TBC was cited by many as “the real reason I want Classic” back when we were only in vanilla Classic.
By the end of the expansion, I knew a lot of people who thought they did, but didn’t. I was among them. I enjoyed TBC a lot back in the day, but I struggled to motivate myself to play, even quitting between the end of p1 into p3.
What would take TBC from being an okay iteration of WoW, to a great one?
It being longer in the phases. Some were way to short
Wth?? who cares its wrath and its never going back
Who are you talking for? TBC was awesome.
But if I had to improve it I would add dual spec because people are going to complain about it if they don’t, allow the shared xp/mob tagging/looting that retail has so multiple people can grind in the same area, increase elemental mote drop rates, and lastly add more items to the badge vendor to incentivize running those heroics more.
class balance lol, some specs did nothing depending on the form of content, especially pvp
adding the same faction bg matches right off the bat, too many pvpers lost interest when they realized it was going to take 100+ hours just to get honor gear to even step into arena primarily due to LONG queues
longer phases
but other than that there’s not much they could rlly do without significantly changing the game. tbc was great because it was NEW and a big improvement over vanilla. TBC classic was DECENT because we had the knowledge going in.
For me, it was the new meta that kinda spoiled the experience a bit. But that’s not really a TBC problem, it’s a community problem. I miss the days when people didn’t treat WoW like some kind fulltime job.
I have no problem with being tryhard, but there’s a certain point where people aren’t really playing the actual game. They’re playing a game outside of WoW (parsing), and when that happens, in a way, you can feel their absence when you play. I wish people would just enjoy the content more. It feels very different – and in a good way – when you’re hanging out with other people in the game who are present and just enjoying the experience rather than the game simply being an execution of all the theory crafting and running numbers outside of the game.
But I guess that’s the curse of bringing back an old game, right? You see this sort of thing in StarCraft and Smash Melee. Luckily in WoW’s case, you don’t need to be competitive to get into it like those.
I still think TBC was and is the best version of wow. Could it be better? Of course. There is always room for improvement.
Most of the negative vibes, as usual, came from the retail fan bois and cry babies who want everything for free an easy. Of course they would hate attunements. Of course they would hate running BGs for days to get pvp gear. Of course they’d hate the fact that there is no mount sharing in classic. Of course they would prefer gold coin in classic. All they want is to join some random groups, click on random spells and get rewarded with the endless number of epic items. They got used to that thanks to all of these crappy expansions, but BC wasn’t like that. Same group of people are nagging about lack of RDF in WOTLK.
Dual spec and LFD for old content. Classic/crusade were doomed from the start since they would never get either of these. Honestly they need tons of changes, but these were the main ones that would have given them a chance a long term survival. After the failure of classic, Blizzard didn’t even try to keep crusade around. They just threw in the towel. May as well, because the realms would be just as empty as the classic ones.
The question now is what to do with the shovelware classic realms. The characters can’t simply be dumped over to wrath because many were cloned, meaning they are on both games already. Closing the classic realms means trying to figure out what to do with all its characters first, a can Blizzard has been kicking down the road.
This is just a guess, but i suspect the reason for this is because there are a lot of unemployment folks that play Classic, compared to Retail.
Meh. I don’t really see how or why that would be more of a thing now than back then. At least in my own experience, when I was playing OG Wrath, there would be month-long stretches where I basically just played all day because I was in high school and had my summers totally clear.
Now as someone with a fulltime job, I play a bit less but I still probably play it way beyond the point where normies would call it unhealthy. 
Those were the days!
I miss them with all my might.
I think part of the problem with TBC Classic, is…
When TBC first came out, it boasted several improvements to Vanilla WoW, it was more refined, quests were better designed, quest rewards were better designed, classes were better designed.
It was hailed as being awesome. And it was, at the time.
Then Wrath came out and made even more progress towards refining the game even more, removing annoying little tidbits that always rubbed people the wrong way, adding in new awesome innovations, etc.
Fast-forward until modern day, people went into Vanilla with the “Remember when?” mindset, and it was cool. But we knew that TBC Classic came, and then Wrath would be after that.
After seeing some of the stuff that’s missing that was introduced after Wrath, the whole pile of “I wish we had…” started to pile on. Every time you reminisced about “Man, I miss transmog…” or “I wish we had dual spec…” it started to make TBC Classic (and Vanilla Classic) feel that much less awesome and more “meh…”
I remember leveling my Ret Paladin in TBC Classic (my original character was a Ret Paladin, that I started in Vanilla, but stopped and went to a Warrior right before TBC came out, didn’t play said Ret until mid-Wrath) and I remember thinking just how terrible its design is. That judge seal judge seal thing was just the definition of pure tedium and I don’t get how anybody found that “fun”.
Wrath Prepatch drops and it goes from “bleeeeh” to “yaaaaay” overnight.
Now I look back on TBC Classic and it’s “Classic is way more fun now that we have Wrath”. A lot less features missing, a lot smoother gameplay, combat that actually works, etc.
TBC is the literal definition of Rose-Tinted Glasses. It was better than Vanilla, but yet going back to TBC Classic just makes you remember all the stuff you’re missing, the stuff you like about Retail WoW such as Transmog, Dual Spec, etc.
Thats a really good analysis!
Lots of people played TBC. TBC is fine.
I enjoyed TBC
What I did not enjoy was my server dying and the massive failure on both Blizzard’s and the community’s part to balance populations. It left a rather sour taste. But the actual content was great, p2 and p5 progression with a chill p3-p4 intermittance. My biggest complaint was Kael needed a new room decorator.
TBC is the greatest WoW expansion bar none.
I’d argue this was more common back in the day than now.
Exactly. When you play the game again, it’s not about the experience, it’s about getting all the achievements, all the secrets, all the everything you missed the first time.
To answer OPs question, I was on the the “TBC is peak WoW” people, and yeah, the shine did come off somewhat. That said, most of the problems with the game were due to people trying to hyper optimize something that wasn’t made to be hyper optimized.
One TBC specific issue though was the reputation system and the attunements. Those made alts a PITA anything past the first few months.
Vanilla and TBC are clearly made for a time when the game was being flooded with new players, and some of those systems simply don’t hold up as well when that’s not the case.
RDF and dual spec. Basically would make every expansion better, including vanilla itself.