for years and wanted to shut down Nostalrius because they didn't want to admit that they fucked up and people preferred how the game originally was to retail. Classic saved the subs) then clearly the golden age of WoW was TBC because that was the only expansion period in WoW's lifespan where the sub count was still rising throughout before it plateaued in WotLK.

I agree. Honestly, nothing soured me more towards the company than the "you think you do but you don't" thing. We as players have put up with a lot of BS, but that was the most condescending crap I've ever heard of in my life. Spoken by someone who truly drank the Kool-Aid and forgot what it meant to be a player.

I'd consider TBC to be the golden age, too.


I enjoyed WoTLK but let's be honest - it was really where they gave a hint at the direction the game was going in. Announced features that didn't make it into the actual game (I'm not even talking about cut content that was like in the presentation, I'm talking about content that was literally printed with the BOX you bought at release I.E. flying mounted combat - totally unprofessional, IMO), zones making it to live unfinished / abandoned (Crystalsong Forest), the ridiculous content gap from final patch to next expansion, etc.

[Huzzaa]

MoP, reasons similar to post #2

Close 2nd would be TBC, 3rd WoTLK, vanilla I didn't play.