Wrath is the end of a huge 10+ year long story combined with 5+ years of refined class and gameplay design in the hight of the MMO genre all coming together.
@@TheHorreK2 If Blizzard didn't totally suck, they'd OFFICIALLY retcon Shadowlands into a terrible fever dream, starting with Sylvanas' attack on the new Lich King. Some kind of world wide Old God Matrix-like dream world that the players finally break free from to find the whole world overrun by the minions of the Old Gods. It would at least explain how completely fucking lame Shadowlands was!
@@TheHorreK2 NO IT WAS NOT YOU IDIOT! The reused arthas story and put it on the little lion. They feminized the story and at the end the just threw arthas soul away like toilet paper…..this is what happens when the people who made the game and story are no longer involved in the actually game and is handed to lame woke people who brake things for there weird ideologies.
It's a big deal to me because I started playing during the original Wotlk. This was the "classic" I remember and really am excited to go through it again.
and its not the same as the original wotlk sadly, they tried to add some "retail" stuff and keep the old lfg systems and such, its a complete mess, so i decided to play retail after tbc because of this :D
@@pixibelle3282 many ppl enjoy it, if its good for you, then its fine, i am not trying to degrade anything or anyone here, i just wanted to play the "wotlk classic" as its intended to be, but nah, they kept changing stuff that made the game different (in a wrong way imo) and its not what i wanted to play, thats my whole point
@@dragonborn6347 I do understand. I just like it as it's not as complex for me to play. I do see differences though. Hardly surprising since we are using different hardware, as well.
Being deeply invested in the lore at the time, Deathwing & N'zoth were the end game I was waiting for and Sargeras the Final Boss. After Cataclysm we expected BFA to happen and end with us Killing N'zoth then Legion after that, ending with us finally killing Archimonde, Kil'jaeden and the Avatar of Sargeras or the big toe of Sargeras himself with the Naaru and Illidan then onward with Warcraft IV to finish the Legion off. This were the expected release of expansions based on the storytelling that was left to be told, a true epic saga. But they milked it with filler expansions that certainly added to the lore and worldbuilding but were pointless addition in the grand scheme of things.
@@XainfinenWell said. I feel the exact same way. Other than the void lords and darkness itself, theres no other real baddies to kill. Even then, the void lords arent too well developed as individual characters
Yeah!. The thing is, WC 3 ended in that huge cliffhanger and with a lot of loose ends but by 2010, all that story was set and done, Arthas was defeated, The Story of Illidan in Outland was done and that was it. They did Cataclysm that had some roots in the early WC 2 days but after that, they started moving the story to weirder and weirder places up until Shadowlands when they did the dumbest move a storyteller can make: the "It was me al along!" story with a villain that came out of nowhere but quite frankly, I could see that coming, WoW overarc story has been a mess since they lost their RTS days Anchor.
I vivdly remember "the Lich King doing nothing" being a bit of a meme on my sever back during Vanilla and TBC. Ironforge - and later Shattrath - chat was frequently like "Why aren't we getting the Lich King? Because he's too busy playing WoW / got owned by Chuck Norris / has been dealing with brain freeze / etc." But when WotLK was finally announced, we all lost our collective minds, and it turned out to be (mostly) glorious.
The fall of Arthas and the frozen throne was Warcraft’s equal to the destruction of the ring and Mordor in LOTR. Sure there’s a lot more lore and bigger cosmic threats, but the story telling and characters involved and villains are top tier story telling and design.
It is THE best and THE final expansion. I remember meeting my friends for the first time in-game back in WotLK many years ago. Still have screenshots of our first Lich King kill. Guess what, our trio is back in the classic WotLK, best feeling ever.
it is one of THE worst expansion. Mechanics are boring, location not interesting,gameplay slow and boring,graphic mid at the best,balance is non existing, and anyways everyone know what to do soo raids and everything gona fall in day 1.
The way they brought back Arthas in early Shadowlands just to turn him into a wisp and tell us to forget about him at the end, literally breaking the fourth wall, was such a slap in the face. He is the most beloved WoW character of all time and the modern writers at Blizz clearly can’t accept that. Shadowlands lore doesn’t exist to me and the sooner it’s forgotten the better the game will be.
I never reached 60 in Vanilla and I never pvp'd seriously or raided past kara/mag/gruul in original tbc, but it was during Wotlk that I really got into the game. Unfortunatelly though I moved to another country just as ICC was about to release so I missed the end of the expansion. I am really looking forward to hitting 80 and experiencing the best time of my gaming life again
@@semiramisubw4864 That’s not the only thing, Wrath is just too easy and casual from all aspects. At least later expansions offered challenging bosses with very interesting mechanics (ie seigecrafter blackfuse, hc garrosh, hc sha of pride, hc le shein)
I’m not sure where you’re getting the date of 2004 for the Lich King announcement. The lich king expansion wasn’t announced until 2007 en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Warcraft:_Wrath_of_the_Lich_King#Development_and_release
I’m a bit biased because I started my WoW journey during WotlK. Hands down, my most favorite expansion and memorable WoW experience. I rolled a warlock a few days ago, and I’m only at lvl 20. Hopefully I can catch up soon and join the fun!
To be honest I think Dragon Fight is literally refining lessons they learned from classic. I think classic has been a huge re-education for blizz on what players actually enjoy. See the classic devs actually play the game and love the game they are working on. It shows so much in their interviews. It also showed that there is a huge market for wow still. They were just so disconnected from the player base. People were like, hey there are better mmo's out there. For what we want. FF14 with its story really lit a fire under their feet.
It sure took them a freaking lot, considering only the threat of the vast majority of its player base (that which remained at least) moving to their competitors was what forced them to change.
In many aspects, I agree, the only things I think they are missing is the clasic style itemization and class design, meaning how the classes rotations play and what utility and raid buffs they bring.
every single expansion has someone going "finally blizzard is learning!" it's so funny lmao. but not a single point during shadowlands did blizzard showcase they learned anything from classic wow.
Bald headed attic goblin. I fucking love that joke. As someone who watches and enjoys both you and Asmon's content, I have to say bravo to you sir, that's the best one I've heard so far. 😂😂
I for one wish that Blizzard does it like Jagex did. Leave the game at a state where it was the most successful and add the things from later expensions + new things, with direct control via polls by the community, in a 6 month or so interval.
Just keep Wrath servers, I would play them forever! They could run it like Diablo 3 or StarCraft 2, keep it on the same expansion but maybe add little things like seasons and hardcore mode, but for the love of god please don't get rid of Wrath servers!
There were plenty of people that said the exact same thing for original Classic and Season of Mastery was basically dead after 2 months. I highly doubt that WotLk would be different without major changes.
People though the same about private Wotlk servers, that in a feel months they'll be empty but 2 decades after and they are all full of players and not even Classic vanila wow or classic TBC wow made any diference. It's the expansion itself that make people wanna keep playing over and over again. Permanent Wrath servers will be a constant income of money for bliz since people will slowly transfer from privates to retail with time.
The WC 3 Lore and story was the anchor that kept the WoW overall story coherent and cohesive. After those stories where solved in BC and Wrath, the story started just going to bad places and the exit of Chris Metzen also let the story totally loose, hence the current situation where we are no dealing with cosmic shit in astral planes and dumb "It was me al along" stories.
He is correct is assuming there are a large amount of people playing wrath right now that otherwise wouldn't be playing any form of wow/blizz game in general and won't be after its over
Playing Wrath Classic has been the most fun I’ve ever had in WoW so far. I’ve played WoW since late 2005 and experienced the majority of ever expansions content… and I gotta say now that I’m back in Northrend, I don’t really have a desire to play anything else going forward. My personal best case scenario would be that Blizzard allows the end of Wrath to continue with a completely different timeline. A “what if” to the story after Wrath… what if the Lich King wins this time? What if instead of going into Cataclysm we have a completely different threat rise up with an entire legion of the Scarlet Crusade? What if we can still have “old Azeroth” and still have Worgen and Goblins in a Wrath+ setting? The possibilities are endless
I don't feel like playing Wrath again I was there when it first launched and it was a blast, I loved it but I feel if I played again it would be more of a chore because I remember most of the storyline and quests, I'll just wait for dragonflight to come out.
I started wow in 2010, my first raid was in cataclysm. but ever since wod i have only played classic, tbc and wrath. wod is what made me curious about the older games. its kinda funny when people bring out the nostalgia argument because i literally cant even have nostalgia. i just prefer the older game for... reasons i quess :D i have played classic since its launch in 2019, and ive only missed a few current raid lockouts during that. really have ahd a great time, not even shilling or anything.
Their own quote summarizes exactly how their end has, and will come. No King rules forever. When Wrath was first released, I had to wait months to save up enough money for a computer to play it, even though I pre-ordered and owned the game from release. The computer I used to play Classic and BC broke; I was 18 and on my own for the first time. When I finally got to play it, I enjoyed it, but I can honestly say, by the time I took down the Lich King on the easiest setting, it felt like there was no reason to play anymore. By killing Arthas, they killed themselves, and the spirit of WoW was never the same once the end was near. Things like LFG, Blizzards store, IO checks, arenas, achievements and flying mounts were all heralds of the changing landscape of the game, and while to some degrees I think they improved the game, they also massively divided the player base and created a rewards based system, rather than an experience based one. In Vanilla, you didn't have anything other than money, mounts and gear to show people what the world would look like at the highest echelons of content. It created a mystery and desire to experience it for yourself. I know because I was in the top raiding guild on Shadowsong in 2005. Once the rewards became more tangible, they could be sold, and once a market was created, the soul of the game was sold. Warcraft is now a pay to win game, and frankly, its not fun enough to justify the cost anymore. Not even the monthly subscription.
It is like you described my childhood. I was a massive wow fan, played it with my friends daily for years. We invested heavily on wrath and those clips from it bring back so many memories. And just like you described, I ended up quiting midway through Cata. Didn't watch back until for like a month during Bfa when the game was on sale. It didn't feel the same tho so I just ended up not renewing the subscription. I am tempted to jump back to wrath but sadly I am not a kid anymore, there isn't much spare time in my life at.
I loved how Ner'Zhul was the orc who defied the burning legion's wishes and as punishment he was locked away in a frozen block of ice. Ner'zhul was the centerpiece of the humans vs orcs idea and was THE GOOD orc. Arthas, the next king of Lorderon, fusing with Ner'zhul to become THE VILLAIN even though both characters sacrificed so much to protect their people is just perfect storytelling. The other characters aren't as symbolic of the tragedy that Warcraft tells in my opinion. Both Ner'Zhul and Arthas became who they became because they did everything right. It was the humans vs orcs core. Ner'zhul is my favorite character in Warcraft and not having him in the story takes away from it, or ends it. So Warcraft's true story to me might've been Ner'zhul's storyline. I would've loved to be able and play the Scourge.
I stood in freezing rain in the middle of the night to pick up my copy of Wrath in the day. While it's not the same as it was then since most of my friends quit, the first thing I did was ride out to Grizzly Hills. I'm home.
WotLK made every class viable, but most importantly, made every class fun+good at something in PvE and PvP content. Enhance Shamans went from buffing melee, to top DPS at the start and could arguably hold that spot with the Spell Enhance build until the legendary weapon in ICC is released.
man you really got the whole point for many player I remember playin as arthas in WC 3 when I was in elementary school and later playing wow loving the idea of finally taking on arthas the lich king on high school and now as an adult been able to relive the experience is awesome
is @4:35 - @4:43 a mistake? because you said the reveal for wotlk was 2004 but also said we had to wait until the first expansion to actually get there? sorry if i‘m being mean but it just stood out to me. awesome content as always!
Wotlk was the best expansion of the best MMO game at that time, it came out at the best period in time when MMOs were at their height and also it had the best story in the entire game.
What if we get Classic Plus? A different timeline after Wrath. You stay at 80, you keep your talent tree, and raid bosses are 83 like the Lich King, but also they are more powerful. The first time you kill a plus boss and only the first, you will be rewarded 1 extra talent point.
Classic has the potential to save wow. The developers can decide to split its direction from retail's and fix all the issues that were íntroduced in the expansions following wrath. I hope they carefully think about this potential and make a proper decision to save this potential gem from a fatal decline.
Never played Wow till the announcement of Classic and over the years of grow apart from my friends. I've met lots of friendly people who are older then me that just genuinely love the game and have welcomed me with open arms. Teaching me how to play the game, and everything else that entails. It's been a long time that I've enjoyed a multiplayer game like this before.
Wrong at the end of the video. Your journey towards the frozen throne starts at level 1, not 80. Thats some boosting mindset idea to invalidate the leveling. It‘s part of your characters progression as well as your own progression as a player who starts world of warcraft for the first time.
From above, we built Arthas up through his rise and fall, commanded his destruction of Lordaeron and ascent to the Frozen Throne. On the ground, we fought through the ruins which we wrought, and we battled our way back into the Frozen Throne.
There was a time when the world wasn’t open yet and everyone was preparing to dock at northrend and people with bis gear get destroyed by lv 80 mobs in game was the best time
In regards to min 4:39 , Afaik the Blizzcon where they revealed the WotLK expansion was 2008. I doubt there even was a Blizzcon in 2004. I think the first one was in 2005.
There's boost and store mounts in the classic 🥺 that's why the only classic that I played was vanilla classic, sadly. Because TBC was my favorite xpack. Hope ppl enjoy wotlk tho! I'm sticking to classic vanilla ❤️
Tbh the three first expansion was the best Wotlk the best of all 3 for multiple reasons. When cataclysm was out there was already a huge downside in term of gameplay and it never recovered from that. Even legion didn't
Wrath was such a big deal, because it was released the right time with all the right conditions: - MMO genre was already established so it also attracted normies, not only hard core nerds - Bringing back Arthas is something like making Lord of the Rings 4 - Return of Gandalf. Instant interest. - The more the game hyped, the more people were coming in. Friends telling other friends, telling other friends... - Blizzard has learned a lot of stuff since 2004 to fix and change a lot of things in the game to create the perfect combination of familiarity but also progress.
It was the last product the real blizzard made. It was good unlike everything after. It's the last time you will ever get to play it and it's the last time we will play a blizzard product.
Yea, I was super disappointed with how they "wrapped up" Arthas's story in Shadowlands. I wanted an Arthas redemption arc. But no, we get a Sylvanus redemption arc that everyone saw coming but nobody wanted and what happened to Arthas? A blob, a blip at the end of the story that just poofs. >_> Blizz has such potential with their story telling and game features but then either half-asses them or straight squanders them. Big sad.
Well, I can't speak for anyone but myself...but since mission one in WC3 I found Arthas to be an insufferable little shit and he only got worse from there! Putting him down for the first time really was the apex of wow for me.
Feel the same as everyone else. What greater threat is there than the undead? Granted they dont have an infectious zombie disease that can plague the living easily but it was still an epic setting - the living vs the dead. Not sure at what patch stage the classic currently is - but I feel like they should change the story once the players reach the lich king and make them actually die, fail and rise again as the lich kings champions. Its already like an alternate universe, why not make a complete different story out of it.
If you really think about it Blizzard gave themselfes actually a second chance to release new addons after WotLK - like everything past it never happened, an alternate WoW dimension. But I dont think they will be that smart ;D
Well, I would like to return to WotLK, but only if I get my characters as they were at the end of WotLK (no: I would not have nothing left to do, because while I was raiding, I was far from having Ice Crown clear or even that Titan instance, so yeah, enough stuff left...but I would hate to have to level everybody up again, grind for the T9-Sets (which I had for all classes I was playing, so every class except: Rogue, Hunter, Warrior, DK and Warlock, so yeah I had a lot of characters!))
Warcraft 3. Better times. 😌☀ ° Arthas was mindcontrolled and not in control of his evil actions after picking up Frostmourne. ⚔ ° And Sylvannas was in control of herself after she broke free of the weakened control of Forstmourne and no part of her soul was anywhere else but in her Banshee-form. 🙂 In Shadowlands Arthas is ret-conned to have been in control the entire time apparently... and Sylvannas is a femdom-incel-fantasy nuclear Karen talking down to him, when she was a 10 times worse as him while in fact having full autonomy over her actions *'before'* the ret-con!
@@Anonimowany1 Are you a Nihilist? 😉 You know you cannot tell someone they must die because one day _"they might die"._ Do not even try it! 🤣 You can't win! Sylvannas was a nuclear Karen, void of any true logic and she hated the consent of others just the same as Zoval did. She murdered, did false-flag and all kinds of gaslighting sh°° since Classic. All because she was afraid to one day lose power. _"Just like any old white Man would. "_ 😂 The writers ruined her! She was cool before! But then she became an incel-fantasy jaaas-queen and her whole agenda became more & more crazy. ^_^
Honestly it’s incredibly revisit this expansion and classic WoW in general. Thanks to retail WoW for setting the bar low enough so the little things that were controversial when this expansion initially dropped are no longer an issue.
I was hesitating to come play anything blizzard again, finally on the 25th i decided to come back in WOTLK classic just to play DK again, the OG frost DK. And it is so pleasurable!!! The height of MMO gaming, PVP.
@@Lascar233 Cata, MoP and WoD were the three best eras for PvP by far. Cata was when the biggest streamers came up in PvP, MoP had the best class design for every spec and WoD had Ashran and great gear scaling.
@@Lascar233 MoP was when the PvE players started to PvP. Glad gear pieces dropped from world bosses, you didn’t need to dedicate an entire half of your dual-spec for PvP but most importantly, classes were re-designed so that all specs were viable. Not to mention, PvP gear didn’t sacrifice a secondary stat for PvP Power,giving PvP players a way into raiding. You had more abilities than ever in MoP which raised for skill ceiling for raiding and pvp.
I think wow classic also hits a new audience of people who were too far past launch to get into retail and they also don't have the huge connection to Arthas.. I think Cataclysim classic (with some improvements) might be pretty successful... not wotlk successful, but not a failure. I'm surprise how many players I meet in game that are totally new to WoW. Personally I was playing other games when wotlk was big, and I didn't enjoy skipping all previous content to get to the newest expansion, so this is like my first time to experience the game. I also didn't like how Cata made it impossible to go back and do older content because they removed so much.
Cause people love to desperately cling to good memories, purposely blinding themselves to the fact that Blizzard will more than likely never return to the state they once were.
Wrath is the end of a huge 10+ year long story combined with 5+ years of refined class and gameplay design in the hight of the MMO genre all coming together.
And game is actually unfinised
Nononono *cough* shadowlands is the final of said long storyline *cough* its the end of Arthas´s story and was totally planned this way *dies*
This is true, this is the pinnacle. After WotLK is the point where the company started falling off.
@@TheHorreK2 If Blizzard didn't totally suck, they'd OFFICIALLY retcon Shadowlands into a terrible fever dream, starting with Sylvanas' attack on the new Lich King.
Some kind of world wide Old God Matrix-like dream world that the players finally break free from to find the whole world overrun by the minions of the Old Gods.
It would at least explain how completely fucking lame Shadowlands was!
@@TheHorreK2 NO IT WAS NOT YOU IDIOT! The reused arthas story and put it on the little lion. They feminized the story and at the end the just threw arthas soul away like toilet paper…..this is what happens when the people who made the game and story are no longer involved in the actually game and is handed to lame woke people who brake things for there weird ideologies.
It's a big deal to me because I started playing during the original Wotlk. This was the "classic" I remember and really am excited to go through it again.
I started in the prepatch :).
and its not the same as the original wotlk sadly, they tried to add some "retail" stuff and keep the old lfg systems and such, its a complete mess, so i decided to play retail after tbc because of this :D
@@dragonborn6347 I'm enjoying this version.
@@pixibelle3282 many ppl enjoy it, if its good for you, then its fine, i am not trying to degrade anything or anyone here, i just wanted to play the "wotlk classic" as its intended to be, but nah, they kept changing stuff that made the game different (in a wrong way imo) and its not what i wanted to play, thats my whole point
@@dragonborn6347 I do understand. I just like it as it's not as complex for me to play. I do see differences though. Hardly surprising since we are using different hardware, as well.
Wrath of the lich king felt like the end mission, everything after that felt just as a bonus content for when you finish the game to boost some score.
Being deeply invested in the lore at the time, Deathwing & N'zoth were the end game I was waiting for and Sargeras the Final Boss. After Cataclysm we expected BFA to happen and end with us Killing N'zoth then Legion after that, ending with us finally killing Archimonde, Kil'jaeden and the Avatar of Sargeras or the big toe of Sargeras himself with the Naaru and Illidan then onward with Warcraft IV to finish the Legion off. This were the expected release of expansions based on the storytelling that was left to be told, a true epic saga. But they milked it with filler expansions that certainly added to the lore and worldbuilding but were pointless addition in the grand scheme of things.
Kinda like MCU... it ended after the release od End game..
@@XainfinenWell said. I feel the exact same way. Other than the void lords and darkness itself, theres no other real baddies to kill. Even then, the void lords arent too well developed as individual characters
Yeah!. The thing is, WC 3 ended in that huge cliffhanger and with a lot of loose ends but by 2010, all that story was set and done, Arthas was defeated, The Story of Illidan in Outland was done and that was it. They did Cataclysm that had some roots in the early WC 2 days but after that, they started moving the story to weirder and weirder places up until Shadowlands when they did the dumbest move a storyteller can make: the "It was me al along!" story with a villain that came out of nowhere but quite frankly, I could see that coming, WoW overarc story has been a mess since they lost their RTS days Anchor.
But what about Sargeras?
To me, Wow should be Worlk then ending on Legion when we finally kill Sargeras.
I vivdly remember "the Lich King doing nothing" being a bit of a meme on my sever back during Vanilla and TBC.
Ironforge - and later Shattrath - chat was frequently like "Why aren't we getting the Lich King? Because he's too busy playing WoW / got owned by Chuck Norris / has been dealing with brain freeze / etc."
But when WotLK was finally announced, we all lost our collective minds, and it turned out to be (mostly) glorious.
You activated a core memory.
I had forgotten this. Thank you.
Well, the Blizzard back then seems like they might have been pretty smart.
The fall of Arthas and the frozen throne was Warcraft’s equal to the destruction of the ring and Mordor in LOTR. Sure there’s a lot more lore and bigger cosmic threats, but the story telling and characters involved and villains are top tier story telling and design.
Wrath was so good, it had "The Oculus" and it still was a fantastic Expansion
The Oculus is fun and easy.
Stop with this Occulus whine, it's easy af and almost completely not depended on gear, one of the easiest dungeons
Also the oculus gives 9 emblems of triumph so it's basically half of a gem
It is THE best and THE final expansion. I remember meeting my friends for the first time in-game back in WotLK many years ago. Still have screenshots of our first Lich King kill. Guess what, our trio is back in the classic WotLK, best feeling ever.
it is one of THE worst expansion. Mechanics are boring, location not interesting,gameplay slow and boring,graphic mid at the best,balance is non existing, and anyways everyone know what to do soo raids and everything gona fall in day 1.
I started during wrath and it has a special place in my heart but I also really loved cataclysm back in the day.
Wrath of the Lich Classic is a chance for Blizzard to create a completely different time line and give us something new that follows it.
Go straight to Legion and give us an end for WoW by destroying the world with the sword of sargeras GG
@EpicKingdom_ id perfer cata and mop then i dont care.
That's an interesting idea, they could weave chromie into it somehow so that our two timelines exist simultaneously if they want to keep retail cannon
It's all shit
@EpicKingdom_ not from any of these writers dude
The way they brought back Arthas in early Shadowlands just to turn him into a wisp and tell us to forget about him at the end, literally breaking the fourth wall, was such a slap in the face. He is the most beloved WoW character of all time and the modern writers at Blizz clearly can’t accept that. Shadowlands lore doesn’t exist to me and the sooner it’s forgotten the better the game will be.
I never reached 60 in Vanilla and I never pvp'd seriously or raided past kara/mag/gruul in original tbc, but it was during Wotlk that I really got into the game. Unfortunatelly though I moved to another country just as ICC was about to release so I missed the end of the expansion. I am really looking forward to hitting 80 and experiencing the best time of my gaming life again
The best storyline.
EVER..
Guess you haven't experienced a lot of media then
@@borek92 OR MAYBE YOU'RE AN IDIOT!!!
I'm trying really hard not to relive my early 20s. It's never going to be as good as I remember it.
Because you now see how easy the content is.
@@brandonkruse6412 this, lol.
Stay strong brother. They don't deserve a single penny for what they did.
@@brandonkruse6412 if you think an MMO is nothing more than "hard content" than you dont want to play an MMORPG.
@@semiramisubw4864 That’s not the only thing, Wrath is just too easy and casual from all aspects. At least later expansions offered challenging bosses with very interesting mechanics (ie seigecrafter blackfuse, hc garrosh, hc sha of pride, hc le shein)
I’m not sure where you’re getting the date of 2004 for the Lich King announcement. The lich king expansion wasn’t announced until 2007
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Warcraft:_Wrath_of_the_Lich_King#Development_and_release
I’m a bit biased because I started my WoW journey during WotlK. Hands down, my most favorite expansion and memorable WoW experience. I rolled a warlock a few days ago, and I’m only at lvl 20. Hopefully I can catch up soon and join the fun!
To be honest I think Dragon Fight is literally refining lessons they learned from classic. I think classic has been a huge re-education for blizz on what players actually enjoy. See the classic devs actually play the game and love the game they are working on. It shows so much in their interviews. It also showed that there is a huge market for wow still. They were just so disconnected from the player base. People were like, hey there are better mmo's out there. For what we want. FF14 with its story really lit a fire under their feet.
It sure took them a freaking lot, considering only the threat of the vast majority of its player base (that which remained at least) moving to their competitors was what forced them to change.
I smell copium
In many aspects, I agree, the only things I think they are missing is the clasic style itemization and class design, meaning how the classes rotations play and what utility and raid buffs they bring.
every single expansion has someone going "finally blizzard is learning!" it's so funny lmao. but not a single point during shadowlands did blizzard showcase they learned anything from classic wow.
All 4 of them classic devs play the game
Bald headed attic goblin. I fucking love that joke. As someone who watches and enjoys both you and Asmon's content, I have to say bravo to you sir, that's the best one I've heard so far. 😂😂
I for one wish that Blizzard does it like Jagex did. Leave the game at a state where it was the most successful and add the things from later expensions + new things, with direct control via polls by the community, in a 6 month or so interval.
Just keep Wrath servers, I would play them forever! They could run it like Diablo 3 or StarCraft 2, keep it on the same expansion but maybe add little things like seasons and hardcore mode, but for the love of god please don't get rid of Wrath servers!
There were plenty of people that said the exact same thing for original Classic and Season of Mastery was basically dead after 2 months. I highly doubt that WotLk would be different without major changes.
People though the same about private Wotlk servers, that in a feel months they'll be empty but 2 decades after and they are all full of players and not even Classic vanila wow or classic TBC wow made any diference.
It's the expansion itself that make people wanna keep playing over and over again.
Permanent Wrath servers will be a constant income of money for bliz since people will slowly transfer from privates to retail with time.
I don't know why I expected a queue to watch this 😅
The WC 3 Lore and story was the anchor that kept the WoW overall story coherent and cohesive. After those stories where solved in BC and Wrath, the story started just going to bad places and the exit of Chris Metzen also let the story totally loose, hence the current situation where we are no dealing with cosmic shit in astral planes and dumb "It was me al along" stories.
WotLK is about to prove again why it's the best expansion ever.
He is correct is assuming there are a large amount of people playing wrath right now that otherwise wouldn't be playing any form of wow/blizz game in general and won't be after its over
Playing Wrath Classic has been the most fun I’ve ever had in WoW so far. I’ve played WoW since late 2005 and experienced the majority of ever expansions content… and I gotta say now that I’m back in Northrend, I don’t really have a desire to play anything else going forward. My personal best case scenario would be that Blizzard allows the end of Wrath to continue with a completely different timeline. A “what if” to the story after Wrath… what if the Lich King wins this time? What if instead of going into Cataclysm we have a completely different threat rise up with an entire legion of the Scarlet Crusade? What if we can still have “old Azeroth” and still have Worgen and Goblins in a Wrath+ setting? The possibilities are endless
I don't feel like playing Wrath again I was there when it first launched and it was a blast, I loved it but I feel if I played again it would be more of a chore because I remember most of the storyline and quests, I'll just wait for dragonflight to come out.
I started wow in 2010, my first raid was in cataclysm. but ever since wod i have only played classic, tbc and wrath. wod is what made me curious about the older games. its kinda funny when people bring out the nostalgia argument because i literally cant even have nostalgia. i just prefer the older game for... reasons i quess :D i have played classic since its launch in 2019, and ive only missed a few current raid lockouts during that. really have ahd a great time, not even shilling or anything.
Their own quote summarizes exactly how their end has, and will come.
No King rules forever.
When Wrath was first released, I had to wait months to save up enough money for a computer to play it, even though I pre-ordered and owned the game from release. The computer I used to play Classic and BC broke; I was 18 and on my own for the first time. When I finally got to play it, I enjoyed it, but I can honestly say, by the time I took down the Lich King on the easiest setting, it felt like there was no reason to play anymore.
By killing Arthas, they killed themselves, and the spirit of WoW was never the same once the end was near. Things like LFG, Blizzards store, IO checks, arenas, achievements and flying mounts were all heralds of the changing landscape of the game, and while to some degrees I think they improved the game, they also massively divided the player base and created a rewards based system, rather than an experience based one.
In Vanilla, you didn't have anything other than money, mounts and gear to show people what the world would look like at the highest echelons of content. It created a mystery and desire to experience it for yourself. I know because I was in the top raiding guild on Shadowsong in 2005. Once the rewards became more tangible, they could be sold, and once a market was created, the soul of the game was sold. Warcraft is now a pay to win game, and frankly, its not fun enough to justify the cost anymore. Not even the monthly subscription.
It is like you described my childhood. I was a massive wow fan, played it with my friends daily for years. We invested heavily on wrath and those clips from it bring back so many memories.
And just like you described, I ended up quiting midway through Cata. Didn't watch back until for like a month during Bfa when the game was on sale. It didn't feel the same tho so I just ended up not renewing the subscription.
I am tempted to jump back to wrath but sadly I am not a kid anymore, there isn't much spare time in my life at.
I loved how Ner'Zhul was the orc who defied the burning legion's wishes and as punishment he was locked away in a frozen block of ice.
Ner'zhul was the centerpiece of the humans vs orcs idea and was THE GOOD orc. Arthas, the next king of Lorderon, fusing with Ner'zhul to become THE VILLAIN even though both characters sacrificed so much to protect their people is just perfect storytelling.
The other characters aren't as symbolic of the tragedy that Warcraft tells in my opinion. Both Ner'Zhul and Arthas became who they became because they did everything right. It was the humans vs orcs core.
Ner'zhul is my favorite character in Warcraft and not having him in the story takes away from it, or ends it. So Warcraft's true story to me might've been Ner'zhul's storyline. I would've loved to be able and play the Scourge.
I stood in freezing rain in the middle of the night to pick up my copy of Wrath in the day. While it's not the same as it was then since most of my friends quit, the first thing I did was ride out to Grizzly Hills. I'm home.
I'm having more fun with wrath then I did back then. That's the sign of a 10/10 game
WotLK made every class viable, but most importantly, made every class fun+good at something in PvE and PvP content.
Enhance Shamans went from buffing melee, to top DPS at the start and could arguably hold that spot with the Spell Enhance build until the legendary weapon in ICC is released.
man you really got the whole point for many player I remember playin as arthas in WC 3 when I was in elementary school and later playing wow loving the idea of finally taking on arthas the lich king on high school and now as an adult been able to relive the experience is awesome
is @4:35 - @4:43 a mistake? because you said the reveal for wotlk was 2004 but also said we had to wait until the first expansion to actually get there? sorry if i‘m being mean but it just stood out to me. awesome content as always!
Why is wrath of the lich king was is when you is was is when is big was a deal?
Wotlk was the best expansion of the best MMO game at that time, it came out at the best period in time when MMOs were at their height and also it had the best story in the entire game.
What if we get Classic Plus? A different timeline after Wrath. You stay at 80, you keep your talent tree, and raid bosses are 83 like the Lich King, but also they are more powerful. The first time you kill a plus boss and only the first, you will be rewarded 1 extra talent point.
Classic has the potential to save wow. The developers can decide to split its direction from retail's and fix all the issues that were íntroduced in the expansions following wrath. I hope they carefully think about this potential and make a proper decision to save this potential gem from a fatal decline.
"Then i must consider this an act of Arthas"
Never played Wow till the announcement of Classic and over the years of grow apart from my friends. I've met lots of friendly people who are older then me that just genuinely love the game and have welcomed me with open arms. Teaching me how to play the game, and everything else that entails. It's been a long time that I've enjoyed a multiplayer game like this before.
Wraith was my favorite expansion back then
Wrong at the end of the video. Your journey towards the frozen throne starts at level 1, not 80.
Thats some boosting mindset idea to invalidate the leveling. It‘s part of your characters progression as well as your own progression as a player who starts world of warcraft for the first time.
From above, we built Arthas up through his rise and fall, commanded his destruction of Lordaeron and ascent to the Frozen Throne.
On the ground, we fought through the ruins which we wrought, and we battled our way back into the Frozen Throne.
Wrath is where I finally started understanding the game, because I came in during the end of BC.
God I miss those days.
A twist would be so good. What if Arthas somehow warps to save modern wow. 😂
There was a time when the world wasn’t open yet and everyone was preparing to dock at northrend and people with bis gear get destroyed by lv 80 mobs in game was the best time
I read about it on a gaming magazine and I lost my mind... because internet wasn't a thing in my area at that time...
I'm so pissed at what they did to Arthas in the Shadowlands...
Memories of the funnest time in my life. I'm going to buy a computer just to play again.
In regards to min 4:39 , Afaik the Blizzcon where they revealed the WotLK expansion was 2008. I doubt there even was a Blizzcon in 2004. I think the first one was in 2005.
I am playing it right now after Many and many years of quitting wow and it is a blast, Me and my guild cleared Nax yesterday and it felt good.
There's boost and store mounts in the classic 🥺 that's why the only classic that I played was vanilla classic, sadly. Because TBC was my favorite xpack. Hope ppl enjoy wotlk tho! I'm sticking to classic vanilla ❤️
Tbh the three first expansion was the best Wotlk the best of all 3 for multiple reasons. When cataclysm was out there was already a huge downside in term of gameplay and it never recovered from that. Even legion didn't
ill never know, i got banned for spamming opening up lockboxes and d/eing stuff.
You put two “is” in the title bro
I'm playing because I'm interested in the future of "classic" project, and wotlk is the last expansion that leads to this future
2:30 ZINWRATH!
pretty much nailed it. Going to max out my Paladin because im likely going no further than this
Nixxiom: "WotLK was the best expansion"
Me as a TBC Andy: "and I took that personally"
Early enough to catch the typo. Happy to see wow content from u always
I just want a wotlk remaster. Today's graphics and old wrath would be awesome.
Wrath was such a big deal, because it was released the right time with all the right conditions:
- MMO genre was already established so it also attracted normies, not only hard core nerds
- Bringing back Arthas is something like making Lord of the Rings 4 - Return of Gandalf. Instant interest.
- The more the game hyped, the more people were coming in. Friends telling other friends, telling other friends...
- Blizzard has learned a lot of stuff since 2004 to fix and change a lot of things in the game to create the perfect combination of familiarity but also progress.
Hey uh, Nixxiom? You said that it was revealed in 2004 that the 2 expansion would be "Wrath of the Lich King".
2004 is when WoW first came out.
It was the last product the real blizzard made. It was good unlike everything after. It's the last time you will ever get to play it and it's the last time we will play a blizzard product.
Yea, I was super disappointed with how they "wrapped up" Arthas's story in Shadowlands. I wanted an Arthas redemption arc. But no, we get a Sylvanus redemption arc that everyone saw coming but nobody wanted and what happened to Arthas? A blob, a blip at the end of the story that just poofs. >_>
Blizz has such potential with their story telling and game features but then either half-asses them or straight squanders them. Big sad.
The Jailer: “All according to plan...“
In those days I wouldn’t say we all played because we wanted to kill the lich king. Many of us believed blizzard would never kill off the lich king.
The Warcraft lore the arthas character was the best I ever seen and the cinematics. Enganging to teeenagers like me back in the time
4:40 Wrath was announced during Blizzcon 2007, not 2004
Well, I can't speak for anyone but myself...but since mission one in WC3 I found Arthas to be an insufferable little shit and he only got worse from there! Putting him down for the first time really was the apex of wow for me.
Feel the same as everyone else.
What greater threat is there than the undead? Granted they dont have an infectious zombie disease that can plague the living easily but it was still an epic setting - the living vs the dead.
Not sure at what patch stage the classic currently is - but I feel like they should change the story once the players reach the lich king and make them actually die, fail and rise again as the lich kings champions.
Its already like an alternate universe, why not make a complete different story out of it.
If you really think about it Blizzard gave themselfes actually a second chance to release new addons after WotLK - like everything past it never happened, an alternate WoW dimension. But I dont think they will be that smart ;D
Well, I would like to return to WotLK, but only if I get my characters as they were at the end of WotLK (no: I would not have nothing left to do, because while I was raiding, I was far from having Ice Crown clear or even that Titan instance, so yeah, enough stuff left...but I would hate to have to level everybody up again, grind for the T9-Sets (which I had for all classes I was playing, so every class except: Rogue, Hunter, Warrior, DK and Warlock, so yeah I had a lot of characters!))
My eyes! Not the footage from WC3 reforged. Nooo!!!
Warcraft 3. Better times. 😌☀
° Arthas was mindcontrolled and not in control of his evil actions after picking up Frostmourne. ⚔
° And Sylvannas was in control of herself after she broke free of the weakened control of Forstmourne and no part of her soul was anywhere else but in her Banshee-form. 🙂
In Shadowlands Arthas is ret-conned to have been in control the entire time apparently... and Sylvannas is a femdom-incel-fantasy nuclear Karen talking down to him, when she was a 10 times worse as him while in fact having full autonomy over her actions *'before'* the ret-con!
@@Anonimowany1 Are you a Nihilist? 😉
You know you cannot tell someone they must die because one day _"they might die"._
Do not even try it! 🤣 You can't win! Sylvannas was a nuclear Karen, void of any true logic and she hated the consent of others just the same as Zoval did.
She murdered, did false-flag and all kinds of gaslighting sh°° since Classic.
All because she was afraid to one day lose power. _"Just like any old white Man would. "_ 😂
The writers ruined her! She was cool before! But then she became an incel-fantasy jaaas-queen and her whole agenda became more & more crazy. ^_^
Honestly it’s incredibly revisit this expansion and classic WoW in general. Thanks to retail WoW for setting the bar low enough so the little things that were controversial when this expansion initially dropped are no longer an issue.
"Tell them that the Lich King is dead... and that World of Warcraft, died with him."
IDC what blizzard says, wrath was the end of the first Warcraft lore book, not shadowlands
it reminds me of the old kingslayer sleeping inside me knowing he accomplish his fates.
I was hesitating to come play anything blizzard again, finally on the 25th i decided to come back in WOTLK classic just to play DK again, the OG frost DK. And it is so pleasurable!!! The height of MMO gaming, PVP.
Wrath PvP was pretty bad compared the Cata and MoP.
@@brandonkruse6412 MOP? XD yea you lost all credibility just putting MOP in there. MOP where it went downhill entirely for pvp.
@@Lascar233 Cata, MoP and WoD were the three best eras for PvP by far. Cata was when the biggest streamers came up in PvP, MoP had the best class design for every spec and WoD had Ashran and great gear scaling.
@@Lascar233 MoP was when the PvE players started to PvP. Glad gear pieces dropped from world bosses, you didn’t need to dedicate an entire half of your dual-spec for PvP but most importantly, classes were re-designed so that all specs were viable.
Not to mention, PvP gear didn’t sacrifice a secondary stat for PvP Power,giving PvP players a way into raiding.
You had more abilities than ever in MoP which raised for skill ceiling for raiding and pvp.
01:55 - Them's fighting words
wrath has been a breath of fresh air in wow, i'm actually enjoying playing the game again, it's so weird
I think wow classic also hits a new audience of people who were too far past launch to get into retail and they also don't have the huge connection to Arthas.. I think Cataclysim classic (with some improvements) might be pretty successful... not wotlk successful, but not a failure. I'm surprise how many players I meet in game that are totally new to WoW.
Personally I was playing other games when wotlk was big, and I didn't enjoy skipping all previous content to get to the newest expansion, so this is like my first time to experience the game. I also didn't like how Cata made it impossible to go back and do older content because they removed so much.
Have we forgotten that we were suppose to obtain new dances in WOTLK and never got them?
Legion was the best expansion. It ended everything. Everything that came after that was a brand new conflict.
I walked away in WotLK and never played WoW again until Classic Vanilla. Vanilla through Wrath is peak WoW.
Says wotlk was announced in 2004 at blizz con. Is that true ?
he said we got to go back to the past back to 2002 and i thought he meant woltk for a moment and about had a panic attack.... like shit how old am I
4:39 . Announced in 2004? Wasn't it in 2007 that WotLK was announced?
Love your videos Nixxiom. keep it up
great video. It made me want to play it.
Dude. Everyone and their mother are cooler than Malfurion.
Great video. Good info, well presented.
Most people left wow after WOTLK and CATA...WOTLK hands down the best MMO game EVER MADE
Can't you just replay wotlk on retail version again?
Cause people love to desperately cling to good memories, purposely blinding themselves to the fact that Blizzard will more than likely never return to the state they once were.
2007 Blizzcon was when wotlk was announced, not 2004...
“Bald headed attic goblin” Nice
Wow wotlk was the best addon. But fuck it im done with blizzard, i still wait for them fix Warcraft 3 Reforged.
Can't w8 for SoM2, Classic + or something like that.
Where is the 8:40 part of the video from?