I also can’t remember an xpac intro CG movie that hyped me as much as WotLK’s did. It still gives me goosebumps.
The day you were born, the very forests of Lordaeron whispered the name… Arthas.
Or it was because they reached market saturation. There was never an unlimited pool of people willing to dedicate the time to an MMORPG.
I remember people wailing about getting declined because low gear score and how heroic raider shouldn’t get the best gear so basically the same stuff people whine about now
- They absolutely do not. This isn’t how data works
- “This is why” followed by a link to a video is bad form, even here on GD
- Wrath was fun then. But there wasn’t anything about it that made it better than Cata, MoP, or Legion except that 12m people were on, and some of them were my friends.
Wrath killed this game for me. Took away every last social part of the game.
You worked with members of your guild to get though dungeons, quests, or just farming because you never had an instant queue to jump into a dungeon or raid. It created the gotta go zoom zoom hurry hurry boom boom game play that is today. EFF Wrath and what it spelled out for the game.
Cross realm group finder was a mistake I agree. They should’ve been merging waning realms from the get-go if getting dungeon groups started and doing group quests was becoming a problem. Cross-realm should’ve been a last resort sort of button.
Wrath was a great expansion, but start of it is going to disappoint a lot of people. Nax will be cleared so fast by everyone the people who stay long term are probably altaholics.
The fact is Shadowlands is the better game. After the creation catalyst comes out this SL will be extremely accessible and fun like it should have been in the beginning. Covenants are going to be easy to level and tier gear acquisition won’t be random.
As with most expansions, Wrath was at its best at the last patch. The only expansion that did not getting better with time was Cataclysm.
BFA was at its best after account wide essences and the corruption vendor(which should have been there from the start of 8.2 and 8.3 respectively).
Legion was horrible at the beginning because of random legendary drops, but possibly the best expansion Blizz has made at the end.
MoP at the beginning had soul crushing, mandatory daily grinds. They straight up made me quit the game. The expansion got better in the middle.
WoD was 1/2 an expansion. People should have gotten refunds or free game time.
I think there is a trend that expansions get much better over time. I believe there are developers making high level decisions to restrict gameplay based off some archaic idea of what an MMO should be.
post #51 addresses this.
They could at least create a W4. Might help them build up a new roster of characters and lore we should care about. We are running pretty thin on both.
Most main lore characters feel dead, banished, and/or imprisoned (“forever”).
MMO was on its peak during Wrath.
New people just discovered WoW and MMO and was amazed of its massive content. It was fun.
When Cata came, many people realized that they have to regrind again. It starts to lose the appeal.
On me, I had a blast from Vanilla then BC then Wrath as I was a hardcore player. But I have to stop as this game is not friendly to my RL life. After Wrath, i had a long vacation away from WoW. But i cant really stop my playing with WoW permanently. Instead, I became Casual… I lost my steam to maintain hardcore gaming. But plenty of hardcore players remained.
My golden moments in WoW was before Cata.
Casuals were having a hard time to cope up. Hardcore people cant be hardcore for years as they have RL too. Good thing, a new age of WoW appeared afterwards to support Casual less play time people. It’s the introduction of Dungeon Finder as you can now join Raid without committing to guilds. And also the introduction of alternative progression of Raid, the Mythic+. It really opened options for Casuals. This new age started on Legion.
To me, modern WoW that started on Legion is way better for Casuals who used to be hardcore. I cant play the same grind I played in Wrath. And Shadowlands is the latest modern WoW.
Do numbers really tell us anything? Do we look at the average total for the xpac? Do we look at the peak total for the xpac? Do we look at the slope (rate at which subs increased) for the expac? Sheer numbers suggest Wrath was the best. Rate of new subs would either put it at Vanilla or TBC depending upon how you interpret the first year of Vanilla. Were people getting burned out by the time Wrath hit such that the people who had played for four years started dropping off as fast as new players added on? Lots of ways to interpret the numbers. No way of know which way, if any, is the correct interpretation. Best xpac remains subjective choice.
What’s funny about this chart is the last segment of MoP saw the BIGGEST most immediate jump in players during an expansion, even more than any of the slow miniscule creeps shown in Classic and TBC when it was growing in small short spurts to 12 M collectively.
If it weren’t for a rocky start after Cata MoP might actually have propelled WoW back to 12 million.
Then WoD 1/4th of the way into it killed the growth again…
I think people forget that there are usually major dropp offs in subscribtions after the last major patch has been out for a while.
Those numbers went way up again, but started dropping pretty quickly after a while, long before the last major patch of cataclysm. But this has been the theme of the subs for a while now.
Every expansion in retail is always going to have a high turn over rate. A large amount of subs for the first few months, then way down again. Wrath of the lich king pretty much sustained all those subs all the way until the last patch before people started dropping off, as after ICC was all cleared, there was nothing being added for a year, so people were unsubbed waiting for cataclysm.
But we will have to wait and see if wrath retains the same status that it did back in 2008. Blizz needs to make it compelling, because if every raid is cleared in the first weekof a patch being out, people will get bored pretty quickly.
I liked how wrath was intermediate in terms of casual and pacing. Now, i legit look like a crazy person. But i cannot move fast enough in retail.
Bro, I could watch a whole movie before I finished watching this video
They are most likely lfd haterz. LAte wrath is when LFD came if I remember correctly.
and lfd is the evil thing that killed wow is one tin foil out bit out there. It ruined the community and the game.
Not sure how a f2p service ruined the community. I say f2p as its what lfd is is to me…free to play. You don’t pay for it.
As right now in tbcc you get some people charging even for stockade carries. Yes…I said stockade. Not ramparts. which are also usually paid runs. But yes…stockade.
58 to 60 with an apparent surge on tbcc dablers you aren’t getting free strath runs often. I can see 9 paid runs to 1 free one in channel 4. Past few days strath runs are dead common on atliesh anyway. 50g a pop.
LFG was one of the bad features of wrath to be honest, but it was one bad feature. Out of what we call retail wow having several, upon several bad features and decisions being made to the game since cataclysm.
That is the difference. There were a few bad decisions in wrath. LFD. Expon/off separation.
Real ID. Oculus and trial of champions, which weren’t really that bad. Those dungeons were fun. But now there are 100’s of changes that have been bad for the game.
Most players weren’t around for wotlk. The ones who are mostly stick to themselves and play casually since life has changed in the last 16 years.
Majority modern players are Cata babies and Mists babies these days.
Everyone who’s played since vanilla, tbc or wotlk knows those were the golden years, and wotlk was the best xpac.
As per modern culture, you’ll get a lot of trolling that says otherwise from people who are clueless, but must say something to fit in somewhere. Everyone is entitled to an “opinion” 
edit: I viewed a few comments here. lol case in point 
It was because arthas. It had nothing to do with gameplay. They can’t recreate that character so wow will never hit that number again.
this was blizzard’s official stance for MANY years to try to justify the decline of the game, “oh, it’s popular because of no reason at all, just kind of happened!” all while simultaneously passing themselves off as geniuses.
the Reality is this:
- the higher ups at the company basically were so scared they let the underlings have free reign, this changed in cata when the higher ups got big heads and crashed the game with their iron-fisted “brilliance” that was previously (mercifully) lacking in the design.
- wrath really WAS fun!
How much do you get paid to post?
People don’t realize that, Wrath was fun and that it was the reason it got so many subs. not just HURR DURR ARTHAS LOL
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