Legion MoP for the winnnn
WotLK wasn’t perfect. It had a lot of things wrong with it. But it was still my favourite xpac, and the favourite xpac of a LOT of players.
I think Blizz need to think long and hard about WHY that was, given that it still had things wrong with it. The main reasons, for me, were:
- Dungeon design. I’m not talking about boss fights, or overall difficulty. I’m talking about music, art design, layout, and variety. They were just a joy to be in.
- Classes. You can say it meant nothing, that you inevitably ended up with a cookie cutter build anyway, but it FELT good to get abilities and talents every second level. And you didn’t feel tied down. Class fantasy be d**ned. All that’s done is remove choice and variety. I loved being an arcane mage that could use Frostbolt and Blizzard as needed.
- Strong, uncomplicated central premise with an iconic big baddie.
- You did what you wanted to. For the first half of WotLK I was with a guild that had ZERO ambitions. We didn’t raid, and had no ambitions to raid. We ran heroic dungeons, levelled alts, did the Argent Crusade stuff, did the holiday events, and generally had a blast and never felt like we were EVER going to run out of things to do.
Having said all that, I’ve just given a personal perspective. But I genuinely think that Blizz need to sit down and think about these things. It’s not just a matter of having bright new ideas, you also need to sit down and analyse what worked and what didn’t, what was fun and what wasn’t.
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coughs up blood
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the issue is devs don’t want to build on things that work. they want to come up with new system for each xpac and for some reason they love doubling down on bad designs.
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Among the many things listed here about MOP and WOTLK, I feel like the one thing that made WOTLK a slight edge over MOP is not listed. I must preface this with the the fact that MOP did not have the things I am about to mention so many of the new players will not have a frame of reference. With that said, unlike MOP, WOTLK had server based communities. Guilds/guild names, and even player names held weight in the community(both Horde and Alliance alike). Hell, people from the opposing faction knew who was who from the other faction by player name and or guild.
I will go as far as to say that even the most hated enemies to a person from the opposite faction are missed by said hating person. IE a ganking rogue. I will take this to hell has a basement, I bet said person being ganked would give anything to have said rogue ganging them still just to have that server community back again.
Just my 2wo cents.
Agreed 100%
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I played during both Wrath and MoP.
Someone explain what made Wrath better than BFA, other than “we were killing Arthas” vs “we’re going to kill Sylvanas.” I think most people agree that Wrath’s story was great, so I’m curious what people liked outside of that.
Personally I put legion right behind wotlk when it comes to my favorite expansions. Having everything we know lead up to this high point of extreme power and status and feeling like a force and a weapon with unchecked power. Using warrior as an example dying in battle and being rebirthed and sent basically from god heaven to Azeroth to serve Odins purpose. Amazing Demi god fun and fantasy realized. Bfa… eh… war hero?.. eh
I want another Legion. That xpac was fire. BFA lacks the unique class experience of Legion and past expansions. They don’t even have class armor sets yet or class specific weapons. I never thought I would rate an expansion higher than WotLK until I played Legion. That was the best MMORPG experience I’ve had. If they let me play that to 120 and left it active, I’d play Legion over BFA.
I don’t hate or even dislike BFA. But I wish it were more like Legion. The lack of a quality class experience makes the game less fun. Now I feel like some aimless member of the Horde wandering around with no goals or reason to advance the story much.
I also don’t like the choices I have to make in game. I don’t like the Sylvanas vs. Saurfang story. I don’t like Saurfang working with Anduin for “honor” as he betrays The Horde to humans.
I especially don’t like this BFA loot system. The random stats. The lack of ability to focus on specific bosses for armor and weapons with desirable stats. Even crafting doesn’t seem to allow for specific stats for specs. What the heck is up with the lack of gem slots? JC went from awesome to barely used. When did WoW start treating professions like pointless activities with no perks for time spent building them up?
I wish they would make Legion easier to play currently, so going back doesn’t feel like wasting your time. I want my titles, mounts, and Pathfinder abilities. It’s a pain doing the dungeons in Legion to get them.
I hope the next xpac is more like Legion. I want to experience a Legion-like expansion in its prime. Wish I had known about it. I would have come back for Legion over BFA.
We’ve assumed that BfA is going somewhere Old God-ish. And there’s certainly ample clues that this is the case. But the fundamental premise of BfA is to recruit 1 new ally (per faction) for an upcoming faction war.
That just isn’t enough. There are some interesting individual stories being told. I enjoyed the Drustvar and Jaina storylines on my Alliance character. But the central premise of the entire xpac simply isn’t enough to keep me engaged.
Wrath had both. It had a strong central premise that we understood from the beginning, and strong individual stories. Wrath wasn’t particularly complex, admittedly… but that may actually be it’s strength, not it’s weakness. Big, obvious existential threats work really well in WoW.
Also, the LK was presented as this omnipresent threat. He kept cropping up, interfering in your quests. There was almost no point during WotLK when you could forget that this was all about the LK.
What I was getting at is that all Wrath had was the story. I played Warlock, Hunter, Paladin, Priest, and DK during ICC and I want someone who played any of those classes to tell me that they think they were better designed then than they are now.
I think it’s a given that Wrath’s story was better. I don’t have to go into why Arthas was a good villain. But I’m looking for things outside of that: I see a ton of complaints that class design is bad, and that it was so much better in Wrath. Someone tell me what made Warlock design better in Wrath than BFA.
Blood DK was my favorite class of all time from wrath and them turning it into a tank ruined dks for me… frost and unholy are just a pale image of the glory of DK
Can you be more specific? Most DKs were tanking in Blood spec by Ulduar, and before that DKs were killing people with Icy Touch.
I am so confused. blood has always been a tank spec. However, if you are talking about the hybrid aspect IE blood/unholy, blood/frost then I am sure many that understand will agree with you for more than just the Dk class.
I played a ret paladin alt during Wrath, and yes I thought it was better designed than it is today.
Warlocks are in a good space right now, I agree. As are hunters. (In both cases, I’m only talking about how enjoyable they are to play, as opposed to how competitive they are.)
I can’t speak to the other classes you list, though.
As for my own class, it’s in a very bad spot. Of course, my preferred spec (arcane) is the absolute bomb in dungeons and pretty competitive in raids. But it’s just… soooo… boring. Even compared to how it has been in the past. Yes, I acknowledge that historically arcane mages have never been challenging to play, but the current version of arcane is the LEAST challenging and enjoyable version since I started playing.
This xpac feels like an exact copy of the last one. Nothing has changed except for the names and levels.
When i look around, we’re all looking at the same equipment as well.
This is strange to me, because when I played Ret during Wrath the entire spec was basically pressing DS and CS on cooldown. I think there were a few other spells (Exorcism?), but I distinctly remember the spec being FCFS wrt each ability coming off cd. I just don’t think that “press the abilities as they come off cooldown” is more compelling than what we have today. I don’t think Ret takes a degree in rocket science, but it’s never really been anything more than "plan ahead for wings coming up in 30 seconds.
This too, (assuming mage), I’m puzzled by. I distinctly remember mages actually only pressing Arcane Blast and Evocate during farm. Like actually 2 buttons. I know we all joke about 2 button rotations today because we’re fine with ignoring cooldowns, but Arcane mages actually Arcane Blasted down to 20% mana, Evocated back up, and then fights were over before they went oom. Fire wasn’t any better, because Fire Blast didn’t work like it does now, so the entire rotation was Fireball until you could press Pyroblast. Like that’s it. You would press Combustion and I think maybe it was good to spam Scorch for 10 seconds, but Fire was just alternating between Fireball and Pyroblast.
I can’t explain it vividly mainly because I was younger in wrath than now in the mind (like 11) but I recall blood dk posting huge numbers whenever I dueled someone and at best I would off tank if our tank died but mainly high damage was what I missed compared to now where it feels like blood dk can only do damage based on the present enemy than just damage in general aka aoe being strong now rather than high single target from before (while yes blood boil was still good). Perhaps I just misremember or was not optimal in my play
blizzard just needs to care about putting out a polished product like it once used to. instead of putting their efforts into keeping people playing longer and staying subbed through slow grinds and gates.
more people will play longer when the content they’re playing is engaging and fun.
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Really?
I wonder why i love MoP and hate BfA then?
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