this is just not even remotely true. I didn’t even start leveling my first character ever (this one) until after ICC was released. Once i hit 80 and figured out how to play end game somewhat I joined a guild that was raiding ICC. It was very easy to get a full set of tier 9 by just collecting the badges from random 5-mans and whatnot. this gear plus what you could acquire from the ICC 5-mans, plus crafted gear was plenty to start raiding ICC. Sure it was tedious to get frost badges, but that gear wasn’t needed to start raiding ICC. Catching up was very easy, especially by the time ICC was around. There was also the weekly PvP boss that dropped tier 10 gear. Plus a weekly quest to down one of the first couple bosses in Ulduar which rewarded gear.
It was good enough.
I agree that it was descent.
But reallistically speaking in the gearscore-era it wouldn’t get you any invites.
what Wrath really did right besides having the best villain in the game and the coolest name for an expansion was…have a good professions system with meaningful crafting… have a boat-load of 5-mans to play through… Have a great continent and zones to play through…
For me it was accessibility.
Its not going to be popular on these forums, but as a filthy casual I did half of ICC heroic. I just felt that playing casually I actually got somewhere in the game. Now there are so many versions of difficulty accomplishment just gets buried because its endless.
People on these forums keep saying the game is way easier now, and thats just a straight lie. Game is way too complicated now, and requires hours of dedicated “research” of youtube videos to even figure out what is going on half the time.
The multi-layered grinds are also through the roof. You feel obligated to log in almost daily now to just get mediocre.
Most casual people look at this and say no thanks. They don’t want to pay $15 a month so some other neckbeard gets to enjoy the majority of the game while the rest of us get table scraps.
I think it’s worth noting that WotLK was where it started becoming the norm for all characters to be participating in the same tier of content, and Cata was the first to really pull all stops for high end content accessibility. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
The game for many years now has herded players into what they’re “supposed” to be doing at that point in time, and tries to funnel everybody into the same endgame. I think this is a huge mistake, because it’s wrong to assume that this is what all players (or even the majority) actually want.
In Vanilla, TBC, and WotLK there was a huge population of players who were perfectly happy playing at their own pace. Some had chill progression guilds that were a tier or two behind but a lot of fun to play with. Some never advanced past the expansion’s first tier, and others didn’t raid at all and yet they were happy because they were doing what they wanted to do.
If player-herding is a requirement, I think WotLK got it closest to right out of any of the expansions. The tiered badge system worked quite well because it gave players a variety of ways to procure their gear at whatever pace they desired (no hard caps). It meant that everybody had something they could work on to upgrade their character, keeping players busy, subscribed, and mostly happy.
Every expansion since has screwed that up. Gear catchup systems are too robust, cutting short what could be a source of satisfying progression, and secondary power systems are hard-capped and almost kneecapped if the player isn’t interested in higher end content. It shouldn’t be a surprise that under this system, a lot of players are left with almost nothing to do in-game. No matter how hard Blizz funnels people or how far they nerf some content types (LFR), many just won’t be interested. Pushing players into M+ and raids is not a winning strategy.
Note you’re talking about Tier 9, which was the previous tier. And various dungeon gears.
Note that you were going and getting Tier 9 gear AFTER TIER 10 WAS RELEASED. That’s a model that Blizzard has abandoned. Now, the moment a new tier releases, all previous content is completely irrelevant.
Which is a terrible system, because not only does it invalidate peoples’ efforts from the previous tiers, leading to an increasing “what’s the point?” attitude in the playerbase, but it also strips newer or lapsed players from doing that content, because nobody does old content anymore.
Personally, I think the subscription drop off from Wrath had little to do with the subsequent expansions and a great deal more to do with the whole “IRL” in real life. Wrath starts when the housing boom is just starting to crack but most of us are still feeling prosperous or at least our parents were feeling generous.
By the time Cata comes out in 2010 the economy has crashed. Money for luxuries such as a game subscription are a thing of the past for so many people. As the Great Recession grinds on with an painfully slow recovery those coming of age are struggling to financially hold their own, not to mention a lot of people of gaming age are just moving on to other games and switching more often, making a subscription based game an expensive luxury. We’re all aging and kids growing up watching their parents play are fewer and, I suspect, WoW attracts fewer new players and relies more heavily on retaining existing ones.
From what I can see, the mechanics and storylines of the expansions are much less a factor than we’d think. Given that WoW Classic provided at least a temporary but significant bump shows that the game is much more dependent on retaining players than attracting new ones. This may also explain why game progression has become much more broad and that there are multiple avenues to obtaining good gear and staying subscribed rather than just the PvP and raiding communities. At least for me, BFA has been one of the best expansions in terms of things to do and ways to get strong enough without having to do endgame group activities. Likewise, endgame activities such as raids, PvP, mythic+ have greatly expanded endgame options for more competitive folks.
It looks like SL is going to continue with this very broad approach to player options and for that, I’m looking forward to it, though the whole covenants thing just seems like another level of “More Aldor and Scryer crud? Bleh!” Oh well, here to those of us who will enjoy that. Room for everyone!
I had a real easy time gearing up in WotLK
I’m think I’d just run the new dungeons, do some other weird stuff like WG bosses and then I’d get a few random pvp piece then use something to lie about my achievements and get into an ICC pug
I’m pretty sure I had a max level rogue, dk, mage and priest and they all had full sets of icc gear
What Wrath did right to have 12 million subs: Be out during the golden age of MMOs when everyone and their mom was trying them out.
Wrath era of WoW = Fortnite era of battle royales.
Entertainment spending (such as on games) actually goes up during recessions.
Yeah, I took a warrior from “just dinged 80” to tanking ICC within the span of the last major patch without even trying that hard. Actually I would argue that it was considerably more straightforward than trying to do the same today.
Wrath was super hard carried by Arthas as the main villain.
It had virtually no content outside of raids and arena. Running laps around Dalaran was the joke of the expansion for a reason.
mmos were at it’s peak then, most of the existing ones had high numbers, people have been constantly losing interest in mmos since then
Yeah it was just get gear and now it is
Get essences
Get neck up
Get good azerite
Level up cloak
Get corruptions
Get gear
People seem to forget how the world was just a few years ago. Smartphone was still a luxury for the rich and WoW was a game a toaster could pay(as a just out of college kid just starting to get a job I was suprise my computer managed to actually play it).
Add to that Wrath tied directly to Warcraft 3 and I think many people wanted to see how Arthas’ story would end!
I think not enough people take this into account. If wotlk came out in 2020 it would not have 12 million subs.
That was true for the original iPhone, but by the time the iPhone 3G came out (2009 I think) smartphones were pretty accessible. I got a 3GS as my first ever cellphone going into college with $0 up front and payments rolled into the two year contract.
It was the second expansion that followed a pretty strong first expansion and had the Lich King, one of if not the most recognizable Warcraft characters, as it’s big bad.
Everything else was just gravy.
I am gonna leave rest of your post since most of that is pretty much half agreeing but this Cloak point is what always bugs me the most whenever people talk about “it’s not needed”. I will give you an example why it IS FORCED.
First thing first, you DO NEED the Cloak for N’Zoth encounter even on LFR difficulty, so your argument is invalid right there but here’s another simple example.
I decided not to even get the Cloak on one of my alts, because “I didn’t need it”. Next thing is, most of the gear drops have CORRUPTION on it. And guess what? You can NOT cure that corruption without actually doing that long boring quest chain xx times and then it’s always catch 22. You either do those corruption related content even to just cure the corruption on your gear or if you want to equip it then you HAVE to level up your Cloak for corruption resistance.
These not so wise designers didn’t have the brain to make sure there’s NO CORRUPTION on any gear drops if you don’t have the Cloak yet. That simply solves the problem right there and then. I don’t want Cloak on my alt, I should not get the corruption and then HAVE to get the Cloak either.
A very shiny example of what a miserable failure of this forced system is.