Why was Wrath the most popular expansion?

Community General Discussion
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Was it the class design? The dungeons and raids? The gearing system? The zones and story?

Someone posted about the elitism in WoW and a link to an article about this and one thing stood out, Wrath was basically the last time we had a system in place for all players in all content to be able to gear up without having to be a top rated PVP player or a top end raider.

But was that all there was too it? Personally I prefer the MoP design overall, mainly because my discipline priest was damn near un-killable and there was a ton of things to do that kept everyone busy and of all the expansions in terms of zones, artwork and all that I would put my least favourites as TBC than Wrath. I just never really liked the design of the Wrath zones, raids and dungeons all that much.

Is it time Blizzard revisited all their past expansions, find out why some things were more liked than others and just implement the best features and designs to make a game for the people, and for all the people, not just raiders.

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concluded warcraft 3 the frozen throwns story

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Basically this ^

It was the end of Arthas story

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The story.

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Arthas was a big deal back then. My bro hardly played WC and knew who Arthas and Jaina was.

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I disliked Wrath. So I have no idea.

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10 man raids baby, and the raids were really good. Also PVP was pretty solid.

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Wrath was:

  1. A culmination of an “epic” story they’d been dealing with for years. Players super wanted to see it.
  2. A paradise for casual players. There has never been a point in WoW that high quality gear was more available in terms of time spent,
  3. The, at the time, easiest leveling experience, plus the new introduction of Heirlooms.
  4. The highest quality questing experience of it’s time. Better stuff came later, but other problems existed to make them less interesting.

Wrath was the most accessible WoW. Whether that’s casuals getting epics and curbstomping world enemies, or people being able to hop into Heroics without a lot of experience and still doing OK. Wrath was the de-facto best time to be a casual player in terms of overall design, social setting, and design trend.

It was, naturally, beloved by the overwhelming majority because most players don’t like the climb and all it represents in terms of player equality.

Say what you want but elitism, and difficulty-centric-design, is destroying the game.

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Wasnt wrath the last time you had to actually go to the dungeon

Also

It was pre-raid finder

Wintergrasp was good until they balanced the sides. It was fine with the tenacity buff.

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I can imagine a few things. Continuing the renowned WC3 Arthas/Lich King story arc. Wrath was when things started becoming easier and more casually accessible as end game goes. And it was still in the early years of WoW so it coasted right off BC’s wave. It still had all of the OG players going for it and high popularity. Timing has a part in it too.

I personally wouldn’t call Wrath the best expansion, but it had some good things going for it and they snowballed to be fondly reminisced on. It was also the last of the “old era” WoW. Cata marked the shift into the new age so Wrath is a notable waypoint.

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  1. Finale of the WarCraft III storyline
  2. 2008 was around when most people in the US were getting broadband for the first time
  3. MMO market relatively new and unsaturated
  4. Design shift towards accessability
  5. Fantasy inflitrated pop culture after the success of the LoTR trilogy

That’s in no particular order but generally what I attribute to WotLK’s success.

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Strangely i remember almost nothing of the PvE side of WotLK, but i have a ton of memories PvP’ing. Even though i did very little PvP that expansion.

Someone remind me how people got PvE gear outside of raids again. Because as far as i remember, there was raids and tokens? But didn’t each patch introduce a new set of tokens? So you couldn’t just farm dungeons and buy ICC gear?

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Took on a major, very noticeable villain that lots of edgy people connected with and liked. Had awesome marketing, and it was the ‘it’ game still back then. I didn’t play it so can’t comment on that side, I’m just commenting on observations regarding peoples comments back then, the ads, the backing it had and that it was coming off the tail end of a very popular expansion.

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The best thing about wrath to me was the overall raid and dungeon design. It also still took some time and effort to level up so the smaller things felt hard earned like getting a mount from oculus was freaking sweet. Dungeons aren’t a huge deal but being able to get there and do it well felt rewarding. And maybe it had to do with how new I was but seeing people in Dalaran in full ICC gear was super epic. They were like heroes lol

I liked the story a lot. We were surrounded by Lich king. He was everywhere! To see him fall eventually felt cool even tho I didn’t do it until cata. I’ll say it too and others won’t agree probably but I really like how big and open Northrend is. It’s a whole lot of running for sure but I still enjoyed the zones more than today.

MoP was my favorite too. I had the most fun in that expansion.

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The answer is nostalgia. Most everybodies introduction to World of Warcraft back in the day was because they lost their mind and time playing Warcraft III, and Arthas, the Lich King, was the Ultimate Villain of the games ending. Simple as.

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  1. Great story
  2. Amazing raids
  3. Classes and specs had individuality and for the most part felt great to play
  4. PVP was decent
  5. Gearing up alts didn’t feel like a torturous chore (F U Shadowlands)
  6. 10 man raids!!!
  7. Casual friendly - good gear was easy to obtain while great gear required work, which was a perfect balance
  8. Questing experience was linear but felt satisfying
  9. Demo Lock Metamorphosis!

The only downside I remember was GearScore

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No M+
No Mythic Raiding
Old School Talent Trees
Previous Tiers mattered

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There was dungeon finder but LFR didn’t exist so you had to actually talk to someone to get an invitation to a raid.

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Did dungeon finder work for heroics?

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This is a huge part of it. Also WoW, Warcraft, MMORPGs and PC gaming were all at their zenith at that point.

Wrath was a really good expansion and the conditions of the time made it a perfect storm of sorts to be a hit.

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