So from what I gather the many issue people seem to have with it is all the cut content. I was reading a video about all the cut content and apparently we were supposed to get several more raid tiers, and the entire zone of faralon was cut. And it would have been really interesting to see what the netherstorm was like in ancient times. How do you think the expansion would have been perceived without all the cut content?
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I mean I enjoyed it because of PvP alone but if it had gotten a lot of that cut content, it would have been amazing.
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I loved WoD, it was probably my favorite one! MM was really enjoyable with the 6.2 tier set. I play at the pace of a snail and I love alts so I never experienced any feeling of content drought.
I loved gearing up in Ashran! It wasn’t so hardcore, you could just goof around and have a good time. And then you left with gear that would get you into the heroic raid!
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The leveling experience and original lore of WoD was pretty fantastic. I would have loved to have dived further into the Spore Mounds and the Arrakkoa empire and seen Yrel fleshed out more as a character.
Honestly the cutting and running of WoD is one of the bigger tragedies for WoW.
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I never gave WoD much of a chance really, the whole underhanded way the flying removal thing was handled turned me off and i cancelled my sub as soon as ion did that random interview and said it was never coming back.
It wasn’t that flying was the most important thing to me or anything, it was the fact that he knew what he planned to do and kept it a secret so we’d buy the expansion and patiently wait for the first content patch, then the second patch… you know how it all went from there. I felt like i got scammed, they should have come out in the open right from the start and let us make an informed decision about whether or not we wanted to buy a no flying expansion.
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We were also going to have a choice of placement for our Garrison. The Talador spot for the Alliance one looked amazing.
And our entire intro was going to be different, too.
I wish we could’ve seen all of that. I think it would have been great if we had more and if they hadn’t railed so hard against flying.
Also this:
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I think the general opinion would definitely be greatly improved. WoD had lots of potential and good ideas. Hard to say how it actually would have panned out, but the first plan they announced was really promising for a solid expansion. There are things about even current WoD I like today. Of course the forums would still hate it.
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I still enjoy WoD and keep a lot of toons parked there and still level any alts through zones. The leveling process was amazing. I really wish they had finished it because it had the possibility of being one of the best remembered expansions.
I would love to go back with revised customizable garrisons and additional continents (along with allied races - Botani for Alliance and Ogres for Horde).
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Other than the wonky time travelling story, I think WoD would have been one of the better expansions had Blizz not cut it early.
It introduced bonus objectives, mythic dungeons, had some of the best raids to date (imo anyway), and the leveling was great.
Edited to add: Garrisons sucked and I was disappointed that Yrel didn’t go ham on the Orcs that abused her.
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What I would love to see, which I know it will never happen, but if they ever do WoD Classic then I’d love for them to work on adding in everything that was cut.
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Adding in the cut content certainly seems like it would have made things better, but if I am honest I was never a fan of the premise of WoD. Go to alternate Draenor to beat up Horde leaders from the early RTS games just seemed kind of hollow and boring to me. It felt less like they were ever a real threat and more like we were punching down at a race whose huge technological achievement were splody metal balls.
The demons being brought in wasn’t much of a twist either. It just felt retreading old ground but we were supposed to be excited about it because of time’a-wimey bullhocky.
Moving my garrison around or have a couple of extra raids wouldn’t have changed that.
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There were definitely some sour notes to WoD, but it may be my favorite of the more modern WoW expansions. Probably the single biggest reason being that I felt like I wasn’t punished for not logging on every day, or even for stepping away from the game for like a month or two.
Anytime a game (or any activity) tries to trap me into a fixed schedule, I start to get aggravated.
I feel like if I were playing at the time (I left after Cata), WoD would have been one of my favorite expansions.
Time travel is one of my favorite genres.
I still have the WoD Collector’s Edition.
I’m still beyond upset we never got to see this. I know, concept art doesn’t always make it in, but still! Even if I’m terrified of the ocean, the design for this thing is amazing.
With hind sight on our side, I look back on WOD and still see it as one of the worst expansions. But not because of the content, which is different from BfA; it was bad because Blizzard failed it. They dropped the ball and cut nearly half of the expansion out (no source on this, but it feels like it).
Compared to BfA which had loads of content, just loads of bad content.
Blizzard loves to work in extremes. Either there’s too little content or too much, either it’s good content or it’s bad. They can’t seem to find a middle ground.
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That would have been amazing.
I think it would have been perceived the same way even with the cut content. Virtually every tier in WoW has some solid one-time quest chains and story to run through, and raids themselves tend to be well designed (and no one acts like the WoD raids were bad). The cut content would have added some more content along THOSE lines, which would just be more of the same - some neat one-time story quests and a decent raid.
The negative reception for WoD wasn’t about lack of those things. It was about the day-to-day, bread-and-butter, organization of endgame systems and mechanics. The WoD team basically put all their eggs into the Garrison basket, and the Garrisons fell flat.
The real question isn’t whether the content we know was cut would have saved WoD, but rather what should they have changed about how Garrisons day-to-day operation worked to get players excited enough to justify the time it would have taken to implement the cut content.
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WoD not only had content cut but also had large swathes of content redesigned. Gorgrond for example was supposed to be a heavily industrialized zone and players could use the grimrail line as fast travel to get from zone to zone (since flying was not originally going to be a thing). But the entire zone was redesigned into what we got in the live game.
This would normally be fine, Gorgrond isn’t a bad zone and the storyline for it is decent enough, but the redesign had major ramifications for Horde players, as the zone was originally going to tell the story of Orgrim Doomhammer and Horde players would eventually be able to lure him over to their side. Sadly what should have been an amazing storyline was compressed down into three quests in Talador before the final battle in Shattrath where Doomhammer got whacked by Blackhand.
Also, seriously, still not giving Blizzard a pass for turning Orgrim into ‘Discount Thrall’ since they had amazing models for the Doomplate and the Doomhammer already in-game (as Thrall was using both during WoD) but instead of giving those models to Orgrim, they used the vanilla WoW versions of both of them.
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Man. When you realize just how much content was cut it makes wow seem like a huge bad of lost potential.
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The pruning killed it more for me than anything. right up till the Class changes hit replacing the MOP design I was still having fun playing and leveling alt, right afterwards (and I mean right after so it was not just burn out, it was overnight) they just were not as fun to play.
seemed to be a common thing back then based on what ive read from the time.
Im sorry but I have a lot of questions about what it took going on in the mind of someone who literally thought it would be a good idea to remove flight from the game.
…insert something about fine print and lawyers in general here, lol.
They would have known players would have gone nuts if theyd have put that out before raking in the purchase price, lol.
Just seeing pathfinder when I hit WoD nearly made me quit.
Im positive had I been playing at the time Ion said no more flight at all Id have quit and deleted the game.
this guy literally has NO clue what the vast majority of players like in a video game.
I personally believe MOST are just tolerating it all because they love the game itself as it has been and keep hoping it’ll return to greatness some day.