Just Why Was Wrath of the Lich King So Popular?
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- Опубликовано: 22 авг 2024
- I was thinking, considering WotLK contained so many features that people consider negative nowdays, how come it was the most popular WoW ever got subscriber wise?
Let's take a look into the expansion features and just why it saw such widespread success!
Enjoy!
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Storm Peaks Music: • Storm Peaks Day Music
Howling Fjord Music: • Howling Fjord and Utga...
Grizzly Hills Music: • WotLK Grizzly Hills Da...
Outro - A small track from Winterspring, "Winterspring 5"
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#wowclassic #wow #warcraft #classicwow #TBC #TheBurningCrusade
i can sum it up in one sentence:
"the day you were born the very forests of Lorderon whispered the name, 'Arthas'"
For me wotlk was best as it was a core point of warcraft lore and story
This gave me chills haha
True, that goddam cinematic.
@@come2brasil633 The best gaming cinematic of all time
@@qcdoomqc at long last....no King Rules Forever My Son.....
Why was it so popular? GRIZZLY HILLS MUSIC 🙌
Arcturis
Amen! Love that music!
Especially waking up in the morning on a day off with the sun shining through the window. Fresh brewed cup of coffee while questing in grizzly hills with the volume up.
Sofa Kingdom god tier questing
@@ianno3 I'd love to relive those days, but I've moved on from WoW after cataclysm.
1) The story was cool
2) you didn't need a good PC to play WoW at that time
3) you had plenty of people to play with
4) The story was cool
5) It felt beginner friendly
6) the story was cool
7) the trailer
8) the story was cool
9) the music was amazing
10) the story was cool
You forgot about how cool the story was
@@chimney6490 Also the amazing narrative throughout the expansion. That was something you clearly missed.
Also: the plot was great.
Personally, I would slightly disagree though. The most compelling aspect about WotLK was the chronological sequence of events and their respective connections. No idea why you would not mention that.
oh I did need a good pc otherwise I got 100% dc in Dalaran
@@mowgaz3439 True on my old PC dalaran was a 1FPS slideshow in dalaran and in TBC shatt.
Well, you don't really need a good PC today either.
Ya’ll remember that suuuper short period of time blood was a DPS spec? Pepperidge farm remembers.
And Frost was a hard tank spec? Good times
and armor pen blood DK was epic big time.
I do because everyone in my guild made dk's and we all leveled together in the starting zone...what a memory..
I still miss frost tank
Omg yes!! I keep trying to find a raid POV of ulduar of a blood dk! They had so many abilities and so many cooldowns, it was sooo fun
Why was WotLK popular?
Because lore of the final boss follwed you from the first step into Northrend untill the final step.
Because classes had their class identity and fantasy was strong and relatively unique.
Because gear was fun and something you could work towards, in contrast to recent expansions where gear isn't fun and completely down to RNG.
Getting to choose from knowing who the 'bad guy' is from the start and have proper build-up all the way, or having one just randomly show up despite rather pointless teases from earlier expansions... Yeah, picking the guy that the whole expansion is building up to.
Don't forget gear customization. There were A LOT of viable sets for each class ontop of slotting gems for things like armor pen and haste which are stats just unheard of anymore
out dpsing people as the tank in dungeons for that last gear piece to be ready for the next stage was great
Not to mentionthe fact that WoTLK pretty much made all specs viable to play in raids
Gear was fun and worth working towards? We must have played different games. With the removal of dungeon sets and the invention of the gearscore addon wolk quickly turned into a sour experience for a lot of people.
"My son... The day you were born, the very forests of Lordaeron whispered the name, Arthas." That first couple lines in the cinematic is the reason why its the best expansion.
goosebumps
Nhaaa it's not like that you need to delay the end a bit like this.."whispered the name...........Arthas."
If you have no context for what WoW is, WotLK's cinematic was the best one.
If you are already familiar with it, then WoD's was the best.
Back in the day I'd occasionally open WoW to play, but would watch all the cinematics. The cinematics in this game were fantastic! One of the reasons why I thought a Warcraft movie would be a good idea.
@@aldriel8274 lol. You couldn't be more wrong. That delay is everything. Tension and release. It's just like music. The delay creates tension because you know there is one more word, then you get the pay off. That delay is more important than the choice of words.
The main reason I returned to WoW to play Classic is the prospect that one day I will be able to play Wrath again.
me 2 dood, still hoping for wrath classic.
once wrath classic is back I will join classic
Hey man you can play Wrath in Warmane, a WoW free private server
Same :D
@@aldrichignatius965 how is the population on the server? I’ve been hearing a lot of it and I’ve been kind of interested but I just don’t want to play on a dead server. Is it enough to get people rounded up for the raids?
1: Fun gameplay.
2: Naxx was fun.
3: Ulduar.
4: Class design was good.
6: Illuminati is behind covid, read the 25 Illuminati goals.
you forgot icecrown citadel !!!!!!!!
@@Heaveaway23 ICC was underwhelming af.
@Jeremy Jensen FBI chief ted gunderson disagrees.
"Globalist" is a term only people who use super male vitality use.
Dont forget tinfoil hat
@@_____J______ Tinfoil hat or not, your family will starve.
Let’s not forget, wrath was the peak of wow marketing as well. The “What’s your game?” Ads with famous actors people idolize.
I agree.
There were also several celebrities that weren't on the ads that revealed they were wow players.
Vin Diesel on the Jonathan Ross show had a talk about WoW (which I distinctly remember was during WotLK)
Also I believe Mila Kunis and McCauley Caulkin revealed that they played wow
And let's not forget that awesome episode of South Park: Make Love Not Warcraft.
Not many people idolized Mr T, but it was funny.
I idolize the MOHAWK grenades.
Edit: Right now I have to settle for chucking snowballs at my party members when they are drinking or casting to beat them in parse.
And before you ask, I know its summer. It is called an alt named Holidada who has all bank slots filled with snowballs.
"world of warcraft , try for free at warcraft dot com"
*I'M MR.T AND THIS IS MY NIGHT ELF MOHAWK*
I would instantly resub for a WOTLK classic server!
Just go play on private servers
Wowowow TBC first mate
go check warmane
@@darynmarc8167pointless playing there, as the server is years old and has too many P2W players there, you cant even queu arenas at 1500 without meeting some guy with shadowmourne, wrathful and hc RS gear/trinkets. and that despite the fact that shadowmourne is what, 150 euros? or at least thats how blackrock is, dont know how the blizzlike realms there are, or how populated they are
@@Exata1337 except that theres now a progression server that only includes naxx and ulduar and will reset every year.
1. A perfect Antagonist/Protagonist "story"
2. Leveling/landscape
3. Every class in pve/pvp perspective was perfect
4. Every good movie or game, needs perfect music
haha exept for the first season with OP DK, Palret was a little bit powerfull too, but they deserve it for being nothing during Vanilla and BC
the punctuation is interesting in this "comment".
5. The sweetest of celebrity endorsements. :)
Literally none of that has anything to do with why it was popular
1. It had TBC as it's predecessor. A strong expansion with a lot of hopes.
2. Very strong storyline, called "Arthas". And many nice sidelines.
3. While zone phasing in a long run proved to have plenty of drawbacks, when you experience for a first time, it's quite fun.
4. Many people had a chance to experience Naxxramas. A raid, many of players could only dream about in Vanilla.
5. Ulduar is still one of the best raids we have ever seen.
As always, artistic departament was on top, both with music and zone art.
I can tell you why it’s one of my favorite places: Grizzly Hills ambient music.
I would sit for hours in that zone, just to hear that music. Once, I camped the spirit beast, Arcturis, for about 10 hours straight in Grizzly Hills. He must have spawned at 5am on a Weekday because I can remember taming him and waking up a couple hours later for class.
That’s why WotLK was my favorite xpac even to this day when I still play retail.
I used to intentionally pick flight paths that were less convenient but went over the zone.
Many hours herb and salmon farming in the Hills.
This is true for so many people. A lot of people play the game to escape reality and the zones wotlk had were so rich and just felt GOOD to play around in. Coming home from work/school, logging in while in Dalaran and hearing that music play while forgetting your troubles just felt so good...
What must a zone have for being this way(sorry for English)?
Awww grizzly hill was my wedding song ❤️
Really surprised that not many people are mentioning the importance of the achievement system that was implemented. Added a ton of depth and breadth to the end game without forcing players into anything.
ya the spergs going for achievements was quite entertaining
@@fullmeltphil7717 Ya lmao. I thought I was a pretty dedicated player until I transfered to hardcore raiding guild and realized that everyone there had over 9k achievement points two patches into the x-pac.
Wrath, till this day will and always be my favorite expansion. Because the story line was so freaking cool and the whole vibe of the world was just perfect.
For me, Ulduar was the best patch ever released while I was playing. It was a perfect response to a release where there was a fair bit of criticism about Naxx etc. The hard modes on bosses were so interesting and actually felt like you were taking an action that made sense in game that made a boss harder, as opposed to just clicking on a button that says "Heroic Mode". It also provided a really organic way for bosses to be progressively harder. Not to mention PVP just felt great throughout that xpac
Ulduar was such a good raid. Mechanics were more than more mobs and splats on the floor.
Best part of wrath for me was Wintergrasp. Wintergrasp when each side had the max amount of players was a absolute blast
For me, it was the last time pvp was fun in wow.
Yep I agree. Oh the memories 😌❤️
@@jaalaj6610 I'm hoping the castle sieges in Ashes of Creation will be able to recapture the Wintergrasp feel but that game wont be launching for 2+ years
God wintergrasp back in its day was awesome and was a good battleground, now its butchered to a shadow of what it was.
For me wintergrasp was an absolute lag fest was complete garbage.
To me, it was the pinnacle of raiding. Great community, powerful storyline and best content ever. Thanks to wotlk, I’ve met many fantastic people, that I still stay in touch with.
I felt it the other way as a primarily solo player the dungeon groups was way faster but of significantly worse quality and made me quit the game realising the community was dead at that point :(
It was great for it's time, but from a purely raiding perspective, most of the stuff that came later was much better. Speaking as somebody who's currently raiding Ulduar on a progressing WotLK private server...
The Cata raids, just one expansion later, completely shits all over the WotLK raids, Ulduar included (and yes, that's the best raid in WotLK). Tbh, the main draw of WotLK, was that it still had rare gear like Classic and TBC. You only get 3 items per boss on 25man, which slows down the gearing A LOT compared to Cata and later expansions that dropped 5-6 items per boss on 25man. Even if it takes long, it's still possible to get your full BiS list. To put it simply, gearing just feels good.
WotLK also had some good class design: The original DK is much more interesting than post Cata DK, WotLK MM Hunter, Ret and Holy Pala are still to this day the best version of those spec ever made. But other than that, most classes play significantly better in Cata. WotLK Arms Warrior vs Cata Arms Warrior for example. The only did minor adjustments going into Cata, but the WotLK version is clunky as fuck and borderline unplayable, while the Cata version is extremely interesting while being butter smooth to play. The same applies to most, if not all of the specs not mentioned earlier (DK, MM, Ret and Holy Pala).
Don't get me wrong, WotLK had some nice raids aswell, but even the most complex hardmodes in Ulduar and the hardest HC bosses in ToGC and ICC, just feel "empty" and extremely undertuned compared to any modern Mythic raid.
@@Melodeath00 this 100%. Also play in private servers, wotlk may arguably have the worse raiding out of any expansion. Ulduar is one of the all time best raids, class design was much better then tbc and ease of use made it that much more casuals were actually raiding instead of farming kara for the 200th time. The story of the big bad and whole it is told thru out the expansion is also great and makes ICC which is pretty underwhelming as a whole into a much better raid solely due to Arthas. Naxx, Trial, and most of ICC weren't that good. If you were going for just raidings and playing each expansion wotlk would be in the bottom half of expansions.
I still remember getting ready for every Saturday night. Mom had bought candy and soda for me. I was ready to pug the first 2 or 3 bosses of Naxxramas! Was so excited every Saturday.
Do you touch them
Wrath was for me the peak of WoW PvP. The lore was amazing, the classes felt good and the talent trees were at their absolute best.
Same
@@coldspell8676 resto sham
Haha, what? it was the most broken imbalanced part of wow ever, Death knights owned everything, have you forgotten completely about that expansion?
@@youareacoward8459 3.3.5 was good.
@@FBFTheRagingWarrior Maybe, but death grip broke the game. TBC was the prime of wow not Wrath.
Wrath is my home and always will be. I remember going to my friends house after school and borrowing ALL of the disks and installing the game so I could go to the game shop later that week and buy it myself and not worry about the install. Darn good times.
Those were the height of my sleep over years as well 😂 pretty much every boy in my 8th/9th grade year classes played and we were all on the same PvP server. So much fun. One of my friends even played on dial-up if you can believe that!
All 48 discs????
Dual spec was the best thing they have ever implemented
That was in TBC BTW.
@@shadowmist4111 nope. Woltk
dual spec is trash
@@shadowmist4111 No...it was released in 3.1 WotLK.
@@bjarkerugsted7539 duel spec is vital
the lore sent chills down my spine when i was 15 and it does now, this was the pinnacle of wow
TBC is the pinnacle of WoW as an overall package. Cata is a better WotLK with less content sadly. WoD is the pinnacle of WoW's depth, complexity and quality of dungeon and raid bosses along with the best class design along with Cata, but again suffers from lack of content even more so than Cata. Ironically the most polished expansions of each era have the least content.
Why isn't wotlk the pinnacle? Trial of the Crusader. The single worst raid in the game along with the single worst tier and patch. 4x elite trash mob fights and Anub'Arak, 3-4x times a week is NOT fun, it's complete garbage.
@@badass6300 WotLK was clearly the pinnacle because everything that came after didn't make sense.
Cata: The changes all over the world made no sense.
MoP: I thought pandaren were an April Fool's joke.
WoD: Time travel doesn't make sense.
...
@@user123yxc The changes to the world made leveling 1-60 good.
Pandaren were good as we got a shared/neutral race.
WoD's only problem was lack of content, but the quality of the little content it had, was max quality and the best we've got to date.
@@badass6300 *"The changes to the world made leveling 1-60 good."* It doesn't matter because a world doesn't change just like that.
*"Pandaren were good as we got a shared/neutral race."* You don't need a neutral race, let alone pandaren. Pandaren were a joke from WC3.
*"WoD's only problem was lack of content"* The problem is that time travel is scientifically impossible and illogical.
To me, Cata + MoP + WoD were the worst xpacs. That's why I skipped them.
WotLK was the last logical xpac.
@@user123yxc I guess you don't know why and how it changed. It didn't change by much, the events changed, along with the destruction from DW.
You don't need to need a something for it to be a good addition. You don't NEED raids in WoW, but we have them.
Well it's also scientifically impossible to shoot lightning, lava and ice from your hands, but you do... why are you searching for logic in a magical universe?
Cata was a better WotLK with 1x less tier.
MoP is the weakest expansion of all, for every positive there are 3x negatives.
WoD was the balls out maximum quality, no quantity expansion. If WoD had 1-2x more raid tiers and maybe a mega-dungeon it would have been the best expansion to date.
I'd say WotLK is on par with Cata due to 4.1 content draught and 1x fewer raid tier, but MOP and WoD are a tier down.
WOTLK's landscape, and music alone drew you into the game.
LK : The perfect villain with an amazing story, numerous cameos in the dungeons so he felt relevant all the way through and a cool world event with the tournament before ICC
The cameos were ridiculous. Typical cartoon villain shit.
@@alicekittleson4088 Willing to accept that by modern standards they may have been cartoony but off the back of BC, with a near absent protagonist and LK having such awesome story I would still argue for that expansion.
Tournament made no damn sense, who would waste the resources for such a competition when the fate of the world is at stake? We proved ourselves killing nax and yogg, now we need to compete in a fucking tournament? To prove ourselves? Worst mistake in the whole expansion. Should have just been a cave under icecrown that the characters thought we could use to sneak into but were stopped at the end by nub.
All WoW classic did was make me miss my true home: Wrath. I leveled my guy to 60, dicked around a bit then started on a private Wrath serrver and I've been loving every second of it.
Funny , I'm going through the same thing atm.
I’m enjoying this fresh tbc server (karazhan) and it will progress to wrath I. 1-1.5 years. I played each expansion casually as a teen and looking forward to relive some old memories and see which xpac I think is better
Same story bro , when honor grind started I quit classic because gameplay is so boring and worldpvp died. And classic reminded me how good wow can be so I started on private wrath. Oh boi this is so good feeling , Google Warmane if you want join, this place so alive
Classic is a TBC waiting room atm, but hopefully TBC after a year will be a Wrath waiting room.
@@brentvillines8021 TBC has a lot of the same issues classic did, TBC was good at the time, but does not hold out now. Wrath was they finally made a solid overall game.
This is an easy question to answer, It was casual friendly while still being complex enough for hardcore players. You could also actually play the spec you wanted to play in this xpac. When a game is good for casuals it's also good for the hardcore players, I don't want to endlessly grind garbage, being able to log in and only have to do like 5 dailies and a dungeon is awesome. Knowing that whatever I do in the game is earning me something gear via badges, gold, sholder enchant, pvp gear, etc. Now in BFA I could play the entire patch and never get a geti at 475, gold doesn't matter, there is hardly any fun memorable gear, no snapshoting, and mythic raiding is too much work for the menial reward and satisfaction it gives. To top it all off I now have to PvE to be competitive in PvP.
not a bad shout at all pal. 👌 for me, having a def cap to hit or trying to milk out every ounce of int i could on my holy paladin, int giving mana and crit chance, agility giving you ap and crit, nowadays i jus feel like i get more gear and im still at the same mana, i dont feel like ive gotten anything from it.. my priest on classic started with 5k mana in pre raid bis, struggled for mana always, popping pots and demo runes, now i have 9000 mana and can free cast like a boss, i feel like i can cast more and i feel stronger, cata ruined that and its been the same shit since.
Well said. These are all same criticisms I have.
Not arguing against you since I agree with you, except the pve to do PvP part
I remember well that there were many pve items which straight up were better than PvP items in PvP e.g. legendary weapons both, shadowmourne and valanyr or deathbringers will as trinket to just name a few things
For sure - it had a rocky first tier but Ulduar and onwards Blizzard really brought it back around
the funny thing is that BfA, from a mechanics PoV, is probably more complex than WotLK and seems like some mythic raids still hold a significant degree of challenge. I think really it was because WotLK, for a large amount of people (I am guessing), was their time in high school/college. Youth, lots of free time, innocence, and people perhaps still not being as toxic as some are now.
Arthas was just a compelling villain. You cared to find out what was happening. And the atmosphere added to this feeling that we were in his turf and the citadel just looming over the zones daring you to try and come challenge him in his seat of power.
Short answer : Arthas
Long answer: F..king Arthas
William Shatner told me to play WoW, so I did.
I..I...I can’t love this comment enough 🥺❤️❤️
NIGHT ELF MOHAWK
For me it was Mr T
Whoomp there it is. I freaking LOVED those commercials. If I wasn't already a player, I'd have gone and bought the game immediately. I started about 3wk before BC launched, but didn't have the time or skill to raid until Wrath. Wrath will always be THE best xpac to me for that reason. It's when I bridged the gap from an extreme casual to a regular player and got to participate in end-game content at-level for the first time.
Ozzy Osbourne told me to. Then Chuck Norris got me back during MoP.
the adverts with mr T lol
The Night Elf Mohawk!
Don't forget all the unique things professions had back in wrath. Way more things than now in shadowlands. Back in wrath you had adding gem slots to wrists, some unique enchants to legs shoulders and more. Even JC got their own personal gem to add to their gear which made it feel more meaningful to role a JCer.
Probably just the golden age we never knew we were living in tbh. I remember playing the 10 day trial for WoW during wotlk, and eventually finally got my own copy. Nothing quite beat that experience to play wow in that era with my friend Mike.
I loved that in WotLK multiple specs became viable and even if many of those were not top dps, they always brought nice utility. If you were a paladin in Classic and TBC, you definitely love this expansion. The only thing I dislike about Wrath is FoS, PoS and HoR dungeons and Vaults of Archavon, they were practically free loot that would let you skip most of the previous patches to get into ICC quickly. Dual spec was amazing too and this is the last expansion where hunters use ammunition. Leveling in my opinion was way better in WotLK, the best balance between fun and casual, some would argue that it got "too easy" but tell me, how many times are you willing to go through the leveling process in classic before getting tired? WotLK and TBC provided new questing hubs in certain zones to ensure no one would need to grind mobs to level up. A lot of classes got so much love.
The only specs that weren’t viable for raiding were frost mage, bm hunter and sub rogue. However these were all strong in pvp, and with dual specs and those being pure FPS classes it was not an issue
@Dikken Bols I’m sure there were those who were able to make it work, but it was more for pvp. Again that’s why I love the class design in wrath bc all classes and specs were viable in their own right, where as now you have specs and certain classes in general a lot of folks won’t play
Well
Storyline: it was the Ultimate endline of the story that started Warcraft 1 to 3, We just Discover Old gods and Titan but we where "done with it", Done with illidan, and we where answering all norfrend questions, the zone where large, we discover dragon flight but they werent plot central, finaly going on the quest of the High elf, sylvanas, Dwarfs, human about everything arthas as done to them at Lordaeron, we where "Ending" the Quest we started before vanilla ever came
GameplayWise : Last time we saw Talents, last time gold was REALY that important, Elitism was at his peak, the game everyone know and love to be "not for casual" (Even if in reality wow was created to be for ... ) was reaching full potential, with Gems, talents, enchants, Glyphs, Dual specs, Reputations, Forging, Mithic and Heroic raids, gold was hardneeded and the game let every player dream to progress like everything was "So hard, only a real dude can do it" Every progress feeled like something important
Community : Community was at its peak, Gaming industry was in good shape, blizzard image was nice and shiny, toxicity as allways been here but moderation was fighting hard, people respected some kind of progress
PvP : Was imensse, with whole zones to it, and huge fights, Flying mount where rare, not cheap, and will not work in certain area + You would have to stay close to the ground if you wanted to find Ressource or mobs
Everything in this expantion feeled like a real adventure, with a storyline making people question themself and what the world around them is to be, in the same time Quest where hard but not obligatory, and progress was tidious but feeled satisfying
Small correction: Cataclysm still had real talents aswell, just half the amount of points.
I'm actually playing on a insta 80 server (wotlkraids) and still bring challenges
@@RevCode Was the down of it, from the start to finish they tried to throw it off because they fear to many talents points and talent tree growing will make balance so hard, obviously they think good, just not fix it good.
I think you hit the nail on the head with toxicity. I was bullied off Vanilla wow. Came back for TBC but just for a couple months because the toxicity was bad for my mental health. When WOLTK was announced I was like I have to play this. I played WC1 to 3 and I have to see how Arthas story ends. I was so lucky to find a good guild that enjoyed everones company. But toxicity in wow creeps in everywhere and the guild eventually broke. I plugged ICC all the way to the Lich King, it was a great experience and I said goodbye to wow for good. Till Classic anyway were I was kicked from a guild because I was wearing 8/8 tier .5 gear to MC lol...
@@beornyondur4594 Obviously this is toxicity, but this is "What to expect" the toxicity i was meaning was more "Public chat toxicity" like Spam, and Bots, and gold seller, and people making chat unplayable
Obviously i use wrong word, and i know what you gone trought, streaming as made my head a hard target for bad people
But thx for clarifying this comment
Honestly, I think Wrath was the "perfect" mix of different types of Game design. Have played since Vanilla and now again in classic. Classic has in many ways made me enjoy modern wow more and more clearly understand the pros and cons of both games. I had the most fun in Wrath and it is imo the best xpac.
BC was my favorite expansion, but from a mechanics and lifestyle improvement perspective WotLK was the best expansion. it made every class and spec viable, especially with the replenishment mechanic which made Ret palis and Hunters far less intellect dependent. it also normalized gear so plate DPS no linger needed to rely on agility for crit; they could actually just use plate the way they were intended to do. Respeccing and duel-speccing (maybe duel spec didnt come until cata?) was made FAR simplier; and I could go on and on about the quality of life stuff. removing the jank and frustration didnt diminish the expirence, it improved it.
The good old days when i first played wow.. wanting to know more about arthas made me brought war3 and the expansion just to experience the story of that poor prince who wanted to do everything to save his people :c
It's a great hero living long enough to become villain story. All that zeal that was once good, ended up fueling his cruelty. Pretty great development! I dont think Blizz can ever top that angle
Aaaah the classic wrath baby 😂
To be fair everyone hated Occulus and nobody ever wanted to do it. If you got it in a random dungeon people would just leave.
As much as I love WotLK above everything else: Occulus is proof nothing is perfect.
@@Sigxy Oculus was perfect, people just couldn't be brave enough to pass such challenge. They just wanted 15 minute relaxed walk
People dare dislike Occulus? Such insolence, such arrogance.. must be punished!
Toms Akmens lmaoooo i love his cinematics/words xD
Tbh i Liked it ^^
Howling Fjord, best zone ever created. I still remember my first time landing there, the grandeur of the place, the atmosphere...
Bing: did you mean 'Borean Tundra'?
I managed to get a couple friends of mine to try a private server called Warmane with me when I first dared to try it in 2019. Immediately, the cinematic started after we launched for the first time and I was immediately taken back to 2009. The sheer magnitude of how many undead flooded that canyon in Icecrown, seeing that dragon fly over, and knowing this guy is out for US... goddamn. Taking them to Northrend the first time, starting in the fjord in Valgarde Port, because a decade ago I first stepped onto that continent from Valiance Keep and wanting to have a fresh adventure through from this side, hearing the music in the grizzly hills and the fjord, hearing the choir in Dalaran, fishing near the Sunken Ring waterfall while the beautiful horns in Wintergrasp, and so many varied and interesting areas and problems and building up our power all the while being very clearly observed by a threat if left uncheck would destroy all these sights and sounds that enchanted us and all the while it goes at your pace..... Truly incredible. I don't think I'll ever be able to become so enamored with a world like I was able to during Arthas' reign.
+++ Positives +++
- The Lore of Warcraft had it's very peak with its most interesting villain.
- The whole nordic setting was awesome, each zone was unique and great, telling the Lichking lore including flashbacks to WC3 (+ expansion pack) Story
- The quests got a lot of love, huge improvement there.
- The old world was still the same, a bit nerfed but overall Classic and TBC lived on with Wotlk
- Class identity was strong, yet every spec became very viable
- More choices with gear, gems and glyphs
- Imo all dungeons ad raids were well designed (ok that crusader thing was just a filler, but there were 3 others tiers already)
- Casuals AND Hardcore players had a good time, the fights in raids really were a lot harder the Classic's
- Dual Spec
- - - Negatives - - -
- Gearscore
- Dungeonfinder
I did enjoy being able to play different hunter specs and different DK specs. Classic, you never change specs and some classes are downright not viable. Wrath, I can bring in a MM hunter and contribute as much as a mage. And it didn’t require me to get World Buffs, which I really hate for expectations in Classic.
Gearscore only mattered if you were a noob, you could always lie a little about gs or link a fake achievement and get the gear needed for the real gs, up to you really.
the only thing that made an expansion the "best" are the ones where titan/thunder forging doesn't exist. You never felt like you completed gearing up your character. There was always something to grind for to improve yourself which made playing alts feel like a waste of time.
I guess Shadowlands will be one of the best then.
@@bear576 ..how? Torghast and covenants already sound like its going to fuck over alts more than anything else ever has
MoP was probably the best expansion to date. the warforging system may have started there, but even then, it wasn't that big of an impact on gearing to ruin the expansion
MoP was probably the best expansion to date. the warforging system may have started there, but even then, it wasn't that big of an impact on gearing to ruin the expansion
The problem is not that simple. Back then, once people has "finished" gearing, they were just playing to discuss (even though forum and msn/skype were big, Discord totally took over) or farming for fun ( A lot of player just doesnt care about farming for cosmetics and shit ). We can see that on classic, a lot of people play until they are full geared than don't play until the next phase. I guess, players has changed.
For example, if I wasn't a mount collector and a altholic I wouldn't play shadowlands I think
I f*cking loved northerend.. I was 17 when WotLK came out I remember I instantly maimed a death knight..’loved the starting zone for them and I have some amazing memories from this time.
Wrapping up the story from the previous games, tons of content for everyone, always something to do, incredible zone design, music, new class, and lots of quality of life improvements. It was just fantastic.
Wrath was always my favorite expansion, most notably because I think it struck the right balance between satisfying hardcore raiders with heroic raids and allowing casual and new players to get into the meat of the content.
Unfortunately, the disastrous gear score addon was available during this period as well which lead to the 'your'e only as valuable as your gear score' mentality that sadly we still see today.
The story in wrath, combined with the strong class identity I think is what made it so great. Also, the wrath pre-patch with the scourge invasion was and still is my favorite of all time.
We dont see the same Gear score issue in retail then we did then. Now everyone has good gear so ppl check raider io which is more performance based. Gear score was pretty bad for the community for awhile. Now everyone and their mom can have a good ilvl
@@recoomedabest9970 The ilvl implementation arguably only came about due to the gear score addon and so in that respect, it still exists, just not in its original form.
@@Azurantine81 the gear score issue of "you're as good as your gear score (ilvl)" mentality doesn't exist anymore is what I was referring to. We dont see it in the same way today, whereas in the past they would look at ur GS and pick u solely on that.
@@recoomedabest9970 Perhaps, but the game itself requires certain ilvl requirements for entry.
Adam E for what entry?
You're only focused on the gameplay of the expansion. I think the content was the coolest of any other expansion. The Lich King and the Scourge are the coolest enemies we've ever had, which I think is a major reason of it being so popular.
Yeah. And it is on azeroth!
Coolest in sense both literally and figuratively....
....
....
Fine, i ll see myself out.
Wrath was my favorite by far, I think it was the accessibility. I was able to enjoy all aspects of the game from PvP to raid content without having to devote every waking moment to the game. It was the expansion for casuals, which in reality was most of the player base.
I think Wrath was the best the game ever looked. The zones and the Feel of everything matched what was in the zone. although the zones were incredibly annoying and most people will just dungeon level like all other
WoW was still gaining players due to the internet being highly available at this time around the world. People also started getting good enough computers to play the game. It is the reason it had the most subscribers.
Also making the classic servers big was never an issue for the private servers.
* Almost no lag during huge pvp battles
* Almost no lag in the major cities
* Whenever insane farm that inflated the economy was discovered it was removed
* No boosting of low level characters
Honestly, the part about internet is very true.
Still, WOTLK was the best xpac
It had the best lore! The Lich King was the ultimate villain. It really felt like we were going to lose. And when we finally beat him it was so satisfying!
Classic Wrath cannot come soon enough. I could play that expansion literally forever, it has everything. Imo it had the perfect balance between vanilla and modern WoW.
i just pray they balance the endgame loot, or redo the loot values so that endgame you can raid the ruby sanctum, Ulduar or ICC simultaneously, i wanna raid Ulduar until im sick of the place, then i can finally rest in piece and leave wow forever, i NEED to play Ulduar again.
I remember (as a BC baby) thinking they really smoothed out the rough edges with WotLK. I liked the changes (mostly) although I wasn't thrilled with the total death of world PvP. But the story was great, the environments of Northrend were *stellar.* And then they made GIANT changes with Cata, yet none of them were really earth shattering at the same time. It started to feel stale, like a hamster wheel, and within a few months post-launch, everyone quit logging in. And that's where it died for me and all of my friends.
None of us could really put a finger on it. I think it's partly WotLK's fault, as if they'd perfected the game and the overall experience naturally plateaued. They just couldn't beat WotLK, and the harder they tried, the more they mucked it up.
World PvP didn't die lmao
I was a Wrath Baby and a Casual. I totally enjoyed my experience in the game - something that I can't say about most of the other expansions.
it's the finale of the universe's meaningful lore... arthas, the final bad guy, all the lore wrapped up. you know, before they ran out of WC3 villians to use as raid bosses and they had to start spitballing new ideas into content with a bunch of 19 yr old intern writers who never played wc3
Cata should have been Warcraft 4, and then wow 2 should have come out afterwards.
However, in Cataclysm, Deathwing legit is a powerhouse lore character that really had a ton of impact in Azeroth. Yet cata was the beginning of the fall. Wanna know what my speculation revolves around? Atmosphere, setting, visual theme.
WOTLK was peak aesthetic for WoW. The music when you first board the airship, the sight of many other people and adventurers signing away their lives because they know they'll be dead anyway, the ever present and real threat that Arthas represented. Tie that all in with the Wrathgate, the prepatch event, the fact that NPCs didn't worship the ground you walked on as if you were queen/king bitch of the universe...you were also just another skilled adventurer that was throwing their life away to try and combat the scourge. It FELT meaningful like the last push against a true evil that must be stopped.
What did you get in cata? "Oh well...Deathwing burns some areas and made Azeroth look different". Followed by a bunch of theme park sites that don't connect, don't feel connected, and don't feel connected to the world except Uldum and one other place. It's just gone downhill from there.
Now the writers are doing their own thing and you can SEE why that screws things up.
That and I still remain unsubbed in protest until Arakkoa and Sethrak are made playable. I am sick and tired of *that* ol bull.
Because TBC built the popularity of WoW - Also, that chart is not right, WotLK is infamous for huge subscription decline in the last 4 months.
it was due to the implementation of the LFG system in that last 4 months which killed servers communities
cause we where in icc for like, almost a year.
If they do WotLK Classic, I will probably jump back into WoW seriously for the first time since I stopped playing at the end of Cataclysm.
Dude wotlk has been out since 2015 go to warmane wotlk servers on lordaeron its almost 100% blizzlike everything is scripted right,even the events
with TBC classic alive there is some knowledge: blizzard gave us 2 weeks prepatch only. if you want to catch up with a fresh char in wrath you better start early in TBC.
Wrath of the Lich King was the best because its the end of Arthas' story. Anyone who liked the lore even a little bit got some enjoyment from closing the book.
Legion was better than Wrath imo. The end of Legion is somtehing else
Wotlk was the only time I actually cared about the lore of wow, it was just so rich. PvP was also amazing, there were some broken stuff and shadowmourne was op at the end but it was relatively balanced. challenging pve actually felt rewarding unlike anything else, think of TOGC and the prestige of the mounts, there is nothing like that on retail besides world first progression.
Relatively balanced apart from those 5 DKs on the enemy team absolutely wrecking house.
What do you mean by PvP? Spamming random pointless PUG BGs to get honor for res gear or staying in ugly and boring Dalaran sewers waiting for arena? Where were the PvP guilds? Rated BGs? World PvP?
Tbc and wotlk were bad for PvP, period.
Cata brought back world pvp because it introduced archaeology profession. It introduced the rated BGs making PvP guilds an actual thing. Also Tol Barad was way cooler than Wintergrasp.
@@Da1337DoOD Both Cataclysm and Wotlk was bad for World PvP. In TBC you had Halaa and while you queue for arena in TBC you had sick world PvP depending on wich server you played at. Nagrand was a slaugther zone on most servers, where the idea of Wintergrasp and Tol barad origniated from to come in later expansions, you try and recreate the slaughter. What you mean by "PvP guilds" not being a thing before Cataclysm? Wotlk took that away, TBC had PvP only guilds that dominated the brackets on battlegroups and hosted world events and made servers grew more and more via WCM. RBGS was big for how long in Cataclysm? first season, then it died off completly? Wow, thats a good aspect that no one plays after 5months since launch. In my opinion both Wotlk and Cataclysm was based on PvE and not PvP. But everyone has different opinions and thoughts about the changes, sure Cataclysm had great managment compared to older expansions but the removal of everything and revamping from AP to Qonquest, Honor is capped down, almost all badges are gone, no grinding left "Their was little grind left in wotlk but not alot". Made the game feel like you only had to play 4hrs a week to get to where the most hardcores is.
@@Da1337DoOD wintergrasp. Amd world pvp is only dead if you make it, every wotlk private server i play I join a pvp guild and can get plenty of world pvp in wintergrasp. The gear progression from honor to arena is way better than retails randomized bullshit
For me, the expansion that really hooked me on lore was Mists.
Flying up to Naxx the first time was so scary and daunting. Can’t recapture that feeling anymore.
Ulduar was awesome! Definitly one of my favs dungeons.
Hell yeah! That whole Mad Max-style entrance area/first boss was incredible.
"Wrath sucked because the game got more casual, if it doesn't take 8 hours a day 6 days a week for you to be able to get to level cap, gear up, and do raids, then it's not fun for me!!!" "W-w-....what do you mean heroic mode and hard mode bosses don't just stand still and do nothing like in classic? Wha....wait w-why is this content not clearable in 30 minutes?? Omg this is so dumb... n-no...!!"
To be totally honest I wouldn't be surprised if 90% of Classic's "most elite" players don't have the ability to kill half the hardmodes in Ulduar months after Ulduar's release when Wrath Classic is a thing.
Also, Grizzly Hills best WoW zone ever made, don't @ me.
Personally i just hated the start of making tanking threat automatic. I mean shockwave come on, you hit one button and you have a huge threat head start on everything. It was the start of making tanking a rotation rather then a dynamic set of decisions which you could actually fail in some scenarios.
@@Minervastouch There's a lot more to tanking than you think. I still regularly play Wrath private servers, and especially in heroics and hard modes, you also have to balance and rotate your cooldowns, tanks have to swap off at regular intervals, you have to move bosses in varying ways, and even then you have to really push your rotation and abilities to keep threat on yourself if you're playing with good players who do high DPS.
@@Minervastouch Ya they made threat generation much easier but it didn't remove the dynamic aspect of tanking. Many hard mode bosses on WoTLK had abilities that hit tanks incredibly hard so if your tank didn't know how to manage cooldowns and react appropriately to abilities like H Lich King's Soul Reaper your group was going to wipe.
I don't understand the love of Grizzly Hills. It's just a bunch of generic trees.
Fucking loved Grizzly Hills. Best music in the game!
10-man raiding was huge for more casual guilds. Definitely opened up the endgame for a lot of people.
Very good point actually!
Further, it was entry-level raiding that still required you make a group and play properly.
They went hardcore into 10man difficulty in Cata, then went the far opposite way after and added LFR...when all they needed to do was go back to WoTLK 10mans.
@@3lit3gn0m3 its kind of ironic that 10 man was "entry-level raiding" as 10 man was a bunch more difficult than the 25 man raids were.
the amount of dps numbers and other stuff that you would need to push 10 man bosses was rough compared to 25 man, as it was tuned with the mentality that its "harder to find 25 good players than 10 good players", so naturally 25 wasnt as tightly tuned.
kind of makes me wonder why 25 man dropped better loot, as i always found our 10 man raids to require far more effort than the 25s ever did
@@Exata1337 cus it's easier to get 10 people to do a mechanic than getting 25 people to do a mechanic.
With 25 people, the chances of someone screwing it up are a lot higher.
But in 10mans, u could go with ur elite group of friends and just stomb it easy.
@@akhsdenlew1861 issue is when it came to hc, you wouldnt stomp it "easily", as the content was actually proper tight compared to 25 man.
its much like how m+ is (or atleast used to be); at times when raiding mythic i would not understand how the fuck some people in the guild were allowed into the raid, and wondered what kind of m+ key theyd be able to do when 19 people werent carrying their ass to make up for it.
while i understand the philosophy of it being harder to have 25 people not fucking up, it also seemed skewed to have 10 man be the "entry raid" giving worse loot, when it was in reality a bunch harder than 25 mans were
Because I like Games with Winter Snow areas and Death Knights too. That is why it was and is so popular.
“Death Knight’s and Acherus Deathchargers with freezy hooves.”
people were upset the mount+skill were a quest reward. back in vanilla or TBC a mount was expensive as hell.....
I'm only hoping for TBC because it increases the chance of getting WotLK, lol. I just love this expansion
@Dazed Gaming Yeah kinda makes more sense to play a private server than to wait 3-4 years or so.
I'm only hoping for TBC because it increases the chance of getting WotLk and that increases the chance that we get Cata Classic :)
@Dazed Gaming Cata privates server? nice i have to check it out :) ty
Wrath was so good because it "finished" Warcraft's story. They should have stopped it there and just made Warcraft 4 before any new expansions.
yea pretty much
Killing the lich king as a death knight was so satisfying
Gonna have to argue that the story of the Burning Legion is much more central to Warcraft than the story of Arthas, and the Legion xpac could be said to have finished a the story if you want to say that about any xpac. Arthas only merged with the LK to stop the spread of the plague, which was because Ner'zhul was creating an army for, you guessed it- the Burning Legion (Kil'jaeden was behind Ner'zhul to be precise) Arthas was but a chapter in the story of the Burning Legion.
WOTLK was by far the best moment of WoW history. I say it as someone who started playing since vanilla
Talent tree removed, legendary item implementation, LFG, LFR. You took the community aspect out of the game and made it so new players could come in and rapidly ascend to the same rank and gear that others had worked years on. An important overlooked aspect of the game was learning to play your character. What works better where and actually having to work at your toon and not get an easy to build cookie cutter style. I personally loved WOTLK, but when LFR and LFG came into play the whole guildy helping guildy, community part left the game. Bosses got easier and raids and dungeons were just clicking and waiting. I hear people talk about how hard it is to level in classic and you have to run over to the instance and that's only if you can find a group. That's how it all started and I think that's what makes classic so great. Make us work for the advancements, for the xp, and build this awesome game back to a community player based model instead of individual accomplishment.
Exactly this LFG/LFR destroyed WOW.
I can't tell if the things you listed at the start are good or bad points for you. To me it all sounds bad: Talent tree removed? I don't even remember that one. Legendary items.. possibly good, it always annoyed me that every expansion only 1-2 classes got to get a legendary, and some never were so lucky, like feral druids. In general yes, what I personally love about WoW and classic in particular is the grounded world and community aspect. Walk 10 minutes to a quest NPC or an instance, take weeks for a quest chain or a month for a particular attunement, that's what I like. Streamline too much (or anything at all, to be honest) and there isn't anything left caring about. Want the best equipment without doing all that much? Here you go. Want to start at max level and skip all that leveling? Here you go. And then there is nothing left except PvP and pet collecting.
LFR didn't come into existence until last boss of Cata. LFG was implemented part way/half way through WotLK. It did ruin the community aspect and turned dungeons into races.
I personally don't think there's anything wrong with LFG, dual-spec, and heirlooms. LFR on the other hand. WoW's decline started in Cata, not Wrath.
LFR killed WoW.
@@narcoleptic8982 100%
with how classic has turned into a boost fiesta, honestly im starting to think that too
LFD was worse than LFR. LFR could (and was) ignore by any highend raiders because it was useless to them. LFD was used by everybody, and killed manually created groups overnight, and kept them dead until M+ was added in Legion.
Sure, I hate LFR, and would never willingly do it, but it never made any kind of negative impact on the raiding community.
LFD on the other hand, directly contributed to the death of server communities when it was added.
LFR didn't kill the high end guilds. But it was poison to all casual guilds. And without them, the life of the server, the social network that also supports the high end raiders just goes out the window.
We liked WotLK because it progressed the game and evolved it.
Cata basically destroyed everything. The world, the talents, the lore, the design philosophy, ...etc.
Ever since then, we've just been consuming the rotting carcass of WoW.
LOL cata was one of the best expansions and we will 100% get cata classic when wrath classic is finished
@@xdesertx Dunno if you're trolling or what, but ok.
@@Emajenus PVP in cata was the best ever
@@xdesertx Lore wise Cata def wasnt that bad. Also the raid fights were pretty awesome. But there were so many other aspects that they failed to improve on. MoP and Wrath were the 2 best expansions imo.
Cata was basically WotLK with better class design and better raids. It had the exact same design philosophies as WotLK, although the execution was lazier (low amount of bosses in Firelands, entire 4.3 patch being made out of reused assets).
WotLK and Cata are the two expansions that are closest to eachother in terms of in-game systems and fundamental design.
It should be fundamentally impossible to claim you love the design of WotLK and hate the design of Cata, since they are the exact same. Cata was WotLK with higher quality, lower quantity.
Wrath has the best zones and the best raids imo (at least Ulduar and ICC). LFG is maybe the only thing that I could do without for wrath, but everything else is an improvement. Both heirlooms and dual spec are great features to aid in leveling additional characters and reduce tedium. Also, don't forget that heirlooms were kind of expensive when they first came out. It wasn't easy to get all of them unless you were just grinding for that stuff constantly. Raids were genuinely difficult in wrath too (not that they weren't in TBC also), but heroic ICC has some really tough mechanics/dps checks. Killing Algalon in Ulduar required a pretty good raid group.
I think what a lot of people are missing is that a lot of these features that people hated weren't added until the final stretch of WotLK and only in limited form. For instance, the LFG tool was only added during the assault on the citadel and initially you could only queue for the 3 ICC dungeons or random.
One thing people never want to admit - you got older
Sure, that affects things. I have to say though, Classic gave me the same joy that Vanilla did back in the day, minus the awe of it being something entirely new. So sometimes it's not just about us people changing.
Im admitting i had kid and then i got old real old.
sometimes i still miss the game though
@@rebeccaschade3987 Yeah but Rebecca you have to admit that no matter what you would enjoy classic - as that was once so special to you. Its nostalgia of being 12 and exploring Azeroth for the first time.
@@lcdany0153 Well, I was a fair bit older than that when WoW came out though ;) Honestly, there are plenty of old games that I feel hold up really well today, and the more instant gratification of many modern games doesn't do it for me as much. So To me, the less "straight to the action" gameplay of Classic is actually more enjoyable than the higher paced focus of modern WoW, regardless of nostalgia.
@@pawlarsen7815 My friends family used to play WoW together I was always so jealous, you could always try the same :)
My favorite expansion by a long shot. I think it strikes the perfect balance between QoL and difficulty, but I wasn't a hardcore raider at the time. This also meant that I didn't see all of the raids until a later expansion and I could solo them. But I didn't care back then. It added something to the mystique of WoW, like in vanilla and TBC. From Cataclysm on this all changed. I did like MoP a lot as well, but only because of the story and art style. When it came to endgame, I was done quickly because it was just a tank, spank, grind through raids with people you don't know. WotLK had none of that stuff.
Looking for a party is something different, if I find a party through a tool, or in chat, it doesn't really matter, you get to know each other a bit during the dungeon. But in in a raid? You're one of the 25, you're insignificant, while if you're playing with your guild, or friends, it means they know you, and you and them know your role, because they've been playing with you for much longer than that single raid. LFR had to be made so simple that 25 random players could actually make it till the end without too much effort, let alone leadership. In WotLK this was all still needed, and it was the last expansion to do so if you wanted to see everything it had to offer.
The gaming industry wasn't so saturated of games back then, nowadays free to plays rule the market, which damages mmorpgs a lot. Also wow was ahead of its time on 2010, but now it's the opposite, it has the same motor of a game from 2004.
I loved the dungeon group finder, the dungeons, dual spec, flying while leveling, leveling while gathering. I loved all the dungeons and all the raids. My fav xpac, can’t wait for another.
I fully agree with the points raised in this video. For me however, I absolutely hated WotLK. Being a hardcore raider in Vanilla and Tbc I've always felt a deep sense of accomplishment one way or another. Be it due to the obstacles of putting a 40man raid force together, preparation beforehand with consumables and special gear or the general difficulty of the encounter (or a combination of the three) it always felt like I had distinguished myself when me and my guild overcame a challenge. Which was visible in the form of rare loot after the fact to remind others but mostly myself. And not just in the cosmetic sense but also in power increase and more importantly the power gap between me and other players.
All of this went down the drain in WotLK. No longer were raid challenges difficult and in the beginning difficulty was mostly found through achievements. Even after that when heroic modes were unlocked I sometimes struggled to see the difference between that and normal modes. And the couple encounters that were truly hard only gave you a slightly off-colored souvenir in terms of heroic gear. Heroic gear that was only marginally better in terms of stats than normal gear, just enough to warrant the attempt but not enough to set you apart.
And honestly that was what WotLK felt like to me. Yes the gameplay was better than ever and content had never been as engaging but I struggled to justify the time commitment to myself. Why was I putting in all these hours of my life wiping on a boss that was made difficult by some added mechanics and would give me a purple colored armor set instead of a bronze one. Before all this I could justify my WoW addiction because I was obsessed with the death animation of the newly added boss encounter, knowing only the worthy would be seeing it. I would look at the new gear sets and imagine my avatar walking around in them, then slowly watching my dream be realized through sheer force of will during raiding. Knowing I was setting myself apart in the process and growing in power as a result. The world of Azeroth and its inhabitants and players that at one point required careful navigation in order to prevent death or ganking were now my playground. And my connection to the world only grew by my mastery of it and the familiarity of all the locations the game made me revisit.
Now all of that didn't matter anymore and my freshly leveled 70 Death Knight was about was comfortable walking around in the world as my main because the power gap had been entirely removed and npc mobs never posed a threat to begin with. After weeks in a dungeon raiding the 'hardest content' there was I pretty much looked the same as someone who had breezed through normal mode, be it a slight color variation. I distinctly remember putting in hellish hours going through ICC in the hardest difficulty. Wiping for weeks to get up to Arthas, only to be wiping for months until the we managed to kill him. I remember starting ICC during the holidays and right before summer vacation started I was finally done. In the past with raids like Naxx and SWP I would look back fondly with a sense of accomplishment. My fully decked out avatar being the proof of that, stronger than before. But this time I just felt a deep feeling of waste and I started to questions why I was even raiding at all. I stopped doing so shortly after and once I took that step I wondered why I was paying my subscription at all. Then I quit.
I miss those days and part of me wished I didn't have to quit and I could have made many more memories in that online world. But in the end it was Blizzard's shift in WotLK that pushed me over the edge. In the end it was probably the best thing that could have happened in my life as a late teenager. WotLK was a great expansion in so many ways but in the one way that mattered most it failed, it failed to give meaning to the people who had invested the most in the game.
"difficult" - vanilla raiding. what?
@@rafotrarran6888 You clearly never played/cleared vanilla raiding content. That's why you don't understand.
@@mikev8746 i mean its widely agreed that post cata raiding was harder
@@rafotrarran6888 By whom? People that never played the old content thoroughly? The majority of old raiders quit way before post-cata content was released. These are two entirely different audiences.
I understand however why you might consider (and others) that those raids were harder because they are way more tightly tuned, have more positioning/timing/targeting mechanics whilst the dedicated mythic difficulties follow a consistent difficulty curve.
However I don't think that these factors actually make for grueling challenges. I would consider them more Dark Souls esque in terms of difficulty. Hard but fair. The point of pre-Wotlk was that allot of it was badly tuned and simply not fair. Some bosses had to be literally nerfed before they were doable and others required a titanic effort to overcome.
Now i'm mostly talking about Naxx40 when I refer to 'vanilla' being difficult. However due to WoW and raiding being in its infancy everything was harder and more strenuous. This is why despite being simple encounters people remember BWL for example to be 'difficult' while in actuality it was not. I feel that 40 man raid groups add another level of difficulty in terms of management, preparation and focus requirement. I've done both those raids and the 25/20 men variants in the latter expansions and I cant tell you the amount of times RNG happened or one raider fucked up in the 40 man ones. This only made it harder to straighten your own back, ignore the frustration and stay professional so that you wouldn't be the next one to fuck up.
It's more a subtle feeling of harder difficulty and Kungen for example has explained this pretty well. But in a sense I think vanilla was difficult in an unfair / uncharted waters way and not so much mechanically. However i think its that very sense of unfairness and insurmountable odds that set vanilla apart in terms of how difficult it was to play. And its this very essence that explains why its hard for people who weren't as active or competitionist in those days to fully grasp what the difference was.
If you don't accept these words from me then let me say it like this. Vanilla was difficult in a different way from post-Cata content. Which was a way of playing the game some people preferred due to the different feelings and experiences that arose from it.
@@mikev8746 "however do to wow and raiding being in its infancy everything was harder and more strenuous"
But that wears off when sites like elitist jerks get popular, wowhead takes over thottbot, information is shared. There's some real surprising comments on the classic wowhead pages of items about what items were thought to be good. Some real hard back pedaling in raid videos.
People just got better you can't really just go back to vanilla/tbc 2004-08 because the top end players are truly better now.
LFG tool wasn't added until the final patch of Wrath, that's when the game started to change to a more casual style MMO imo, although you can make an argument that the game started to change with the BC pre-patch where everyone could obtain high warlord gear. Either way you can clearly see just from looking at that subscription chart when Blizzard started taking away peoples choice and funneling everyone into the same direction subs dropped and continued to drop until classic released.
??? Lfg was added during trial of crusader
@@Lidond My bad, i knew it was towards the back end of Wrath though
@@Lidond Dungeon Finder was added in patch 3.3.0 (ICC patch) wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Patch_3.3.0
As someone who joined in late Wrath, I can say my reason to join was the Lore, this and the fact the expansion theme looked amazing.
for me it was the story that kept me wanting the next patch in WOTLK also i feel pvp was less of a burst affair and required you to know your class and Ulduar being probably the best raid blizzard has ever released
I think we underestimate how good of a story "The story of the Lich King" actually is. Why aint the community pushing for a movie? I would love to watch it, and know others that would as well.
We had a Warcraft movie...
@@tancredelegalileen9777 One about the lich king?
@@bv2893 the film was disappointing af, they have no reason to make another one
Edit: The Lich King's story goes beyond Arthas btw
@@tancredelegalileen9777 It sure does. But you can still make a movie about it? i just think the story is too great not to make a movie out of.
And the story going beyond arthas is just great, then the movie can start out slow, and the people that dont know the universe can get insight.
This expansion was great for the less anally stat obsessed elitists among us, who wanted to have a good time and play a social mmorpg that is fun and not a job. And yeah, the lore was great.
Wraith was literally one of the best times in my life, it helped me dealing with growing up without parents.
how did you afford WoW subscriptions without parents? Or did you join after you became an adult and got a job?
I think you nailed your point when you said each tier bough in a reset and the badge system (hate it or love it) actually made it accessible for more people to jump into the raiding scene from any point in the progression ladder. This accessibility allowed newbies and casuals to join the race not at the very bottom but somewhere in the middle and progress to ICC.
Wrath was full of issues but what I love about the first 3 games were they were constantly trying to improve and balanced the formula to meet players needs. Maybe it went too far in Wrath but the fact that so many people could play meant for a better social experience, meeting people from different levels of experience, people willing to learn and the feeling of being taught something new, it kept that magic of "I know something and I will share it will you" alive since majority of WoW can seem confusing and convoluted at times, especially when it comes to acquiring the best gear (pre-"I can just Google everything" era).
Oh also WoWhead was like the no.1 source for your database community around this time, this and along side min-maxers such as ElitistJerks crunching all the numbers in spreadsheets (fun times) it made the investment in your character so much more fun.
Also just a random shoutout: Ulduar.
Genuinely one of the best raiding experiences since TBC, the raid was so well designed and I loved how you could activate hardmode by incorporating tactics instead of a hard switch in the UI. Also fighting Yogg Saron and Algalon, adding to the whole Old Gods vs Titans lore, that in itself felt like its own game, it was like a mini "to be continued" half way through the expansion but we knew we still had a job to do...Mr. Lich King needed to go down.
It also incorporated the traditional dragon bosses but with a twist (Malygos and the vehicle combat). It had everything covered lore wise from Dragons, Old Gods, Titans, Arthas/Lich King, Nerubians, mech battle with Mimiron (with an actual frikkin hard mode switch in game!). It introduced the Vrykul and proto Drake mounts, Brann came back to give you some bite sized lore as you played, it felt more steamlined.
I felt apart of the story not just spectating.
I'd just like to add, the top private servers that are hugely populated are all WotLK servers ^^
Followed by TBC and believe it or not Pandaria...(I guess people quite by then and want to experience it again).
love everything you said. i could just be super ignorant but my opinion was wrath felt like a balanced classic and tbc as well as yeah maybe they did go a bit to far but because of that accessibility i met a fun guild and am able to actually raid i love wrath and while playing tbc classic will look forward to wrath classic ;)
Edit: i also currently play on a wrath server *raises hand* 🤣
Loved Northrend and Dalaran it was so good
and deathknights ofc new fav class
imo with wotlk blizz found the best compromises between balance and fun/accessibility. both in pve and pvp.
they never nailed it as good before and never did again.
not saying it was perfect but from all the expansions i enjoyed this one the most for it.
i also really liked the effort they put in the DK / Lichking storyline from DK starting area, cut scenes up to ICC . the lichking was the most charismatic and iconic villain in the wow franchise to me and the DK became my main for a very long time.
i sure hope they revive the expansions up to wotlk.
There is a simple reason: There was just enough familiarity from the old days and enough new exciting things to keep us entertained. Cut-scenes were well crafted, chain quests had an amazing storyline, soundscape was beyond epic, the zones were enough familiar to real world for us to make a connection to our characters yet enough fantasy to make it feel like it. All in all WotLK had just the right amount of balance of familiarity and new things. It was the best money I've ever spent.
yup just before info overload and hyper focus on meta by a lager part of the player base , i can firmly say back in the day , you did not need to be meta to play , no one was looking and even if they knew not much you can do ,i would also say that was true for parts of cata as well , i think we can appreciate how much the player bases has shrunk since wrath .
I’ve enjoyed both TBC and wotlk back on retail and now later on private servers. Both have engaging content and interesting features, class/spec mechanics, boss mechanics etc. Even tho a lot of the features changed between the two expansions, it didn’t necessarily go for better or worse, for example, things like party-wide buffs vs raid-wide buffs (and btw some party-wide buffs, like certain shaman totems, still existed in wotlk). To me they’re just two different versions of the same game that both feel fun to play. However, the biggest reason why TBC still stands out as the best era in my mind is the mentality of working together. I’ve seen this very clearly now having replayed both expansions. In wotlk you can pug a lot of the content and gear up more easily on your own, which diminished the role of guild raiding and made a big portion of the population less commited to raiding in a guild and more self-centered, solo players, which shows especially in smaller/less hardcore guilds. In TBC it feels like players raid together, not only for personal gain, but for the sake of progressing and accomplishing things together, enjoying playing with people you only got to know in the game, thru failures and successes, learning and improving together. To me (as a PVE player at least) this feels like the biggest and most significant difference. It’s not just wotlk being more casual than tbc, but the fact that it changed an important aspect and the nature of the game majorly, and I think that is one of the reasons for this plateau in subs. (For reference, I quit retail wow in Cataclysm, havent ever returned to it, and what I know is that this trend wotlk started has just gone further and further.)
From my experience, what I’ve noticed is that people don’t go back to classic and the old expansions and private servers just for the content and gameplay but for this social aspect as well. That is where blizzard dropped the ball with wow.
You were actually a individual and had a character that no one else had
Lich King died and so did wow but at least he's coming back
You mean in Classic WOTLK right?
Because he's also coming back in Shadwolands, the budget walmart edition
@@BlackBirds93 I'm talking about shadowlands.
starnetic 777 didn’t Sylvanas destroy the Lich King’s helmet
@@onyonrong9244 yea but arthas is coming back
@@starnetic7779 Arthas shouldnt come back. theyre just going to mess up his lore like they did Illidans
I think what carried WOTLK in terms of subscribers was the immense storyline and hype regarding Arthas becoming the Lich King and that insane epic cinematic. The previous expansion TBC was also very succesfull which probably had a helping hand in making WOTLK popular.
As one of the few people that hated TBC, Wrath was the pinnacle of WoW for me especially for all the points you made. One thing you touched on is especially true for us that have been with Warcraft since Orcs and Humans. Wrath for many of us was the conclusion to a story that had been told since the late 90's. After WC3: TFT we all asked ourselves, "When do we fight the Lich King and when do we see Northrend?". When I first saw the Howling Fjord and heard those orchestrated Bag Pipes and Viking related themes. I thought to myself, "Man Blizzard absolutely nailed it". Even bringing back Naxx for the Vanilla players that never got to experience it. Sure it's Baby Naxx, but Lore-wise Wrath was the pinnacle for people that were invested in the story from the beginning.
Every Expansion afterwards has became "Oh no we wrote ourselves into a hole: I know TIME TRAVEL, or Asian Stereotypes, or let's bring "insert name here" back to be the Big Bad again." I am finally coming back to Live for Shadowlands, but it looks like the Diablo Live Team took over the WoW Live Team. Everything from stats, smart loot, and Torghast all comes from D3:RoS.
Ahh still playing it!!!
Activision can't hurt me here.
I'd prefer staying in tbc, with dual spec.. But I can't have it all I guess..
Hey, come join on the private server "endless". It is TBC with a dual spec implemented ;)
Personally the best thing for me in wotlk was aiming towards Shadowmourne which I ended up getting realm first. The journey to get it was really great. Not just a random drops to get but actual questlines and challenges to do. Then finally getting it and just destroying everything in raids. Retribution alone was great in ICC but combining it with Shadowmourne was just insane. And also being able to tank heroic dungeons in dps spec (retri + righteous fury) with our guilds main healers. It was a blast.
Wrath was also when competitive arena gameplay was being released and year later turned into the a sport we all come to know and love
*Marty from back to the future looks at the title of this video*
"Wait I've seen this one this is a classic"
We know why Wotlk was popular. Everyone knows.
People who don't play wow know.
Cuz Vanilla and TBC was, and some plebs started late.
And..it was the last time I had to jump in my car to be at Gamestop at midnight to pick up my copy. My God, that was as much of a family holiday as Christmas. We cooked lots of food, took preparatory naps, and waited for blizz santa with cookies at midnight. I'll never forget a guildie at 11am the next morning saying "meh, getting kind of tired..." The rest of us rallied him, he made a pot of coffee, and we were finally beaten around 3pm. Ahhhh...good times. A mom and her two teenaged boys have a unique thing to look back on compared to a lot of people, and I treasure it as much if not more than any family holiday.
Great video WillE. I was a BC baby, and I loved WotLK. The feel of the Vanilla old world was an important part of the game that was still around. Felt more like you lived in the world vs. the world revolved around you and your quests.
Lore was also fantastic, funny enough, I played WC3 about a month before I started WoW in late BC. Moving from that into a continuation of the Arthas story was phenomenal.
Dungeons may have been on the easy side, but they were interesting places to be. Zones were beautiful and had interesting quest lore tied either to LK or the Ulduar/Titans story thread.
Dailies existed but were manageable. Being a BC baby, making gold in classic without any dailies has been challenging given the time that I have to play.
Catch up gear and the dungeon queue system sought out to rectify a couple of issues, but maybe went a little overboard. We're seeing difficulty getting dungeon groups in classic now for anything that isn't Lv58+ or containing NR gear. For catch-up gear, I'd probably choose to address it by increasing the number of pieces dropped by "non-current" bosses so that the need to run the content remains, but it goes a lot quicker than during progression. I'm not sure what the alternative to the dungeon finder is. Clicking a button and getting teleported to a dungeon with strangers takes some of the feeling of "epicness" out of the game. Spamming the LFG channel for hours looking for a tank in classic (or anyone at all for a low level dungeon) is not exactly awesome either.