What is Peak-World of Warcraft?

[Mojo03]

I respectfully disagree with people saying nowadays is peak design. The game is centred around endgame and a focus on instanced content. That effectively makes the world a lobby while you wait for raids, M+, BGs, or whatever. The focus is on the destination and not the journey. It feels like I'm a player trying to get numbers, not an elf navigating a war-torn forest.

Ya, they've basically given up on the role playing aspect of the game it seems like (kinda makes sense when you see Ion is leading and the team has awful writers for such a long time)

Doesn't feel like I'm a character in a world anymore

Everything is a bit too fast too. You don't really feel the impact or value of anything because of it

It is essentially a glorified lobby game

It's in kind of a good spot currently for people that like that

[Biomega]

The most fun I personally had?

3. Heroic LK progression: I was a Disc Priest at the time, and felt like I was hard-carrying the healing. Managing Shields to perfectly proc Rapture and keep people at high enough HP to remove Infest just felt like such #bigbrain moves at the time. It's fairly trivial as far as healing goes these days, but man I never felt like I had things handled as much as I did back then. Everything just fit together so well mechanically, and shields were a somewhat new concept that worked so well with certain mechanics. Peak.

2. Blackrock Foundry: I was a Shadow Priest then, and unlike many in that community I actually loved the no-DoT playstyle. Spamming Mind Spikes all day and funneling DPs with off target DoTs was just such a sweet racket. Plus we had Cascade, which was probably the most fun SP AoE spell of all times. To me this was peak SP gameplay and I never enjoyed the spec as much since.

1. Tomb of Sargeras: Much maligned as Tomb of Soakgeras, for me personally this remains my favorite raid. Yeah I get it they overdid it with the soaks, but pretty much all of the bosses there were absolute bangers. And it had some backbreakingly difficult fights at the end, which is exactly what I want in my video games. Mythic Avatar progression especially was absolute insanity, and I loved every second of it. KJ was a little funky because of the movement cheese which didn't really do it for me, but other than that it was also an absolutely amazing fight. Them overlaps, man! I think I never played better than I did at that time, and it was downhill for me from then. Peak personal raid performance.

Objectively speaking, though? I think the game was probably best-designed overall in MoP. It was the perfect mix of challenge and chore, content for everyone, great class design, a compact yet engaging world. Not perfect by any means - just better than the rest.

[AudibleEscalation]

It is essentially a glorified lobby game

It's in kind of a good spot currently for people that like that

No it isn't. They should add direct lobby to BNet client and queues to maps from there. Being able to just buy a season pass to play the maps for couple of weeks would be awesome. Same applies for arenas.

[Glorious Leader]

Tbc launch
icc patch was a big one
Legion felt like that all over again as well

[Triceron]

It's all about the situational reactions of the guild for me. That social experience of someone cracking a joke that makes everyone fall out of their chairs, or the skin-of-your-teeth win on a boss that just wouldn't go down, or the chance drop of a nice big shiny for the person who's been wanting it since the beginning of the expansion. All of that is what makes WoW for me.

[sam86]

In wrath of the lich king (the OG, not classic) my guild was working on the hard modes of Ulduar, and we got to General Vezax. The pull we killed him, my buddy ran out of mana and pots, so mid combat I traded him some pots to use. The same pull we had killed the animus spawn, and were working on boss when most of the raid had died. This cause me and my buddy to both oom(I was healing, he was dps). We both were shaman, so we sucided to use ahnk, to get mana/pot resets. We got the kill with just him, me and the MT left alive, and I was completely oom so I was just autoing the boss.

Not sure anything could top that memory.

what an amazing memory, thanks for sharing

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peak wow for me? wiping on hc 10 lk with a full group of RL friends, we would go to a cyber, and we all raid
that or the non-stop wiping on Ulduar firefighter until we finally got it, but it was brutal
also getting ToC10hc zero death mount was amazing, also it was my friend who got it, and i just jumped from my chair on his neck to 'congratulate' him for winning

[nvaelz]

I've got pretty good memories from exploitative stuff like wallclimbing in vanilla, or "breaking into" the chess event in Karazhan for some free loot on my rogue. Some farming methods aswell that came and went like stealthing to loot chests or the more recent Ice fishing in DF was fun.

Probably Legion/BFA in general, I enjoyed playing many different classes in Legion, so much fun. And getting back to more main-class centric journey in BFA was a good followup. Or the early days with PVE in Vanilla to WOTLK. Alot of Cata to WoD was good too.

[phattsao]

Vanilla will always be peak design for me. The level of immersion I had the first time going through the Night Elf starter zone for the first time never be matched.

I remember randomly encountering my first named mob, some kind of saytr. Wasn’t for a quest or anything (I think I found out later it was for a rogue class quest), but I assumed it was some kind of boss.

I killed it and got my very first green text item, a malachite! Again, no idea what it was, but I’d never seen green text before so I assumed I was rich.

Recently felt a slight bit of this again when I started a hardcore character. The world comes alive again for sure, and getting a 12 slot bag from fishing felt more rewarding than anything I’ve done in War Within so far.

It’s all about perspective I guess.

[AudibleEscalation]

I had been playing and programming MMOs (or MUDs) since early 90s and came to WoW from pretty hardcore EQ guild. Vanilla was a terrible game. Probably released at least 6 months too early. Classes were not finished at all and most of them were broken. World wasn't done. TBC was the first time it felt half-done. They fixed most of the glaring gaps in classes.

But it all seemed pretty ez-mode faceroll. Most of the world was soloable. No death traps, no lost gear on corpses, no paying rent in inns, all the hard stuff in instances etc. It was colorful and pretty though.

For me, WoW didn't really click, so I played a lot of EVE on the side (since EQ died). But it did click during Mists. Throne of Thunder was the first time I thought the game reached it potential. Raiding was actually really quite good. And then it kept on improving until they fucked up Legion with Legendaries and AP-grind.

[Cyclone Jack]

To me, peak WoW is going off the beaten path and doing my own thing.

I don't do "end game", so I tend to roll up new thematic characters, or challenge characters, and just go do my thing. I've had one character capped at L32 for months, going through all of Classic, BC, and LK (got my TLPD and Frostbitten last week!). I just recently bumped them up to L34 and now I'm going through all of the dungeons and the Argent Tourney, but getting some seriously bad drops rates in the BC dungeons; 6 dungeons and only 1 boss dropped a single blue, most just drop gold. I've got an Engineer that's trying to farm all of the schematics. I've got a Hunter with nearly every named Aqir or Aqir-themed pets (some Wasps, Qho, etc). LOL Just random goofy stuff. I turn the theme park into a sandbox.

[melodramocracy]

From an overall gaming vibe viewpoint - playing in Wrath when it was current. The game still had exploits that were fun (the guy who figured out how to pull the daily abom quest up to Dalaran and use it to blow people off the flight platform, just lol) - these sort of hijinx seem to just not exist any longer, and the sense of social comradarie in the game has been replaced by task lists and leaderboards. Such is life.

On my own personal gameplay - probably getting AOTC on Castle Nathria. Tanking Denathrious, for me at least, was tough.

[Biglog]

1. Wpvp outside of Kara and Serpentshrine in BC when our raids were forming. That would usually go for an hour before we'd actually raid.
2. Getting a friendly carry from a random max level player through SM when I was a lowbie noob.
3. A wpvp event where we formed 10 40m raid groups to raid Stormwind, which crashed the server.
4. Mind controlling people off of the LM hill in AB, or the bridge in AV. Honorable mention for lock seeds of doom while defending the boss room in AV.
5. Getting an awesome drop off a random mob in the open world, especially when it's something incredibly rare.

The normal daily grind isn't it, it's the unusual impromptu things and unexpected moments that are peak wow imo.

[Johnjohn]

1- running around Teldrasil as a newbie Night elf in 2004. It was my favorite starting area and had a lot of mystery and adventure at the time.

2- level 60 dungeons to me were just so amazing. Especially BRD. I loved the way they played (slow and methodical).

3- levelling and questing in WOLK was amazing. It felt like a build up to the lich king the whole way through. Only time I was ever really invested in the WoW story.

4- Doing the Artifact weapon quests and appearances in Legion. Great idea, made me feel the lore of the classes.

[Azerox]

Everything in Vanilla.
Ulduar and ICC.