Personally, after going through vanilla, TBC and WotLK again - I am of the strong belief that WotLK is the weakest expansion (era) of the three, and is a far worse experience overall than Cataclysm, sans the Dragon Soul content drought.
Wrath had DKs, Arthas, a lot of easy PvE content and came after the huge success that was TBC. I really think its extreme popularity lies more with timing than anything else. Sure a lot of classes play reasonably well, but when I look at the top - to - bottom experience that is WotLK, it has some serious holes.
Catas world update is a big win. If we are talking vanilla, sure the argument is there, but by WotLK the old world is pretty damn empty. Additionally, I feel the PvE content is objectively better, with Ulduar being the only thing on its level.
With ALL of that said, you should absolutely have access to a WotLK era server. I have zero interest in it, but I really don’t see why Blizzard doesn’t just keep a few TBC and WotLK era servers up.
Conspiracy theories abound on the internet. Blizzard had tons of data on how often and how many players went through Azeroth and likely it was almost unused. They redid it to try to draw a few more players to those areas and to make it more interesting than redoing the same quests most of us had already done a dozen times.
im glad you like wrath and perhaps they should leave one legacy server up for those that never want to move on.
i for one am excited to move into the next stage. for me personally the combat was far better cata-wod before legion turned it into our current era. i for one look forward to cata, mop and i hate myself for saying this… wod.
Unused areas of Azeroth are on Blizzard. Rather than adding new real estate, much of the unused areas or little-used areas could have used some great content
Sure, they could have. But that wouldn’t have achieved their goal: To make life worse for Velara. There are secret emails on Hillary’s server where they i.e. Obama and Hillary discussed the issue with the Blizzard devs. She specifically asked the devs if there wasn’t some way to mess with Velara. The devs suggested destroying your favorite Azeroth areas. We have to face the reality that it was Hillary’s fault, with Obama’s help
No, you’re claiming that “the devs just wanted an excuse to wreck the place.” How did that come about? Did the devs just sit down some day and say, “let’s totally destroy Azeroth.” One dev than said, “How about we have ships from Argus full of Kil’jaeden’s forces still hunting down the Draenei come and blow up the place?” “No we already did something like that in BC. How about the gnomes create bombs in Gnomeregan that get out of control and blow up the whole world.” “No no no, lets have a dragon blow up Azeroth.” Then the lead dev said, “I don’t care how we do it. I just want to have an excuse to wreck the place. Any way, some way, it doesn’t matter how. Just Wreck The Place!!!”
Here’s the reality. The devs had data that showed all of Azeroth was nothing but dead zones. They thought that maybe making big changes to the zones might get people excited to go back and replay those areas and do the new quests.
For me at least it’s gonna work, I’m planning on leveling a Priest once Cataclysm comes and continue my Shaman (which I’ve not leveled since BC) after I’ve done Archaeology in Pre-Patch (something to do).
It didn’t work for me, but only because I changed jobs at Cata release and had much less time to play. I have more time now so I’m looking forward to making a worgan and playing through those zones for the first time.
I was kind of the opposite. I completely hated the idea of trashing the old world and getting rid of so many quests and items I was familiar with. Meanwhile, it seemed like everyone was more than happy to say good riddance to all the old content. I hung in there though and found a lot to enjoy. The major increase in stats in just one level, even with only new green gear was amazing. Some of the new questlines were quite cool. My personal favorite is in the last normal zone. The dwarf wedding :D. BTW you do get an underwater mount. Everyone who quests in Vash’jir does (as long as you don’t bail before that quest.) It’s a seahorse not surprisingly. Twilight Highlands also has an open world arena quest quite a lot like the one in Zul Drak Air combat is a stretch but you do get to blow up a zeppelin and (hopefully) escape just in time. I loved the special hunter challenges. I am starting a new hunter just to do those again. I’m not a raider, I don’t even like to dungeon since original burning crusade ended. I normally hit raids later when I can solo them. Therefore, I didn’t learn until legion that some cata raids were cool AF. I need to get to Firelands at level this time and get that achievement that can’t be solod.
So yeah, this time around, I am looking forward to it. I’ve had enough of undead and scourge for a while
I was simply stating my interest in Cataclysm and when I heard that there are cinematics in Redridge my interest was piqued for the “new” quests.
As for getting what I want, I didn’t ask for Cataclysm, I assumed it’d be happening but wouldn’t really care if it didn’t. If it didn’t happen I’d of just moved on from WoW or maybe play Retail and get past the leveling for once.
