Yeah and the best way to get AP is IEs, so you're wrong right off the bat about WQs - and IEs are very different from WQs - and Warfront rewards? Yeah, gotta get that random i370 / i385, hoping it'd be an azerite piece so at least you get the residiuum from scrapping it.
No really, do make the "list" go on. I want to hear more of it.
They always told me I would miss my family... but I never miss from close range.
I love how everyone keeps mentioning ICC and forgets about Ulduar. Look, WOTLK had plenty of issues, I was fuming about them at the time, but it's all trivial compared to the wave of shit that's washed up on the game ever since the lich king finally died.
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Looks like you really did forget, maybe you thought it was fun. YOU HAD TO GET REP WITH THE CHAMPIONS OF AZEROTH FIRST, remember? And how? WORLD QUESTS, gather azerite lad! For bronzebeard!¨
and, youre actually defending island expeditions? Literally farming mobs, vanilla style, blizzard couldn't even be asked to design a shithole like timeless isle, just go farm mobs.
Actually, Sarth3D wasn't really that hard, not 10 man, not 25man..
Now, our first LK (normal) kill was done with one BM hunter (who was blind on one eye), 5 melee, two tanks and two healers..
THAT was a challenge...
Killing Val'kyrs, avoiding being exploded off the ring and defile avoidance was hell, with only one half ranged DPS..
Fact (because I say so): TBC > Cata > Legion > ShaLa > MoP > DF > BfA > WoD = WotLK
My pet collection --> http://www.warcraftpets.com/collection/FuxieDK/
Shiny212 you were obviously not playing to say WotLK was "hardcore". I remember killing the Lich King without having optimized myself (didn't had enchant / hodir's rep so no shoulder enchant). For the reccord, the first raid tier of WotLK (Obsidian/Naxx/Maly) were cleared on a lot of realm for the Realm first by ungeared / not even full groups. You could clear a full heroic raid in a pick up group back in the day. That's how I got my tribute mount back in the day. Also, I was pug farming heroic ICC. The only boss we were not doing was LK because obviously the boss was so overtuned even the big guilds needed a 5% buff to kill him.
Oh and, for the timegating rant. Limited try on heroic bosses (which led to the incredible longevity of LK / Algalon) wasn't timegating maybe ? The old loot system which allowed you to get drop your group didn't needed and you had to wait the next week to retry wasn't time gating ? Gear checks like Patchwerk / Festergut wasn't time gating ? How about dailies then ? Or honor points ?
The only hard things I recall from WotLK was the immortal title because of dumbfuck raiding drunk. And maybe red proto achiev at the beginning because nobody managed to pull strats on certain bosses. If Wrath was released with the same "difficulty", it would be so easy because you don't have to go to a poorly designed website (elitist jerks) to get informations on your character build.
As for the PvP rating, 1800 has never been something hard to achieve.
All true statements, except the last one, I'd wager a very small minority of pvprs ever achieved 1800 in wotlk.
Now that that's out of the way, here's the only thing you need to know, ALL the problems you mentioned in wotlk, are amplified and worse than ever in the current game. Listing them as they existed in WOTLK or even TBC, doesn't change the fact that's it's worse now, so much worse.
Yeah sure, kill some BfA mythic raid bosses and then go kill some HC raid bosses an then tell me which is harder.
Hell, my guild was casual and we still got some hard modes ulduar kills.
Dungeons were at that time were WAY easier.
The badge situation, while I love, was completely out of control.
So, yeah, WOTLK was pretty goddamn casual.
IMO the difference is that at that time the game was less varied and had less difficulties, and since today, the game looks more like a theme park, it looks more casual. Right now, the game just has difficulties so everybody can enjoy the game. But honestly, WOTLK was way more casual.
I don't want solutions. I want to be mad. - PoorlyDrawnlines
I mean; We can talk about world content. That wotlk world content... Yeah. A lot of fun that was. What was it again? Go kill 10 vrykuls every day for 100 ebon blade rep, OR get a tabard and spam dungens to exalted in an evening? (Which, don't get me wrong, was a -very- comfy thing, but it also made world content kinda obsolete...)
You harp a lot on world quests but I honestly think world quests were the best thing they added into this game in years; It's just that they need to figure out how to pace out the rewards so it doesn't feel worthless, OR mandatory.
Ulduar was great. We can agree on that; But again, Ulduar patch was just a raid. No dungeons. No world content. No story. No new zones. Nothing. Just the raid. Best raid in the game, but still -- just a raid.
* No lfr
* No dungeon finder (until icc patch)
* Biggest talent trees ever seen in wow
* Some of the hardest raid encounters (hc anub, yogg+0, hc lk) with limited weekly attempts
* A lot of stats to play with: agility,strenght,int, spirit, armor pen, physical hit, spell hit, spell crit, physical crit, haste, expertise, defense, dodge, parry etc...
* Weapon skills
* Weapon speed was not fixed for all weapon types and did actually matter
* Weapon types did actually matter too because of talent specialization (axes swords maces etc...)
* Professions providing combat bonuses
* Baseline multiple sockets on gear
* Many more gear slots could be enchanted with some enchants requiring rep grind
* No character boosts (only heirlooms)
feel free to add more
You think you do, but you don't ©
Rogues are fine ©
We're pretty happy with rogues ©
Haste will fix it ©
They let you do that raid too though, they let you do it without suffering through hours of pointless world quests. If you wanted to do dailies in TBC/worlk, you did it for mounts or gold, and you did it happily. Now it's directly linked to player power, have fucking fun. I dunno about you but I enjoy the social activities in wow, group pvp and instances.
So uh, is something stopping you from going into trade chat and finding a guild that'll do arena / rbgs / m+ / dungeons / normal & heroic raids with you? Or is socializing also locked behind 420 ilevel necklace? I know a lot of guilds will laugh at you if your neck isn't leveled, but you don't strike me as someone who wants to push day 1 mythic progress, and there's plenty of more 'chill' guilds that'll take you regardless of your neck level.
"... And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers, and you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee." - Ezekiel 25:17
"My name is Legion: for we are many." - Mark 5:9
My characters :3
HotS failed for many reasons, but IMO it primarily had to do with the very late release, at which point MOBAs were already starting to lose out in popularity to other genres.
Their main selling point at release was the easy accessibility as well as unconventional maps and heroes, which Blizzard have been hard at work diluting ever since they decided they wanted a strong esports scene.
As far as WoW is concerned, the game has targeted the "casual mmo crowd" since day 1. It's always been far more accessible than its competitors and I'm sure Blizzard has access to actual data showing that the crowd they're targeting their content towards are also the ones paying the bills.
Now, I don't personally agree with a lot of their design decisions, especially in BFA. It's very evident from the general player consensus and the amount of players who've stopped playing since the expansion launched that Blizzard has made some especially egregious decisions and errors and it'll take a lot of work for Blizzard to win back the favor of players.
I've personally plenty of things to do that don't necessarily involve any current content, so I'll likely continue playing regardless of the direction of the game, at least for the moment. But how Blizzard treats 8.2 and beyond will likely dictate whether or not I continue to buy new WoW expansions, as 8.1 has so far been a disappointment both in terms of gameplay and narrative.
That's all fine, but it's the fun that's missing. It's not fun to feel like the game points you in a direction of powering up your character, but that direction is meaningless world questing. Why should I play when it isn't fun? I'd love to do instances to get a good neck from some boss, that'd be great.
In the end it's all moot though since there's far-reaching issues with just about every part of the game, the gear treadmill is just one of them.
But you do get necklace leveling up from just looting azerite in dungeons & PvP? It's just a small bump in item level, nothing else, and you're acting like they're literally not even letting you zone into raids without completing the magni rep. The rep bump doesn't even unlock new traits, you still have to grind actual azerite to do that.
Like, honestly, you may be your own worst enemy, because if you're forcing yourself to do something that isn't fun for what in the grand scheme of things is a trivial power boost, and you're complaining you can't get it instantly, while also complaining about casuals...
I mean I get it, you want to be challenged, but you're really diluting your point with all these mixed messages.