I never said or implied I disliked how you said it, I was clarifying what I said which is important in the context of this discussion.
I added clarifying to your point that people knew, because they didn’t entirely know.
My main point is that people speculated, because factually they did.
This isn’t like an argument or something it’s just a difference in where the issue stemmed from.
You’ll never hear me say anything good about WoD. That was the start of when they destroyed Ret Paladins and it’s just been a crap spec ever since, in my own personal opinion. The expansion itself was oogly, too many orcs, too much green ooze, and too much talking and not enough killing. The dungeons and raids were boring and I didn’t care at all for the garrison solo experience. It also was the kickstarter of that egregious follower mission bullsh** that I have come to loathe and hate. I was happy to leave it all behind.
WoD wasn’t the most exciting expansion and it had some big issues ( terrible launch, flying debacle, apexis sites) but I still had a lot of fun. The levelling campaign was well-paced and entertaining. Collecting followers and building up my garrisons was something I really enjoyed (maybe I’m in the minority here, but I really did enjoy it). And even if my “endgame” was managing mission tables, levelling alts and running legacy content, I enjoyed it a lot.
It was a different time in my life and my standards/tastes were a little different, but at the time, it just meshed well with my mood.
Yep, it’s not mage healing in PVP, it’s just the ability to apply pressure consistently.
But back to PVE, it’s generally accepted that hardcasting Regrowth is not an option. It’s tuning is extremely low. You can spam it, sure, but it’s still extremely weak. You’re better off using that same GCD for DPS as your healer casts an AOE heal. (Your healer will do like x5 the healing too.)
In short, Mage barriers are VERY good. Regrowth is butt. It’s weird that a pure DPS class has better off-healing in competitive content than historically-hybrid class.
The clutch saves are real though.
Same with ret paladin insta FoL and WoG.
I enjoyed then and enjoy it now but again, Alliance side, only. Horde version of WoD sucks.
Wod was that one expac where the things it did well it did very well, and the things it screwed up on it didn’t screw the pooch but the whole kennel.
Let’s divide WoD into some different areas, because what it did well it did exceptionally well, and what it did poorly it did legendarily poorly.
First, leveling content. Outstanding. I loathed WoD as a whole but I still take my alts through it, because this bit was pretty great.
Second, raids, although I have to report that second-hand because I’m no raider. I hear the raids were pretty great, too. Dungeons go in this bucket too – I hear they were pretty good.
But endgame, if you weren’t a raider, STUNK. All garrison, all the time. Oh sure, you had the daily. As in, the one and only daily, that everyone in the known Universe was doing at the same time. Some were OK. Others, where you were gunning for scarce, non-shared resources, were hell-grinds.
Now that last bit, you simply won’t see if you’re cruising through on Chromie time. You see the expansion at its shining best. If you missed it live, and you love what you see, I wish you the best of it. Like I said, I still take alts through, because it’s a fun ride.
But I’m not best pleased with the memories of a year-plus of fiddling around with garrisons.
I’m a Warcraft II fan, so bringing us back to Draenor with all the clans and characters (even if they’re alternate) was a massive, massive nostalgia hit straight into my veins. The soundtrack was incredible, the landscapes and visuals were gorgeous, the new models and animations were cool, the game just felt fresh again, plus they were taking risks with things like garrisons. Plus, I love how it wasn’t just another island hidden in the mists revealing itself reasons and some villain of the month showing up for reasons, but a “What if…” story, where it was Horde vs Alliance proper, and the Legion was back.
Wod was a pit of despair, lmao. 
I loved it for the raids/dungeons/pvp but a lot of people were unhappy that there wasn’t much else, and they tried to spread the raids over too long a period of time.
rained gold to start with , the pvp was decent with the gear scaling in combat, many people liked the garrisons, the maps where nice and questing was decent, the few raids were good, and imo that was a great expac for professions, i enjoyed WoD more than Dragonflight.
WoD sucked. Everyone complained about Ashran and so many other things nonstop, including but not limited to the lack of flying.
I think some people have rose colored glasses on.
WoD was kind of a tragedy of an expansion. It had an amazing end game but it was just to stretched out.
It has arguably some of the most diverse and rewarding world content but it was invalidated by garrison rewards making it feel unrewarding and irrelevant.
Its one of the expansions like bfa that were tarnished by awful systems and design that had amazing gameplay content.
Frostfire Ridge is one of the best zones in the game. WoD is a great way to level alts.
Then there was, until patched, a method of, I think, using the Barn and Trading Post (and Enchanting Building?) as a gold making machine.
The salvage yard was amazing for gold. Every table mission brought back a box and every box had a chance to have ancient, rare BoEs in it. I got a Teebu’s Blazing Longsword, once.
I don’t know all the sentiment seems to be against WoD. I liked it but it was not my favorite. The promises of garrisons fell short I think. I remember getting the feeling we did not need other players for profession mats and could have everything i need at my disposal if I did a lot of garrisons at once i could do it for a lot of stuff. there was a lot of repetitiveness to garrisons in my opinion when you had to maintain multiple characters.
The story and questing was good. I think raids were pretty good. I did not do them with a raid group trying to AoC or anything like that but later on when they were a bit easier.
I did make a bunch of gold, like a lot gold as a healer and dungeon span because of bonus’s due to not having enough healers. I thought healing was easy then i guess not everyone did though.
Honestly, the reason for the appreciation of WoD by some players is the introduction of more solo content. Solo content isn’t inherently bad—everyone has their preferred playstyle. The issue arose when the focus shifted too much towards solo play, leading to a neglect of guilds, which were left behind for years. I recently made a post addressing this concern:
"To all of us who treasure the camaraderie, adventure, and shared goals that only guilds can provide, let’s make our voices heard! Guilds have always been the heart of the community in World of Warcraft, creating memories and friendships that last a lifetime. If you’ve ever experienced the thrill of running a dungeon with your guild, participating in epic guild events, or simply enjoying the social aspect that only a guild can offer, you know how crucial these experiences are to making WoW feel like home.
Let’s make our voices heard and bring back the glory of guilds in World of Warcraft. Revitalizing Guilds in World of Warcraft"
Also, it’s important to remember that "nothing should be removed or excluded just because someone doesn’t enjoy participating in that type of content. Players engage in many different kinds of content, and having more options and variety is always beneficial. We even have special rewards for those who enjoy pet battles.
What people are really getting at is, ‘I don’t like it, so I don’t want something I don’t enjoy standing between me and a reward I want.’ However, anyone could say the same about something you enjoy. If you don’t like guild content, simply don’t engage with it—don’t join a guild, reward or not. I don’t enjoy Hardcore PvP, but I still want the cool PvP mounts. While I might be out of luck, that’s okay. Let those who enjoy it have something to show for it."
Leveling, zones, and story were all great. Raids were a lot of fun. What killed it for me was the attempt to permanently remove flight from the game. I unsubbed for almost a year in protest, then came back to do the first round of Pathfinder, and level alts. They also added a mythic difficulty to dungeons with a chance at heirloom trinkets. I spent the rest of the expac making tons of gold with garrison missions, and watching the dev who tried to remove flying try his best to make the player base miserable for bruising his fragile ego. Can’t believe he’s still going at it with the 5 second channel to swap flight modes.
Yea the only people who hated WoD are people who play only WoW all year.
And people who played MoP and were mad their class got pruned.
But WoD was fantastix for returning players. Way better then any expansion.