Why do you think this will be my experience of Wrath Classic? Don’t get me wrong, I fully expect some people will switch the music off after 1 month. And some people may get sick of the zones too. But it isn’t possible to know the universal answer to your question. There’s only a personal answer. Claims to the contrary are, IMO, bogus.
I’m sorry, but from my perspective it STILL seems like your trying to defend your personal position, rather than showing a genuine curiosity regarding other people’s likes and dislikes.
Alt accessibility. LFD to gain extra currency. Amazing raids. Great tier set bonuses. Achievements. Crafting continues to be good. Reputation is meaningful still. The lich king theme. The music. The zones culminating design peaking in ice crown. The countless taunting of the Lich king and then finally getting to confront him on his throne. Pvp was more balanced. Added much needed spells to every specs kit. Less reliant on huge raid sizes. AMAZING raids. I could go on and on.
I played since Vanilla and loved WotLK. Here are a few reasons why:
The zones — The design, the music, the layout — just felt much more organic than anything I’d seen before. Going to Grizzly Hills and hearing the music for the first time made me want to live there IRL.
The story — This really felt like the first truly coherent story in WotLK. We knew who the bad guy was and we were out to get him. There was much more interaction with world leaders this time around like Sylvanas and Jaina but they didn’t overshadow the action. It really felt like we were part of something bigger, something grand, like there was genuine purpose to the game. (Vanilla felt like a sandbox in a sense, TBC felt like more of the same but with big mushrooms, but WotLK felt like it had a genuine plot).
Dynamic content — You mention Naxx, but it makes sense that the LK would recall his most powerful base / ship. It felt like the bad guys were really up to something. (Compare the things that happened in Wrath to the elemental mobs in vanilla that just circle about screaming “If you’re all so craven, this is going to be easy” for days on end.) The way the world changed from patch to patch was exciting.
Heirlooms — I think heirlooms became an albatross eventually, but during WotLK, they were pretty limited in their scope and number. Heirlooms (in limited number) really did help gear up alts so the game was certainly more open to experimentation in that regard.
Grinds felt better — The grinds for the Skyguard and the Ogres in TBC were pretty tedious. I can’t put my finger on it, but the grinds for WotLK felt better. Maybe someone else can help me out?
Gearing — While some may hate it, getting raid gear with badges wasn’t a bad thing for people who were working, had families, etc. The gear system really was less stressful in this Xpac.
Dungeon & Raid content — This felt more coherent and more story-driven, if that makes sense.
I know not everyone will agree with me, but I think WotLK got way more RIGHT than wrong. Overall, it was the last installment of the golden age of WoW.
Vanilla and TBC were ok, Loved wrath, Cata was a nightmare. The OG cata dungeons were so bad they 180’d at the end of the expansion and never added interlocking murder trash mob packs again. It wrecked my guild.
I think Subtlety was still BiS for arena at the very highest ratings. Pikaboo continued playing Subtlety, for example, and was the highest rated Rogue in NA.
I was not playing at that level, but I still stuck with Subtlety and refused to go Combat. Redbuff Killing Spree is truly not that exciting. Long Kidney Shot was really dumb, and could be made even longer with Shadow Reflection (of course competent teams would just kill the reflection).
It did mean my pool of teammates was a bit smaller in WoD S1 because of dumb 2.2k LFG heroes thinking that my spec, rather than mistakes and misplays, is the thing holding us back lmao. But I also met plenty of folks that had brains and weren’t just looking for the least effort path.
By the time WoD S3 rolled around, I had some consistent teammates and I was unfortunately humoring them by playing as Assassination (which was also very dumb at the time). Funny thing though, the queue session where we reached 2.5k rating was the one where I went Subtlety without telling them. By the time they figured out what spec I was playing, we were already winning a lot of games so they didn’t whine about it.
It turns out that playing the spec where you have the most expertise and practice can be a lot stronger than playing the agreed upon meta spec – who knew? lol.
Well, most people are probably not going to spend too much time immersing themselves in these zones after the initial leveling experience. More power to you if you are, though. The zones truly are beautiful and the music is very well composed. I like these things a lot, I just know that most people will not pay too much attention to them once we are into the thick of things with the expansion.
Again, I don’t dislike the WotLK zones and music, I think they’re great! But if you’re going to continue enjoying them for more than a few weeks past launch, you’re probably in the minority. That’s great for you personally, I’m glad that you will enjoy them. My point is that, it doesn’t really explain why the majority would seem so hyped for this expansion.
And that is what I am most curious to understand with this thread. Your reasons are valid for you, but I don’t think they explain why there seems to be so much WotLK hype for many others. If it truly comes down to the zones and music for everybody else (which I’m sure it does not) then the amount of hype would be, IMO, pretty misplaced considering that most of those people will not pay much attention to the zones and music once we are a couple weeks past launch.
BTW, I am still really curious to know what specific profession changes you are looking forward to. I enjoy goldmaking and professions quite a bit. I am wondering what I missed about WotLK professions compared to TBCC, and if I should perhaps re-evaluate my profession choices going into the next expansion.
Can you elaborate on what makes WotLK more alt friendly compared to TBCC? Attunements perhaps, although TBCC has already been much more lax with attunements compared to the original TBC.
They aren’t doing LFD, at least for now.
I really liked Ulduar. Are you considering other Wrath raids to be amazing as well? What do you like about them compared to TBC?
Isn’t Wrath also the point where the scaling became so much that previous raid tiers become totally irrelevant? I liked it when the itemization wasn’t so clinical and formulaic that higher ilvl is always better. I liked that DST remains BiS for many specs through the entire TBC expansion, for example.
Did TBC not have these? As a Rogue at least, my T5 and T6 bonuses were amazing. T5 really affects the rotation and flow of resources, while T6 is just an incredible power increase, so much so that Rogues will even try to use it in both PvP and PvE.
What specific tier set bonuses are you looking forward to in WotLK?
My opinion is that these were a mistake. It leads to people intentionally making “mistakes” because they are pursuing a specific achievement. For example, intentionally allowing the other team to capture a base in BGs, because you are going for an achievement to re-capture it. This badly harms the experience of BGs when you have people going in with a personal goal that is contrary to the team objective.
Another poster mentioned profession changes as something they were looking forward to. I’ve enjoyed TBC professions and nothing stands out to me as being radically different about WotLK. Am I missing something here?
Isn’t it the case that TBCC has many reps that are relevant immediately at launch, while WotLK has basically only 1 rep per tier that matters?
To each his own, I suppose!
Yes, as an amateur composer myself the WotLK music is truly outstanding. Unfortunately, most players probably will not care or continue to notice it once we are a few weeks in, so I don’t think this explains the amount of hype this expansion is receiving.
The scale of the zones is very impressive and cool. And the wintry aesthetics of most of it. I really loved Storm Peaks and Howling Fjord, personally.
I guess other people are a lot more excited about this than I am. I really do not care in the slightest. I think the whole “big bad evil concept” is way overdone in the genre. I’d rather have a cast of characters with more complex motivations than 1 single bad guy behind almost everything. It’s kind of a lazy narrative device.
Definitely not at launch, LOL. WotLK Classic will be based on 3.3.5 though and that will be nice.
That said, I don’t think TBC PvP balance is poor at all. The fact is that for every class in the game, there are people out there getting Gladiator titles. Maybe you have to work a bit harder, or you have fewer top-tier composition options available.
But it seems to me that people use PvP balance as an excuse for why they don’t play, when the real reason for their lack of success is lack of skills or unwillingness to put in the effort. WotLK isn’t going to fix those problems. People aren’t going to go from Rival to Gladiator in WotLK just because their class got buffed.
Probably Hpals and Ele Shamans have the most to look forward to, w.r.t. PvP buffs. And those classes are still Gladiator viable today, Wrath just makes it not quite as hard.
I suppose you could argue that it’s more of a buff at the skill floor, than it is at the skill ceiling. But players near the skill floor would be better served by improving their game knowledge and awareness rather than just waiting for the skill floor to get raised. Like OK, maybe they’ll be 1500 instead of 1300, but how much difference does that make?
If we’re talking about casual BGs rather than Arenas, all of this is a moot point anyway, because specs like Ele and Hpal are much more desired already in these larger team formats.
Such as? Speaking about Rogues, TotT is pretty cool, but Fan of Knives is pretty unwelcome in my opinion. Rogue should be a single target class not AoE. To me, this sounds like homogenization. FoK also doesn’t even interact much with the rest of our mechanics. It’s just 1 button that you spam when there are multiple targets. Not very fun or exciting even if it buffs my class to “S-tier” in raids. I’d rather be desired due to buffing my strengths, rather than removing weaknesses.
What does this mean? Most guilds will still prefer 25m in WotLK I believe, because 25m offers higher ilvl rewards. (I could be misremembering, it’s been a long time).
Which? lol. I agree Ulduar was awesome. But without a doubt the original Naxxramas was more fun than WotLK Naxx is going to be.
Thanks for the fairly comprehensive answer. I’m trying to understand why so many people seem so hyped for this expansion and you definitely listed a lot of things when most others are saying the same 1-2 things that don’t seem that relevant in the long run.
Please elaborate as much as you wish, I’d be very curious to hear you go into detail about some of these thoughts.
How much does this matter for WotLK as opposed to original WotLK? There aren’t going to be any surprises here. Do you really enjoy “the story” while playing WoW classic – is that why you’re really here playing this game?
As I’ve said before, I think the BBEG trope in RPGs is really overdone and played out. I kind of prefer being an adventurer helping the locals with their issues and getting immersed in these smaller scale stories. As opposed to saving the entire universe from some supreme evil cosmic force that is hellbent on destroying it all for… what reasons exactly? There is just so much more nuance and depth that is possible when everything doesn’t lead back to one single villain.
Hmmm, doesn’t really seem to be a big deal. I doubt that this explains much of the hype surrounding this expansion.
Personally I’ve got 8 characters at 60+ already. I think a lot of people already leveled alts very early in classic. Perhaps this matters more for people just starting classic with WotLK who didn’t play vanilla or TBC (but will there be many of those? if so, why?)
I didn’t do these in TBCC so I couldn’t really say.
Most of my guild have jobs, families, etc. Maybe this made a difference for people in the original, but has this been a problem for people in classic? Seems like the gear is very attainable already in classic. In fact, PvP gear is now much harder to obtain than PvE gear, which is radically different from how it was in the original release.
I kind of doubt that the average classic player cares much about this, even if you personally are looking forward to it.
There are guilds that don’t do this. You might have more fun if you team up with other players that have similar expectations and attitudes towards the game.
I think a lot of people feel this way. So what is the future of classic after WotLK? Maybe Blizzard has a plan, but I kind of doubt it. Which makes the decision to rush us through these contest phases seem highly questionable to me.
Pretty much all classes/specs finally felt mostly finished.
Pvp is generally more balanced and the arena meta felt much more exciting.
They had a nice balance of “bring the player not the class” while managing to still make building a balanced raid comp generally desirable. At the top end it’ll probably not be fantastic but at any other level it seems like it’ll be a nice medium between classic’s melee stacking and TBC’s “we need these specific specs to complete these preset group comps or else we are significantly worse”.
Ulduar and ICC were better raids than anything that had come before (although ICC gated release was dumb).
10 man mode allowed raiding to be more friendly towards smaller friend groups and made raiding more accessible in general.
Significantly more alt friendly than TBC.
Doesn’t matter for classic version, but the original release storyline was very nice as it felt like the first time we had a cohesive backstory which played through the entire expansion.
Engineering enchants are the greatest profession addition ever imo.
You would be shocked to learn how many people enjoy the story as presented in WotLK. You really would. Of course, for someone like you, it’s all about strutting around in l33t epics and compensating for your lack of accomplishments in other life domains, I’d imagine.
Seems like you’re just here to troll anyone who doesn’t agree with your “glass half-cracked” view of life.
I loved the dungeons. The last year of Wrath after dungeon finder was added was the most fun I ever had in WoW, except perhaps Vanilla.
Wintergrasp was a lot of fun. Even though I played an imbalanced server so I was always outnumbered. The buff made me a God and I destroyed the enemy players, but lost every battle. I liked Isle of Conquest and Strand a lot.
The story was great. The zones were very well designed. The music, the layout. I would literally just spend hours flying around the world soaking in how amazing it was. Class design was phenomenal. The best in the history of the game. The talent trees were just amazing and offered so much variety. Plus with dual spec opened up even more possibilities.
People who started in wrath remember it more fondly than those who started in vanilla/tbc, generally. It was the intermediate between classic and retail WoW. It had elements that were still great, and others that were the beginning of the end.
Regarding the content, ulduar was the greatest classic raid and ICC was good but it’s not the masterpiece wrath andies like to claim it is. Two of the raid tiers were complete garbage, naxx was so undertuned it was a joke even for the time it was released, and ToC was a pathetic excuse for a raid tier that anyone who played back then should be insulted by. Wrath had a ton of cut content that was replaced with the abomination of ToC and 2 rehashed raids (don’t try gaslighting me with “but but but vanilla and tbc had cut content”. Yes they did, but they had both more good raid content and raid content overall than WOTLK, and things weren’t cut in favor of rushed holdover garbage like ToC). TBC had more raids and none were rehashed. The heroics in TBC were far superior to wrath, even early wrath before people were geared, the heroics were a joke AOE zug zug with no cc.
Wrath was the beginning of 4 raid difficulties with ToC (10/25 normal/heroic). Epic loot became significantly less meaningful. Old raid tiers were invalidated, it was the beginning of play the patch and not the expansion. Especially with ICC, when badge gear gave old tier sets to jump immediately into the final raid without touching any other tier.
Regarding classes, early DKs were the most broken class in the history of WoW and nobody who didn’t play a DK looks back on this fondly (thank god we get last patch DKs in classic WOTLK). Final patch class balance and design is better than vanilla and tbc in some respects, every spec had its niche and most classes had more engaging rotations. At the same time though, WOTLK was the beginning of class homogenization. Warlocks got a cone of cold, virtually every class got a stun, many classes got the exact same raid wide buffs, etc. It was to a more tasteful degree compared to what we got in future expansions, but it set a horrible precedent and homogenization was put on steroids in cataclysm, and in MOP every class was practically the same.
At the end of WOTLK, we got the single most catastrophic feature to the game in the history of WoW, the random dungeon finder (and thank god its removed in classic WOTLK). Only the raid finder can hold a candle to how destructive this feature was, and LFD set the groundwork and precedent for LFR being implemented into the game.
The zones, quests, and music leveling 70-80 was good, but at the end of WOTLK in the ICC patch leveling was made into a complete joke by giving every lobie crazy mana regen to the point you didn’t have to ever drink anymore, and made lobies more powerful against mobs. It was rarely beneficial to join a group to complete quests more efficiently because leveling was made so easy it was better to get the extra exp playing solo. There was no danger in Azeroth anymore and leveling became brain dead boring.
WOTLK was still a good expansion (especially pre-LFD), but set the foundation for many horrible systems and design choices that ruined retail WoW post-wrath. It is a bridge to retail. Thankfully blizzard is intent on course correcting some of these mistakes with the removal of LFD.
I’m pretty pleased with my achievements IRL so far, and I know I will continue to accomplish bigger goals. I’m not sure why you’d think high effort in-game would be correlated to low-effort IRL, if anything I’d assume these are correlated. For example, many people that I raid with are very successful engineers, quantitative analysts, day traders, etc. My closest arena partner for many, many years recently left his job at NASA for a nice pay raise in the private sector.
And sure, there is more to life than a career of course, but I’m enjoying my career AND my hobbies, recently purchased my first house that I’m very pleased with, and my beautiful, sweet, supportive, and accomplished girlfriend of many years said “yes” when I proposed. I’m probably one of the most fortunate humans that has ever lived, all things considered – no life is perfect and mine is not without its struggles but it would certainly look drastically different if I were born in a different time or place, or even born to different parents in the present day and age.
And no I’m not here to troll people, unless you consider it trolling to ask people to genuinely consider whether the reasons they’re hyped for Wrath Classic will still apply 3 weeks after launch…
The fact that you felt the need to make some personal attack and very questionable assumptions about how things are going for me IRL, indicates that this thought exercise was for some reason uncomfortable for you?
ICC (25) was a better raid than anything TBC has to offer imo although it was hurt quite a bit by the gating and limited attempts issues. Ulduar is a clear winner over everything prior to it.
I personally don’t consider Naxx being a rerelease as a particularly bad thing since very few players in WotLK had seen the original and it was retuned for smaller raid size. As a standalone raid I personally would rate it on a very similar level as Kara due to having a 25 man difficulty and Kara also being easy and more of a glorified dungeon. Also achievements at least gave you something to keep it somewhat interesting.
Sarth 3d and Maly are also both better than Gruul/Mag although I can understand people hating the vehicle nonsense.
ToC was certainly a massive disappointment especially as a full tier which puts it solidly behind TBC equivalents, but at least comparing raid to raid I would throw ToC ahead of Hyjal.
IMO Naxx <= Kara, Maly/Sarth 3d > Gruul/Mag, Ulduar >>> SSC/TK, BT >>> ToC > Hyjal, ICC > Sunwell.
Overall my vote is that WotLK is better than TBC for raid content.
Heroics/dungeons are a different story that I won’t get into too much because I despise TBC heroics.
Naxx was not the difficulty of prenerf karazhan. Hell, nerfed karazhan is more challenging than WOTLK naxx. It was an absolute joke to a comical degree for the time it was released, let alone to modern WoW players. Pre-nerf karazhan had mechanics you actually had to pay attention to or you would wipe. WOTLK naxx is so undertuned all of the mechanics can be completely ignored and its just a massive zug zug fest. You are highly underestimating just how easy WOTLK naxx was. It wasn’t just easy by modern standards, it was extremely easy for the most casual of casual players at the time. Not sure if you ran naxx on private servers or not, but if you did don’t be fooled, private servers always buff up naxx for a reason.
I can agree for the time, having a rehashed naxx for players who never saw it in vanilla was fine, but making it an entire raid tier over brand new content was just insulting. Even more so that the raid was a bigger joke than running a TBC heroic in full sunwell gear.
Strongly disagree about ICC. Pre-nerf sunwell, SSC, and TK are a lot more fun than ICC in my opinion. Hell, I even enjoy prenerf karazhan more than ICC. ICC is still a decent raid, but it is by no means a masterpiece. Ulduar is the single raid that beats out everything in TBC. I can understand someone enjoying ICC more due to better class design, but the raid itself was not blizzards best work. Even if you still find yourself preferring ICC again (ultimately, it’s personal opinion, it’s not an objectively bad raid), it still remains that WOTLK had 2 good raids, whereas in TBC the only trash raid was Hyjal and even that is better than ToC and the severely undertuned version of Naxx. On top of that TBC had more raid content overall, with all but Hyjal being fun.
Agree with Ulduar > SSC/TK, but the rest I reverse, especially if we are talking about pre-nerf versions of TBC raids.
Because it’s very fun, and had a very good mix of both casual and more hardcore content, which blizzard has never, since wrath, managed to do properly.
My first expansion was TBC, I still love wrath to death, it also had a good balance of every class actually being able to do things, sure maybe they weren’t all 100% top dps and everything wasn’t fluidly balanced but it was alot better than vanilla and TBC in terms of specc viability for normal content.