How was it? Why do people say that wotlk was so good back in the day. What made it so “special”.
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For me, and for many others I know, its the end of the Warcraft Story.
We played Warcraft Orcs vs Humans, up to the expansion of Warcraft III: the Frozen Throne. It was something we already loved, brought into WoW. So playing the RPG from an MMO was pretty awesome.
It was THE true final boss: the Lich King, and many of us felt that the game was concluded after that. The true vanilla experience was OG, TBC, and WotLK
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People were far better human beings back then.
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Game felt good, classes were fun (none of those 2 buttons that vanilla and tbc were), reps didn’t take months and had account wide feature, raids were pretty cool, dungeons could be skimmed through, leveling was made much faster and easier to make alts with heirlooms. Lore was pretty decent and tied around wc3. Basically it just felt like the final tune up of wow, 2 expansions that built up to the finale that Wotlk was.
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Growing population, and rather newness of the style of game for a lot of people.
For me in particular, Wrath was when I first actually made an effort to keybind my abilities, tank heroic instances, and get into a guild with scheduled raids.
Well part of the idea is that we didn’t know what we would get. Beyond setting ARTHAAAS up as the villain of the era, we do not know if we will get a wrath era where the endgame is icc 25h. I am not sure I want to try for h icc until we can be certain that there will be a wrath era. I think in wrath there was an understanding there would be more expansions and that doesn’t have to be the case this time. Now people just waited for the loot pinyata of phase 3 to open to get pre-icc bis and I think with the wow token having an era for each expansion up to and including cata makes financial sense.
What made Wrath of the Arthas so special for a lot of people was the fact that WoW was finally catching up with the adventures of Arthas who is the most epic villain in the whole universe because of “This Entire City Must Be Purged” and falling into the super duper elaborate trap of Mal Ganis who pretty much told him:
" Hey come to the north pole, I’m not gonna kill you or turn you into an undead killing machine or anything hehe. Bring some blankets, it’s cold up there"
Like who could have guessed that the demon who turned everyone into zombies, the one inviting Arthas to northrend was actually setting up a trap for him to either kill him or do something sinister?
10/10 writing right there. Best villain of the century
Honestly, the Jailer doesn’t seem that out of place compared to Arthas “tHe bEsT vIlLaIn iN eVeRy FaNtAsY fOrEvEr”
Also, the game was fun.
No they weren’t… people were all about GS and gatekeeping back then too.
Growing? Compared to vanilla and TBC, the population was flat. It pretty much plateaued during WotLK, with maybe a slight bump at the very end as Cata was getting ready to release.
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The Wrath story is good. The raiding is sub-par aside from Ulduar which is one of the best raids I’ve been to.
Unfortunately everyone coming out of the initial raid tier gets the idea that they are elite raiders now. It never occurs to them that the content is very easy and they get that reality check big time in Ulduar. So goes the rest of the expansion.
Dunno, I didn’t actually like it back in the day. I quit WoW a few times through the middle of it. I was fanatical about WoW through Vanilla and TBC OGs.
To be honest I am enjoying WoTLK more this time around. ;p
I think a lot of the hype around WOTLK is due to it being a point of generational change. It was the Apex of the hype wave for the genre, as it was breaking into mainstream culture. A younger more mainstream audience were being pulled into WOW, and MMOs in general at that time, while many of “the old guard” were leaving.
It resulted in a break even scenario - a plateau.
I think those who started at Wrath tend to have very strong opinions about it - they tend to view wrath as the template that defines what a good MMO should be. Meanwhile those who got into the genre earlier have a more mixed view of it.
I remember thinking some of the design changes were game destroying. It’s not as bad as I remember it being, I’m having fun this time around. ;p
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A story everyone had been waiting for, but was fresh because 2 years had been spent in medieval Starcraft. Design using lessons learned from two releases.
Culturally, the ease of difficulty coincided with many players beginning their third or fourth year, giving the impression of mastery.
The extended gameplay loop for an entire year was perfect. Level with RDF; raid prep with RDF; raid gear with VoA, weeklies, dailies and finally ICC pugs or alt runs. PvP and max out fairly quickly. Go to a new toon. Rinse and repeat.
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Well it was the peak of WoW, it was when blizzard got the formula pretty much perfect. There was a good story and there was tons of stuff to do at all levels of play, casual, alts, raiding.
Sadly blizzard has actively destroyed that in Wrath classic and turned it into a raid log game like retail.
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In terms of pure numbers the start of Cata was the peak of wow, it has the highest recorded number of players. But you have to take momentum into consideration. There’s a lag in peak population.
I think there’s a strong argument that Sunwell was peak wow.
The percentage of people playing MMOs generally was much larger through wrath than TBC and yet it’s numbers basically stayed put.
It was 12 million subs back then…the gatekeepers and gear score keepers wasn’t big a deal as they are now. RDF was a big part of that, as well. There were always tons of guildies online. The ones now, keep falling apart, due to lack of active people.
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Cata peaked early in the expansion and then crashed hard. That is because it was coasting on Wrath’s success.
Keep in mind Cata then proceeded to lose millions of subs months after launch, whereas Wrath managed to actually grow subs at the end of a year long content draught.
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It was all new content, people were riding the high of the game’s success up to that point, classes had finally reached a point of balance where even the worst specs were still playable, and people hadn’t solved the game yet
Lots of Wrath Classic’s issues stem from the community. The game is solved so people are urged to play what’s “best” instead of what they enjoy, because how dare you try and play a sub-optimal spec that will still kill the boss just 10 seconds slower?
Not to say there weren’t any bad eggs back in the day, but they were way less accepted as “the norm”. Also bots were both more actively dealt with, and not nearly as sophisticated as they are today
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Sort of, a #nochanges Wrath would have had different results.
Blizzard has been actively screwing with Wrath Classic and trying to turn it into retail.
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back then…Players was trying to socialize and have fun! while the future was unknown.
nowadays…everything is well known while the players just want to get the job done.
current wotlk classic is nothing like original wrath "game based on last patch, many changes which screwed alot of things regard the gameplay/items…etc, poor faction balance, massive RMT, tbh i like both original wotlk & current classic wotlk but if i’ll rate them based on multi factors then Original wrath is 8/10 while Classic wrath is 2.5/10
Note that in 2009/2010 you could easily bring your friends to the game and they would fit and love it, But you can’t do this now…imagine inviting new friend to wow classic wotlk Now “it will be hard for them to find enjoyment in this game as he/she will only struggle, get rejected most of the time and end up quitting or buying gold.”
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I really liked Wrath 2009. I thought it had more to do with enjoying the quests and the zones and the dungeons and Ulduar/ICC raids.
Really though I’ve figured out I liked it so much because I was in a guild of super like-minded people on a medium-pop server with an awesome server community. I knew those parts would be hard to match but I didn’t know how much these things would actually matter for my enjoyment. It turns out it was 95% of the game for me.
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To be honest, I don’t think a beat for beat rerelease of Wrath would’ve gone any better, not without RDF anyway. The only real reason betas are run is because they’re easy Ulduar gear, removing them wouldn’t suddenly make people start doing standard Heroics, because the gear is worthless. People would just be raidlogging even more, and the leveling would still be dead without RDF to entice people to level more alts