My Thoughts on WotLK

WoW Classic Wrath of the Lich King Classic Discussion
1

This isn’t really for anyone but myself, I wanted to just put my thoughts of WotLK down, feel free to comment though this is a forum after all…

Raids

The raiding in WotLK was fine, not overly great but not bad either. I didn't enjoy it as much as TBC but that might've been because of Naxx followed by 2 phases of Ulduar.

Naxxramas (Naxx)

Naxxramas in WotLK was honestly a disappointment, they basically made Naxx way to easy removing mechanics like Rezuvious shout and the Four Horsemen ghost mechanic etc… It just made it feel like it was nerfed too hard and we got the 30% buffed version, I can’t imagine how much of a cake walk it’d of been unbuffed.

The re-coloured teir sets are alright, I won’t speak for other classes but Mages getting two re-coloured Frostfire Regalia sets was fine. Personally I still prefer T3 than the vendor/token T7 though the token set (25 man) does look nice.

Eye of Eternity (Malygos)

EoE was was the first raid to introduce vehicles and honestly it was done pretty well, I don’t know if you’d include the discs as a vehicle but phase 3 of the fight where you’re on dragons was an interesting concept, one where I think it was done well.

Obsidian Sanctum (Sartharion)

I really like the concept of OS as a raid, selectable difficulty depending on who you keep alive with keeping all 3 drakes alive rewards a mount after you’ve killed Sarth. The fire wall and the added difficulty from the drakes made it an enjoyable raid and I hear that the items from OS were relevent for multiple phases (or just the next phase).

Ulduar

Ulduar was where hardmodes were introduced, nearly all of the bosses had a hardmode that added mechanics that needed more than the usual co-operation and actually needed us to be more conscious of what we’re doing, the only fight that I can think of that really made us do that was pre-nerf Lady Vashj in TBC where one persons screw up messed up the encounter.

Most of the fights were great the only real issue with Ulduar is that it over stayed its welcome. Now I know that I didn’t need to do Ulduar during TotGC but I and I assume many others did for more Val’anyr’s. The worst part of Ulduar by far was killing General Vezax, the hardmode took ages and the run back on a wipe was brutal making the fight just annoying to do even in clean runs.

Trial of the Grand Crusader (TotGC)

TotGC was a good raid albeit too short for it to be great, had no trash which was nice but also had too little bosses so it was done too quickly. I know that some people might like that but personally I didn’t, I think that if there were bosses, perhaps a spar against Tirion himself or perhaps fighting Garrosh (if Alliance), Varian (if Horde) or all 3 would’ve made the raid much more enjoyable. The bosses we got were great but again too few to get that into them.

I liked how Anub’arak got a proper fight rather than it being the end boss of Azjol-Nerub (annoying fight). The fight itself is nice, easy but you have to pay attention during p3 which is all that I can ask for really. Fights where you can AFK without issue just causes people to get bored and burn out.

Icecrown Cititdel (ICC)

ICC is what everyone was waiting for in WotLK, I was anticipating this raid a lot and apart from several bosses it lived up pretty well. My first time going into ICC was great, killing Marrowgar into Lady Deathwhisper really put theory to practice. Gunship was easy but everyone knew it was going to be easy. Saurfang is a fight I thought would be harder but was actually quite simple. Let’s skip bosses and go to the big 3 (which then turned into the big 2) the Blood Prince Council, Prof. Putricide and the Lich King…

BPC was a nice fight to adapt to, not moving or stutter stepping to move around wasn’t that hard this boss was more of a growing pains than anything and as the fight got refined less and less issues occured.

Prof. Putricide was a very fun fight and remained the only challenge apart from LK because of the individual responsibilty the fight had. Now with the 30% buff this isn’t as fun but it’s a chill fight now, a shell of what it once was difficulty wise.

Lich King, this was it the hardest boss in WotLK and for the most part it was, the personal responsibility that’s in this fight is quite high which adds to both its difficulty and fun. Shadow traps, Valks, Defile, Ice Orb, there’s so much personal responsibility in this fight that most couldn’t do it without the buff (conjecture). I think it did live up to it’s status

Ruby Sanctum (RS/Halion)

RS has a nice concept for what it’s worth, where you have to match the other sides dps to down the boss with both sides doing different mechanics. Mechanic wise I think that both sides are good though reduced because of the duality of it, I think that only having two mechanics per side is too few, I think one more would’ve been good not sure what though.

Overall WotLK had 2 great raids but unfortunately with phase 1 being a bad re-hash and with phase 2 bleeding into the majority of phase 3 made Ulduar overstay its welcome and currently with ICC looking like it’s going to last at least another 2 months WotLK raiding as a whole wasn’t as good as it could’ve been which is a shame.

Dungeons

Dungeons in WotLK were quite enjoyable even with the Titan Rune mechanics most we're perfectly fine save for a couple, I think we all know what ones I'm talking about.

Nerubian Dungeons

Azjol’Nerub and Ahn’Kahet one has the most annoying encounter (Anub’arak), the other one of the longest dungeons if killing all bosses. It’s Titan Rune made this dungeon annoying as you had to rely on other people breaking you out of webs and break you out quick before it gets out of hand. You can really see the bystander effect at play in these dungeons as well as the Nexus dungeons, I think adding this mechanic to this dungeon while makes sense thematically, doesn’t really hit the mark in what it should’ve been.

Troll Dungeons

Gundrak and Drak’Tharon Keep (DTK) are honestly good dungeons, even the Titan Rune mechanic isn’t that bad I don’t even notice it whenever I do get it. Though when we first got them it was over tuned by a mile I’m glad that they nerfed it

Ulduar Dungeons

Halls of Lightning/Stone are nice little lore dumps, do HoS learn about Loken then confront him in HoL which then ultimately leads to Ulduar itself where you face his brainwashed brother Thorim. Mechanically normal and the Titan Rune made it very fun to do. Having infinite mana and increased damage was great, it made groups really quick though the gauntlet in HoS was a bit bad to get through cause the buff was touch and go depending on how quickly you cleared.

Culling of Stratholme

It’s always nice doing a Caverns of Time dungeon, peering into the past, seeing and actually being part of these major events are quite nice to see (the first few times that is) seeing Arthas being lured into coming to Northrend by Mal’Ganis is a turning point in his story and I’m glad that it was adapted ingame (yes I know it was in WC3).

Nexus Dungeons/Violet Hold

The Nexus dungeons have a bad rep what with Oculus being one of the most hated dungeons in WotLK and the Titan Rune mechanic doesn’t help either. Oculus is currently the best dungeon to get in RDF for scourgestones 6 stones in like 15 minutes.

Violet Hold is disliked because it’s a timed event much like Black Morass in TBC.

Utgarde Dungeons

The Utgarde dungeons remind me a lot of the dungeons from TBC not mechanically challenging in any way but still a nice dungeon to do (like the Hellfire dungeons). The Titan Rune mechanic

Trial of the Champion

TotC is a unique dungeon, I like that it starts with the jousting leading to fighting the Horde Champions without their mounts. The next boss (Paletress/Eadric) are pretty easy if you kick/dispell and the Black Knight is pretty hard if you don’t have a good healer (especially with Gamma)

Icecrown Dungeons

These dungeons are a timeline, not something I’d want to do more than once for the most part, the only one being Forge of Souls because of how quick it is but PoS (mosly fine) and HoR aren’t as prefered personally.

Random Dungeon Finder/Looking For Dungeon

RDF being added was great but should’ve been added sooner, Arfus is a nice addition and I’m glad that the Perky Pug finally became obtainable (even if it’s through normal means). The issues with people kicking others that I’ve seen here because of gearscore or performance is an issue of RDF that should be handled and hopefully something is done for Cataclysm because if these people are having problems now then those problems will be exacerbated come Cataclysm leveling.

Account Wide Collections

I don’t mind the account wide collections personally, I think it’s fine that my other characters get rewarded for what my main does. I even wouldn’t mind shared achievements so long as the character that obtained the achievement is credited.

I’ve pretty much gotten all pets and have the 100 mount achievement and I don’t mind if my other characters have access to my Ashes of Al’ar, Invincible or my Black Proto-Drake but again, that’s just me and I’m sure that there’s people that take issue with shared collections.

The Zones

I think the Northrend look great, just so many screenshot worthy places it’s a very pretty continent. The mountains of The Storm Peaks, The massive steps of Zul’Drak, the forests of the Grizzly Hills so many screenshot worthy places, I personally use Outland skyboxes as backgrounds for mount SS’s but Northrend truely is a place that’s great for just the terrain.

This uses the daytime Nagrand skybox as the background

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/894147300920787014/1122439836142403594/image.png?ex=66091b8e&is=65f6a68e&hm=73d210a235d048a94898f2998c01d2be66c5dea9aadc770db05a6cd92ee6ede2&

This uses the night time Nagrand skybox as the background

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/894147300920787014/1017889263959945376/unknown.png?ex=66105a3f&is=65fde53f&hm=8c2ddcc4137708a0dbc764575cf30e87abce5ffa7c9b25b9056508774c1756ac&

This uses the skybox from Netherstorm as the background

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/894147300920787014/1218862671240106014/image.png?ex=66093552&is=65f6c052&hm=ea540b05e7b57db58e01ff4ffd83f142532d90252bdea92f7a893e5b407a65f3&

Fishing

They absolutly gutted fishing in WotLK and it’s sad to hear that it continues into Cataclysm. It was so rewarding fishing in Classic and TBC and I was looking forward to it coming into WotLK but as I read into it more I got deflated because there’s not nearly as much of an incentive to fish as there was in WotLK. And I mean fishing from pool to pool, WotLK made staying put and fishing more rewarding than going from pool to pool which is pretty disappointing, the only thing worth going from pool to pool for was the turtle and I got that quite quickly.

The rewards from WotLK fishing just isn’t rewarding enough when compared to Classic and TBC, I really enjoyed fishing in Classic and TBC and it was pretty deflating for it to be so unrewarding in WotLK.

These are my thoughts about WotLK…

4 Likes
3

Nah, we simply needed better people making the decisions. I think people like a lot of the changes but because we had Brian Birmingham at the helm, a lot of bad decisions made it through too.

Kevin Jordan said something years ago before Classic even released. Paraphrasing from memory here but he said that some changes are objectively good improvements and SHOULD be made, but it would take good developers to recognize what those changes are. We didn’t get good developers, for the most part.

This team decided to include the modern raid frames with original Classic release but actually spent development time and resources to remove the in-game Calendar. How do you define that level of inconsistent decision making as anything but incompetence?

3 Likes
4

RDF tracks various statistics related to vote kicks, and players that over-use it incur a longer and longer cooldown over time. It’s only been an “issue” due to the feature not being out for very long. Had it been released on launch, people likely wouldn’t have been getting kicked with the eventual inclusion of H+.

1 Like
5

My feelings towards Wrath are quite simple. RDF should have been in earlier, and Heroic+ dungeons don’t belong in Classic. They just promote toxic gatekeeping, reduce accessibility, and negate a sense of progression. I made a thread about that the day Blizz announced them.

Also, Megaservers and Layers are complete trash and antithetical to the overall design philosophy of the old game. They’re the single worst thing infecting Classic. There is zero server community. The sense of the World is rendered obsolete as the world is cut up into little pieces. I could go on and on, but Blizz doesn’t care.

5 Likes
6

Dannnng I made them mad :rofl: The truth stings!

7

I don’t even know what you said, you’ve deleted your post, the only thing I know you said was…

So was that the whole thing?

8

Na blamed the devs for making changes and called them nerds, said the old devs were better, etc, also got a 24 :rofl:

9

I got to lava burst my way to 100k kill achievement, do raids I never did back in the day, and am approaching full-BiS, so wotlk was a win for me.

Also, I think Grobbulus is BiS server and a better WoW experience than playing on a mega server. I made chars on one for like 10minutes and I couldn’t handle how fast LFG chat was moving. I think a lot of people playing on a mega server do not know what they are missing.

10

Dude! You like Ulduar? Well, how about some Ulduar with your Ulduar… literally. 2 phases of 10 man and 25 man hardmodes having BiS for most (all?) classes.

IDK about this one. I don’t think Dungeon Finder belongs in this sort of a game, but that’s me. That could bias my opinion, but it seems to me like the population of Wrath really took a nose-dive when they added it, so…

Same as last time, coincidentally. Of course correlation isn’t necessarily causation, but it’s something I notice.

I mind, apparently. Account-wide mounts just killed character identity for me, and I stopped wanting to play my Wrath characters, at all. I know it seems like a silly reason, and it doesn’t feel like a reasonable thing, but that’s just the way it is for me.

Even though I didn’t get the tiger mount from ZG, as soon as account-wide collections dropped, I lost any motivation I had to keep farming it. This is yet another thing I think does not belong in this type of game (personally of course. I can understand why others would have a different opinion).

:woman_shrugging:

11

I’ve seen the opposite. Previously dead realms or one-sided realms had a resurgence in players with it being added. Players leaving is better attributed to lack of content at 80 (once they’ve finished ICC, they move on.)

12

I don’t think ICC was nearly as popular as anticipated, especially after the nosedive in population that coincided with the release of RDF.

:woman_shrugging:

13

I confess I’m a bit confused by this, since it depends on when you are measuring the pop. At peak Grobb was 26k (ironforge), and clearly in the mega range imo. Current numbers are about 25% of that.

It’s about the same level as Atiesh-now, though Atiesh peaked much lower than Grob.

Even the other servers we think of as mega are really in the ‘large’ range currently - Faerlina 12.4k, Bene 10.7k, Whitemane 8.0k, Pagle 7.0.

The question is really how (or potentially but unlikely ‘if’) they rebound for Cata, but Grob could perhaps be a megaserver again in 3 months.

14

That said, I don’t dispute that I also personally think 6-10k makes for a fairly healthy server for day-to-day playing and finding raids, the hitch is how long can the game sustain that level?

Over the life of classic 6k servers have tended to become 2k servers which quickly become comatose servers.

15

Naxxramas was intentionally made easier and accessible by design in original Wrath; the final raid of vanilla being transformed into an entry-level raid, serving a similar purpose to Molten Core and Karazhan. This was done because only a small portion of the playerbase set foot in Naxx, and even fewer cleared it, while it was current content. I hope that gives a bit of context as to why the raid was so easy for both original and classic Wrath.

Personally, I wasn’t disappointed with Naxx in original Wrath, since it was the first time I ever got to experience that raid. Sure, it wasn’t exactly the same as the original, and it was definitely undertuned, but I still had fun at the time. While I did join classic Wrath during the tail end of phase 3, I imagine that if I did start from phase 1, I’d feel whatever about it as that’s how I feel reliving ICC again.

As far as ICC goes, I’m glad it’s ending much sooner than how long it lasted back then. I got tired of it after half a year, and that part hasn’t changed especially after being given a reminder about how scuffed loot was in Wrath (3 drops in 25-man and only 1 heroic token per boss, I don’t miss this at all).

It was an interesting read, even though I share similar opinions of the expansion as you do. But one thing I really don’t like about classic Wrath was the anti-boosting countermeasures which didn’t exist back then. That took me by surprise when I was leveling through dungeons with friends, and we found out we were getting like no experience from mobs all because one of us was just 1 level too high for the mobs we were fighting. The stunlocks suck too for farming old dungeons, so I didn’t even bother making tanking my offspec.

1 Like
16

I know why they did it, it just that the reason worked back then but doesn’t work in WotLK today. They honestly should’ve increased it by 100/200% rather than 30%.

Yeah, the level range needs to be tweeked, heard a lot of people having that issue when it first came in TBC.

17

Everything about wrath classic was perfect. And therefore in my op, a permanent wrath classic server option should exist.

18

Personal opinion, I’ve stated what was wrong with WotLK. Also, this thread isn’t about WotLK Era servers so I’d appreciate it if you’d stay on topic.

1 Like
22

Then you did not ACTUALLY play the game.

23

I did play the game wrath of the lich king. And I played wrath of the lich king classic to. And it was my favorite version of the game and the most perfect version of the game. And I just want one permanent wrath classic realm to play on.