My Wrath nostalgia stems from the themes, setting, and ambience; not from how many numbers spell X does, or how much currency I get when I kill boss Y. Sure, I don't want to see modern spell rotations in wrath, but they'd have to change a hell of a lot of the mechanics before it beats out the feeling of that grizzly hills theme song.

I started when ulduar was current. Took me six months to hit 80 because there was so much to explore and so many little fun things going on with people to distract me. I still had plenty of time and opportunity to get into a progression guild as a rogue and do H ICC. Today, it's like pulling teeth to get a 5 man together. The player base has changed and the attitude toward the game has changed. People have minmaxxed the game and sped to the end and then want to complain when there's nothing to do. Hell, my hpal was removed from a toc 5 man because I have herbalism instead of two crafting professions. It's insane.

The scarlet Crusade, had so much Lore, so many possibilities that could’ve evolved into plenty of content. That was always my favorite part of classic lore.

As with many things in games, the problem is located approx. 1 to 3 feet in front of the computer screen

wrath was when gearscore started to matter. wrath was when classes began to homogenize. wrath was when blizzard was bought by activision. Its clear to see why people think that this was the last "good" expansion wow had. I have a hard time with this expansion because I remember how it was back in the day and its impossible not to draw comparisons. In the words of Andy Bernard from the office “I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them.”

It would be amazing to see Blizzard put out an alternate timeline expansion starting from vanilla using lessons learned over the years. I mean an absolute divergence where instead of Outland they fully finish Azeroth's zones for questing 61-70. From there they focus the narrative on a new set of characters, instead of the lich king, etc.

Wrath was destined to end up like this, because it massively streamlined the gameplay loop of WoW. In vanilla and TBC there is a lot of grinding to really squeeze the most out of progression, you have reputation farms, attunements, profession gear being highly competitive (spelltrike/mooncloth sets) thus requiring you to farm loads of thorium in vanilla or primal elements in TBC. There was also greater scarcity of consumables, not that it was ever a problem to get your flasks for raid etc, but wrath showers you with potions and flasks, they are worth nothing now. For me and I think a lot of people, the classic series is just a tour bus to do old raids as they were. People don't play the game the same way anymore, I remember back in OG wrath me and my friends would spend hours upon hours doing nothing in stormwind or goldshire, we just hung out or maybe did some battlegrounds and messed around. People don't "play the game" anymore, they minmax time vs rewards and if something isn't efficient it's not worth doing. Vanilla and TBC had enough friction to slow people down a bit and in a way "force" them to play the game entirely, in wrath you don't get those chores, you simply hit max lvl and jump straight into raid or now heroic ++ and gear up within a week. I would also argue raids in TBC were more difficult relative to class design & gameplay features. When you consider the 'janky' mechanics such as; crushing blows, weaker threat generation/taunt immunity/threat wipes, as well as a greater importance on mana conservation, there were a lot more obstacles and unpredictability than pure mechanical play. And given the average skill of players is far higher than what even Wrath demands, without the 'jank' the game just doesn't ask enough of people. Ulduar and TOGC are objectively more complex than AQ40, SSC and Sunwell, but because of the way classes functioned in vanilla and TBC, those raid were a lot more challenging. Healers are insanely OP in wrath, mana is basically cosmetic at this point, itemisation is a lot better now and tanks don't have to worry about being crushed anymore, and to cap it all off the dmg disparity between classes is lower than ever. Because of these factors, everything is more of a 'steamroll' because our classes finally feel "complete", we have all the tools we could need, but the game just isn't mechanically demanding enough. The gearing system became a lot more vertical in wrath meaning content became redundant a lot faster (hence why they buffed Ulduar). But in Vanilla even when Naxx was around, people still had a reason to run MC/AQ40/BWL and even some dungeons. Even in TBC to a lesser extent, BT and MHJ maintained some relevance during Sunwell. In wrath however, once a new raid is out everything else can pretty much be ignored. Except for Death's choice and maybe a couple of the tribute cloaks, no one will care about TOGC, ICC eclipses 99.9% of gear before it, as did Ulduar vs Naxx. I'm not saying this is all a bad thing, but this is my take on why I think a lot of people feel whelmed by Wrath. /end of essay.

"There's PvP, of course" is about as much thought as Blizzard seems to be putting into improving the arena experience, balancing the playing field between those who have BiS PvE gear in arenas and those who don't, and getting people to actually queue in WOTLK with those inflated ratings we saw last season.

I'd love to see like a "classic vanilla 2 " with new vanilla dungeons and a raid. Maybe a SM raid or something.

As someone who is now an adult and doesn’t have as much time to raid as a teenager in wrath, I absolutely love the Titan rune dungeons. Best part of wrath. Love fast 10 mans like TOGC. I would love to see titan rune dungeons in every classic expansion

You knew what you were getting into, WillE. This is just how MMO's are when youve done it all before.

My favorite part of classic so far aside from re living ulduar was leveling through northrend, the beautiful landscapes, and the awesome lore filled quest lines. Did it twice as a druid and warlock, and it was so fun. After getting to 80 and raiding a bunch on both toons, it got kinda old once you got your bis gear.

Classic handles leveling more slowly, and I treasure that experience more. Retail really pushes you to get to the end fast, and makes the leveling experience bad. So to me that makes the big difference, besides all the other bells and whistles.

i had fun till they added the gold token, i quit right after. blizzard has proved that cant be trusted handling a decade old game without fucking it up, brown nosing streamers, and in game storing it up.

The problem with wrath is all these realms keep dying. Every realm I’ve played on everyone has left but when you go to a high pop realm. Pugging is almost impossible unless you are fully geared because they won’t except you. The problem is there are to many people on those server everyone can be replaced within one or two spams in lfg.

In the vein of having more choices and the tendency towards raid centric gameplay IMO Blizz should make a server where the raids/world bosses scale up in level. So if it was in TBC it'd have all the Classic raids and the TBC raids as viable loot, then if the server was in WOTLK you'd have 3 expansions worth of raid content scaled to endgame levels and loot quality. If you had a level 70 Thunderfury, you could go run a scaled up MC again during WOTLK for a Level 80 Thunderfury. It would definitely require a more hands on approach and problematic items would probably have to be pruned (particularly from classic) but that kind of, everything is available and (somewhat) viable approach would actually pull me back to the game.

Maybe it was just my server, but back in 2008-2010 WotLK was not well received (in my circle). I thoroughly enjoyed it, but really missed TBC and Vanilla (having played both originally). There was a lot of bashing on PVP imbalance and the big complaint that once Ulduar came out you didn't have to do Naxx anymore, and then so on. (this started the jump to newest raid tier concept). For me, once Ulduar launched (even in 2009), I felt the game change. It went from slower progression and outdoor world-centric things, to "move fast" and clear everything for the best items. In TBC, we were just trying to have fun, but also take down bosses. When I replayed TBC and Vanilla, I felt the nostalgia again and why I liked it, but playing Wrath I see that it was the beginning of the new era. I still enjoyed Wrath though and like it, however, it is not the "classic" feel you get from Vanilla/TBC.

I am not sure this is really a problem - I am happy to go play something else when I have downtime. I do agree that the sub cost argument is valid, but I don't mind raid logging some phases.

Fire Warrior? How does this work? I tried finding info on it but not sure if I understand how it makes deep wounds stronger

Does anyone know the name of the unit frame addon being used at 0:55? please and thank you!

This was the same problem in original Wotlk too. Raidlogging was a huge problem back then and if they'd changed nothing it would be even worse.

As someone that came back recently, part of the thing I always loved in game was collecting. In Classic, it's just re-grinding stuff I did back in the day. Raiding those raids again would be fine, but I am just not interested in doing the same grinds/collecting at all. Part of collecting is how good it feels to be "done" with any grind/farm and doing the same thing again is not fun to me. I also feel that my "True collection" is on my ancient main that has un-obtainable stuff A few of my friends seem to all prefer classic, but I am looking at mountains of grinds on retail compared to treading the same ground. I am probably gonna play in Cata, since that's where I quit in the past, but outside raids, like you said, I'd rather do any grinds in retail

Wrath was definitely the start of killing the classic wow feeling but cata finished it

Vanilla Classic came to late for me, when I was playing on Nost it was tuned to be much harder and the community was amazing. Having the server slowly roll out patches was a lot of fun.. But now I crave a vanilla + progression server.. I tried Turtle WoW, and the content they've added is amazing, but everything is unlocked so there's no sense of progression or doing anything.. Its more exploring content.

Kevin Jordan talks in one of his videos about the eggtimer problem. You log in do your raid, your daily quest and log out and set the egg timer for your next login. All that in the hope you get the gear that will make the game fun again. ;)

The only negative I have seen from adding the beta dungeons is that it is something hard to find a group when ur a fresh 80 that isn’t wanting a beta run because why not get the best gear, even if ur not technically ready for beta. So there is a push out effect that happens

I like everything about WOW except the raiding. I have the most fun leveling through BG's and playing the AH.

can you make a video of your current addons? please? i love how it looks like during raids,id like to duplicate it

You mentioned it briefly but all I ever really wanted changed for wrath was Blizzard introducing transmog and toys early. Yes, I know the collections tab will always be superior in retail just because there is so much more to collect there and later expansions were much more built around them, but by wrath there was enough old world content that is soloable for the majority of people that I believe it would still have a positive and meaningful impact on how people spend their time (and gold). It should have been a slam dunk decision too in my eyes, giving people a reason to go explore the old world before it will be gone forever again, socializing by doing old raids or dungeons. But more than that, it allows for player self expression. Sims have solved the problem of the value of any given piece of gear numbers wise. The numbers are out and can't be argued out of but the aesthetic value of gear has been almost entirely left off the table and I just don't understand why. Would the cost of introducing those systems early, having to code it into the game without accidentally breaking something else, really outweigh the benefit of players playing more hours and generating content on platforms like KZfaq?

I love that wotlk is what it is, there is much to do in the game, obviously not compared to retail. People who complain its raid logging, I can say that about every expansion except for vanilla. One thing I find annoying with wotlk is actually how slow it is to dungeon queue, I love the lfr system how it is at max level, but if I want to dungeon spam (which is my preferred method) I'd like a lfd auto tool, but have it removed at lvl 80

Are we going to get video about clears in first 2 weeks of TOC like other previous tiers?

The solution won't be more difficult dungeons that you won't get invited to and are just stressful when you do.

It's crazy how good Classic felt compared to tbc and wotlk. I guess one aspect is the game economy. For me it was fun to log in middle of night to gather herbs and make potions for auction house, since there was a lot of demand for consumables. Or run scholomance for the dark runes. I guess it made the world feel more alive when you had to go to different zones to gather different items.

I agree with the others saying retail started in wrath of the lich king, this is where i quit originally after playing very long hours, the magic just kinda went away, i cant say if its dungeon finder or the raid meta that changed but the game changed majorly.

Exactly why, since the beginning of Classic, I've always found mount or other collectibles farming completely pointless. The only reason I can find why that would make it worth is if, at the end of Classic, Blizzard reveals out of nowhere that items will be transfered to Retail, and even then it's not that interesting...

Blizz should've added RBGs into classic. You had so many people fall in love with warsong gulch as they ranked in vanilla, RBGs would've promoted more play at 80 some pretty hard-core pvp

I think we got it all wrong. Wrath was a big hit cause around that time high speed internet was starting to become more widespread. I wanted to play since tbc but couldnt without good internet. Im a wrath baby but i still think Cata was tons better, but i also enjoy pvp more then raids. Pvp in wrath is beyond horrible. Wintergrasp is a joke, 240 players in 1 match is waaaay to much, its nothing but lag city. You are completely right about areans. Everytime i hit 1400 ratings we always go against the strongest comp that already out gear us by a long shot. I can not wait for Cata.

I think when people say wotlk is the beginning of retail, they mean the excess of accessibility. If you want to be a pumper in classic vanilla you have to be PREPARED, world buffs, flasks, etc. Yet because content wasn't difficulty gated you didn't need an entire raid full of pumpers, you just needed a few and otherwise could scrape by with casuals so long as they knew how to not stand in fire. Moreover you didn't get showered in epics at max level, you had to WORK for your first purples and by cthulu it felt amazing. Then there was the leveling journey, the slowed down pace meant the world felt truly lived in, you were constantly meeting new people, and in vanilla when everyone is on foot that feeling is amplified ten fold. You had attunements, and other long quest chains to sink your teeth into at max level, and the world itself beckoned you to log in every day despite not having 3 different types of dailies to do. Which is the exact opposite of wotlk, you log on to do your dailies, do your raid, and then there is ZERO reason to play the game and live in the world unless you feel like leveling an alt. But then you do level your alt and realize your server has 30000 people, no other faction, and the world feels utterly dead and barren apart from the bots you see running around to mine old resources. Then on top of that, leveling your alt is a depressing journey as you out level content and have to skip whole towns and parts of zones, and there is zero reason to do a dungeon even if you could miraculously find or put together a group. Wotlk just has no soul. Doesn't help that the current state of the wotlk community is pretty disgusting, pugs are impossible to do unless you're kitted out with the best of the best, and the pugs you do find are 95% GDKP.

For the little bit i've played in wrath classic, I recognize how many things there are in wrath that retail is known for.

I’m a big leave it as it is guy when I started but the more I play especially pvp it would be nice to have class balances to change things up and cause the meta to really change. Which would actually have some classes roll again to stay relevant till the next balance happens keeping leveling alive

Regarding PvP gearing in WotLK; it's not the BG grind that prevents players from competing in PvP. It's the arena grind and the PvE grind. There's 3 tiers of PvP gear: BG gear, unranked arena gear, and ranked arena gear + PvE gear. The second requiring arena points + honor or emblems, the last one requiring arena points and arena rating; all of which are finite and difficult to get resources. There being no catch-up mechanics for arena points is also extremely painful for players who join a season mid-way. Then there's also the fact that the power gap between BG gear and ranked arena gear is enormous which means that while you may have been thrown to the sharks in BGs while grinding for BG PvP gear, you will again be thrown to the sharks by entering arena with BG gear.` People saying Cataclysm/MoP are the PvP expansions are right. Those expansions simplified PvP gear progression and narrowed it down to just 2 PvP tiers; BG gear and arena gear with arena gear only being a little bit better than BG gear, lowering the barrier to entry in PvP significantly. Those expansions, at least MoP iirc, also had catch-up mechanics for conquest points (aka arena points) for people joining later in a season. They also majorly buffed PvP gear in general which meant that in very few cases you did not need to PvE at all in order to compete in PvP. Cataclysm had a few trinkets that were better than PvP counterparts, but even then the PvP trinkets themselves were actually really good compared to WotLK PvP trinkets and weapons which are absolute ass. Sure, you still had to grind for PvP gear but at least in my personal experience, those grinds were actually really fun. I made multiple alts back in MoP just to do the BG PvP gear grind on because of how much I oddly enjoyed it. WoD iirc was pretty much the same in terms of PvP gear progression. It's Legion which messed everything up by experimenting with a whole bunch of invisible scaling systems and RNG PvP gearing. I still enjoyed Legion arena for what it was, but its PvP gear progression IMO was a major step down from Cata/MoP/WoD. Especially because, personally, I really enjoyed the PvP progression going from BGs into arenas. It gave me a reason to do BGs which Legion started removing. Then BFA came and its invisible gear scaling sucked massive ass. The fact you couldn't rely on your visible damage numbers to know how much damage you REALLY did to an opponent was whack.

As a classic raid logger, I don't think the game needs more content. I play the content, I got Chef and the Violet Proto, but I primarily use it as a social gathering. Like a team sport, its a hobby, me n the boys get together 2 nights a week. I don't have alts, I already played through wow I know what my favourite class is. Other games are my alts.

I mean you said it yourself as a "perk" to classic WoW "You know what content that will come out, you know what classes are performing well and which ones aren't.." Classic WoW will never be the true experience that people experienced back when these expansions were relevant. Because people were still figuring it out. More so in Vanilla and TBC without the aid of Social Media and information online was extremely scarce. Nowadays everything has been solved. There's no mystery. It's purely for nostalgia and people to get an idea of what it was like, but they'll never truly understand what it was like.

The main issue with Blizzard and things to do outside raid, is that they are never just fun side things todo, they are usually monotonous and mandatory

What we needed was the expansions to last as long as they were intended to originally. The expedited release of raids phases etc. made playing feel rushed and like a chore. You can’t juggle classic and retail and progress with either and do anything else

The single most important change that they should've done, and i can't stress this enough: perma enable Joyous Journey! It would incentivize players that want multiple alts to stop raidlogging while also making the world be more alive. I leveled an alt on a megaserver recently and most of the times, you can't find any dungeon parties. Not even for the 70-80 range most of times, just boosters. It really sucks to feel like playing a singleplayer game till i hit maxlevel.

PvP is broken because everyone is cheating and botting

Well Wrath is the expansions where many retail idea took root. Yes Cata and especially panda expanded on it a lot.

i mean you can say that they buffed ret but ret was nerfed before the expansion ever came out taking away their best aura before the wotlk ever came out, which was in the game oringinally to togc.

Players would love more things to do outside of raiding, they just don't want to do busy work. The problem is busy work is easy to deliver, fun or interesting content is hard. Blizzard will never put the kind of resources necessary to produce that into classic. It's a passive side income for them.

A huge issue is that gearing in these raid logging expansions just isnt fun. A big portion and motivation for players to raid and get gear is to have content outside of the raid to use that gear in. In other words, what other parts of the game can this new equipment help me in. Sadly, as we move further and further away from vanilla the only purpose of gear is so you can do the same easy raid faster. You gear to clear the same easy content you're already clearing a bit easier. It feels pointless.

I mean other than vanilla classic, the classic expansions are fine as they are. Most people have at least started in tbc or wotlk like me. So I'm not so eager to replay expansions past vanilla.

Honestly, I know Wrath has brought quite a few changes to Classic, but I am still ofc having alot of fun. I will say, raid logging has been common. Prior to pretty recently, I took a few months where I was mostly raid logging, playing Dead by Daylight and other games, etc. I've actually been thinking about messing around on Classic era (not hardcore, I'm ngl hardcore doesn't really excite me outside of playing it with my friends here and there) I would love a SoM 2, tbh. That would really pull me in, but I would honestly hope that it comes out after the ICC patch has been released for a bit, so I could play that and raid ICC with my guild, idk. I have noticed a lot of my friends and guildmates are playing the game pretty seasonally. Depending on what has just released, whether it's SoM, Dragonflight, the "current patch" of "main Classic", etc. people are playing a lot of MMOs very seasonally, doing what they need, getting to that point, and then grinding out some other game they're interested in. Whether that's another iteration of WoW, or some other game like I mentioned earlier, I've just noticed that seasonal attitude has been the norm since like, honestly BfA? It's been growing in the gaming community at large.

After replaying it all, the only thing i really want is the collector's tabs from day 1. I don't even need the ability to transmog my gear, i just want to be able to collect it all from day 1 without jamming up my bank.

New player here. To play classic, do you have to purchase a different game than dragon flight?

WotLK is so dead outside raids because boosting killed early game. That's all there is to it.

Its good that they change things, it's bad that they don't care about customer service on classic realms. Arena is literally full of hackers that don't get banned because there's not a single GM for classic wotlk, tickets need a month before a computer generates a lame and not helping answer.

I played Vanilla, joined WoW right as TBC came out. I had amazing memories of the classic experiences, but I knew one thing. I had no intention to play WOTLK. All of the good memories were the friends I had at the time. On reflection, the armours in Wrath are some of the ugliest after Cata (browns/muted colours everywhere) and Northrend wasn't fun to Chromie Time so likely wasn't going to be in classic. I've enjoyed spending that time in retail and being where the new stuff is, but I'm PVP centric so that was always going to be the case.

you mean 12 million people the first time around wasnt a large enough sample size for OG Wrath?

I want to play Wrath again but the XP boost being removed is the worst idea ever...

“Basically what I’m saying is, that if I want to farm a Thor’Redal, I can do it on retail, I can do it easier and I can do it solo.” So you do know what people are talking about when they say “X was the start of retail”.

No dungeon finder is a big issue for me, I really was looking forward to logging in and dungeon crawling with alts :(

MMORPGs are a game that is out of step with the contemporary culture. They don't really function as they used to and never can do in a world with streamers, KZfaq people and other social media. WoW persists because the brand predated this era but the experience is not the same for obvious reasons. There is no reason to use the game as a vehicle for being social anymore, there are many many other outlets. Look at D4, it was billed as an mmo-arpg but they couldn't even be bothered to add any social features to the game..no lobby, no ability to find groups and so on and so on. As nostalgic as I am for early 2000s MMO scene, dark age of Camelot, ultima online, world of warcraft..they don't and can't operate as intended anymore. It is the age of a very different approach to the multiplayer experience The success of classic wow is entirely because 1) it is the only version of wow that forces social interaction 2) coinciding with the pandemic means it was absolutely historically contigent...just like wow in 2004 for reasons stated above. No amount of tweaks or arbiratry rule sets like hardcore are going to fix this because it is not something that can be fixed. The soul and enviornment the player exists in now has fundamentally and irrevocably changed.

I've given up on WoW on all levels. Currently sitting in the "Blizzard Survival Game" waiting room.

There's little to do and most of it is taken away by blizzard's incompetence. Badges from quests kills a few weeks of dungeon grinding, as well as letting you completely skip the initial blue grind if necessary. The fact gold farming is so massive and was never addressed, along with people entering with 15-20k gold stashed, killed many weeks of professions/gold grinding. Then they kill pvp because they outright refuse to even consider fixing its obvious issues and there you have it. It's not REALLY perpetual play, its not a world you can sink an infinite amount of hours in, thats an illusion. There's still a set amount of hours roughly averaged for a player - I can't calculate it right now, but if we assume its 350ish hours for wotlk, if you kill something like 150 of those hours by eliminating several of the things you spend time on, you have 200ish hours left. Spread out over two years, that's about two hours a week. You can stretch my calculations, but either way, there's a pretty big difference between having enough to do for about an hour every day for 4- 5 days of the week and having enough to do for 2 days of the week. One creates the constant feel of a world you can log in and do stuff in, the other - the raidlog experience where you lose connection with the world. And remember, days you're in are days you're socializing, which enriches everyone's experience.

Even if its pretty raid loggy - i still love classic. Tbh the reason im raid loggy in classic more than og wrath is bc ive planned better. Im in a better guild. Generally most people are better and more prepared so things get finished much faster.

I don't know if there's much that can be done about raid logging. Most people are here for nostalgia, and to do stuff that maybe they couldn't do the first time around. I'd say most people did all the non-raid content back in 2008-2010, and don't care to do it now. Also, back then, one of the selling points of Wrath was that it was easier to level alts with heirlooms, then later, RDF. Most people play now have all the alts they want. People need to accept that it's never going to be how it was, and that they can accept that or move on.

Playing an Alt is pain on Wrath classic. I think the Random LFD tool is long overdue.

Blizzard has made many mistakes over the years, and never cared to clean them up, because next expansion happens soon anyways, so why fix it now. In the classic replay we know about all these mistakes and the playerbase exploits them to their maximum potential. So it is essentially Blizzard being lazy now catching up and ruining some of the fun that was had back then.

I play the game 4 days out of the week sometimes more, and I’m mostly raidlogged. I’m really enjoying being able to log off and not fall behind.

4:19 I think Modern wow started in Warlords of Draenor pre-patch. Wow tokens in Wod, MIssion tables in wod. Also the first stat squish happened in pre-patch for wod. It's wod that really started to eat away at the core of wow. By the end of Legion wow became dead to me. World scaling was a bad idea

I'd be cool to play vanilla or TBC or wrath as close as it was to the original, like the same engine and everything maybe even start on the 1st patch. Idk how popular it'd be but i'd mess with it.

I'm not playing Cata. This was my last Hurrah for Blizzard. I think I'm done with them after this, and the content outside of raiding leaves a lot to be desired. At least in vanilla classic, there were things to do. Now it's just raid and twiddle your thumbs

Recently started playing on firemaw classic wow again and am now a lvl 47 warrior. And 1 thing I've been thinking is that what I would want the most is to be able to choose when I'd want to progress to tbc or wotlk etc after I get tired of vanilla. I don't know if that's feasible but I would love that. Would also like to have achievements in vanilla :p

It honestly depends what you want from the game. A lot of 'changes' in the game were pandering to the 'I want to.... (make it easier) complaints. It started wuth 'insert class her' is too OP, so they were nerfed, and then it was 'insert anoher class here' is OP so that was nerfed as well. Repeated nerfs started the decline, Classic and woTLK allow players like myself who have journeyed through all the espansions, to relish things like the class quests. A classic complaint at the time was that druids had a bump up on Cenarion reputation when anyone who knows druid lore would understand the reason. The retail version has made it possible to do all content solo apart from the raids, the guild mechanic which was such fun has basically died, and you don't need to do dungeons or raids to get to maximum level. levels 1 to 10 could take a week, in the retail it takes an hour

My biggest problem by far with WoW, both Retail and Classic, is the FOMO. Nothing earnable in-game should ever be taken away completely, but that's exactly what they did with things like Mage Tower appearances and challenge mode skins. Casuals will farm for months to get a look they enjoy, but Blizzard doesn't care, so they/we move on.

Warning: this is a wall of text. Disclaimer: In no single sentence will I ever say there's a "correct way of playing the game", at most I will say that the reasons to play the game diversified and people playing the game changed to encompass people with different ideologies, objectives, etc. I don't think that's necessarily good as divides Developer effort and focus, and divides the expectations and requirements of the general player base. The post: Personally, the reason why I think Retail actually started in WotLK is because there were a lot of changes around this time to make the game more casual, while adding more daily content, also making leveling even more trivial/inconsequent. Leveling in TBC wasn't that bad because even though it had less emphasis on the world than Azeroth at 1-60, at least the dungeon spam was pretty fun and fulfilling. Almost all classes had AoE, even if you brought one without it they were fast while leveling, each dungeon had a lot of mechanics and mobs along the way, loot and reputation gains were pretty good during leveling. And yeah, the focus on dungeon-grinding was due to reputations requirements at 70, but if TBC dungeons were like LK ones, I'd never level up 2 lvl 70, just like I didnt level 2 lvl 80s. LK leveling is boring af. I could level in TBC for hours at end, but 30min of LK leveling and I was almost asleep and bored as all hell. The quest feel and design was changed drastically, it is clear the difference from TBC, and paved the way to what Cataclysm brought. In cataclysm was even worse, since with the world redesign leveling because extremely formulaic: Accept 3 quests for a mini-zone: one of them is 'KILL X', another is 'collect Y items' and the third 'use the quest item'. Go back and complete, accept the followup quest to return to the same mini-zone and kill the named boss, return again to complete, accept a new quest to walk into the next mini-zone, repeat all again. Its a set of going back and forward, wasting time, you can only accept 3 quests to the same place, you waste much more time, quests have much more prerequisites which means you need to do it all to get really good rewards. In cata, really good rewards even disapeared, this was when gear was even more homogenized. LK isn't like this but it is pretty similar. LK dungeons are pretty boring because the pace is extremely slow, the mob density is extremely low (halls of lightning is probably the exception), using AoE isn't that useful due to mob density, you walk a lot and kill little along the way. All dungeons are one way corridors and with what I just described, it makes a really shitty experience. You get little experience in the dungeon, the bosses drop shitty loot and the reputation gains are shitty as well. Leveling in LK with flying from the get go is another criticism but I might be alone on this one. I was apprehensive about LK raiding but it was actually the leveling that burned me out first - it "prevented" me from touching alts which made me raidlog 24/6 and Ulduar eventually broke me. I leveled 6 lvl 60 characters in classic, 7 level 70 characters in TBC, but only 1 lvl 80 in LK. I wasn't even motivated enough to level my gatherers. By letting me fly anywhere I just used my 73 druid and 72 paladin with Epic flying to farm icecrown/sholazar for herbs and wintergrasp for veins. I had a lot of will and curiosity about tanking with both those characters at 80, but both the leveling and the max level gameplay on my mage completely burned me out and demotivated me into never leveling them further. Raiding wise, I managed to push my intended main to 80, a fire mage that it was my main in retail from Vanilla up to WoD, but naxx was a pushover, ulduar was boring as fuck even though it had its challenging moments. The bosses were just too damn boring, with frustrating mechanics. Fuck Flame leviathan as well, I swear vehicle fights are so shitty in wow. This mage was even the class that I was motivated the most to play again mostly due to Fire changes and yet it was extremely boring. Outside all of this, I didn't really had any interest for "progressive dungeons" in the sense that each raid tier would progress the dungeon loot and difficulty so you could get gear from them instead of repeating weekly raids, but to me that's the fucking point. Part of the reason I got so many characters in Classic and TBC to max level was because of the leveling, and part of it was because the raid progression. There was almost no real "catchup" and shortcuts. If you want to gear a new character, you need to progress through the raids and get appropriate gear. Get preraid bis -> farm MC -> farm BWL -> farm ZG -> farm AQ -> farm Naxx. Get preraid bis -> farm karazhan, gruul and mag -> farm SC and TK -> farm BT and MH -> farm ZA -> farm SWP. I swear, both are awesome. I actually am starting to miss TBC raid progression, it was really cool. LK adds a layer on this by making dungeons always useful but by doing this, always required. Loot wise, badges weren't that bad in TBC, but it started there part of the daily tax of wow. LK worsened it, in two weeks you were completely sick of world tours. Heroic + and Heroic++ do this as well, and ICC dungeons will be catchup that eventually will feel like this. It was actually here that Blizzard found out that the gameplay loop of constantly doing heroics was great for the ratio "keep players engaged"/"develop time". In Cata this even gets worse. Dual Spec was asked by a lot of people but that just brought the expectation of having an offspec healing spec and gear for hybrids, and double raid specs for pure DPS. This literally frustrated me in Ulduar because changing from fire to arcane during progress is something I never wanted - yet, you do want to show your raid your commitment to progress runs. Imagine if Dual Spec existed during TBC and you can imagine how things would've went back in 2021. Achievements is something that they added but just like I thought, its just a way for people to spend more useless time inside the game. Transmog will be even worse, as you will no longer be able to identify what people have equipped and will be a matter of everyone always using the same 3 outfits per class. Back to Achievements, the constant guild spamming is tiring. Among other things, brought something I dislike which is doing bosses in raids/heroics in a certain different way just to unlock fictional points (achievement points), mounts or pets. This was when Blizzard learned that they can pump tons of cosmetics per patch with little effort, while making completionists spend thousand of hours inside the game. It literally started the trend of playing the game for completionism and cosmetics. Until then, cosmetics were pretty only specific mounts that existed in ZG and Stratholme. This divided the community and basically the goal behind the game. Transmog will be even worse in Cataclysm, but since I will not play it, it doesn't really matter to me. I hope whoever likes that expansion and busy work/completionism, enjoys it fully. I'll finish with something I just remembered. In classic and tbc leveling 1 to max level was pretty good, yet right now in LK people find the notion of leveling a character completely abhorrent: most people actually wait for Joyous Journeys and won't level without this and full heirloom gear - this is a travesty of what leveling really should be, imersing yourself with the world, fight and struggle for upgrades, struggle with the mobs. This change in the playerbase might be because not many people are leveling to max level (which means most people are either sitting AFK at max level or doing things at max level - which enters here the raid-tax, dungeon spamming, probably even the GDKPs) and it also might be because LK attracted A LOT of people that really wanted RDF - either from retail, or people that simply didnt want to level 1-70 but wanted the "best wow expansion experience". Until LK classic released I could see arguments in favor of LK being considered the best expansion, but as time passed the flaws became more opaque and glaring. IMO, classic > tbc > LK. Legion was pretty fun until the borrowed power illusion fell off. Pandaria was OK. Everything else was in general worse even though there were little pockets of fresh air here and there. Haven't played Dragonflight as the "change talents everywhere and anywhere" ideology settled in and for me, Class and most importantly Character identity is King in an MMO. You chosing a character's spec should be a part of its identity, and at most you should be locked to one single spec per raid. This is probably a controversial opinion, especially because the playerbase REALLY enjoys minmaxing always, parsing everywhere and speedrunning everything.

I'm such a casual, that I don't even bother with raiding! I reached lvl 80 and jsut started making sporadic dungeons for fun and trying to achieve random stuff, like unlocking all recipes, acquiring achievement titles and so on. Leveling is the fun part for me. Also, please someone push the guys who made the voice over for vanilla to introduce it for TBC and WOTLK.

What is there to do outside of raiding in wrath then? lol, that progress your character in a meaningful way...

PVP is fine in wrath with the exception of 2s above 2.2k. It is only 1 of 3 comps and out of those comps there is a massive amount of Priest Rogue bots where the rogue does milli second reactions like vanishing instant cast spells. perfectly lock down 2 players while killing them ect. they run the BlistRogue bot.

How about class balancing in vanilla? Now that'd be an experience

We simply need classic plus. I'm confused why blizzard can't figure it out. If they release a spin off for classic wow it would be amazing. All they have to do is balance classic more. At the moment it is just bad. Add some new quests, collectibles, dungeon and once now and then a raid.

The only thing I want is balancing in the true vanilla classic of WoW. Paladins get a taunt. Druid and paladin tanks get a better chance at resisting crushing blows like warriors. Better item set bonuses for more viable play styles. Druids with a basic rez. Warlocks get the health stone pedestal and closet for summoning. Just qualify of life stuff. Pacing I felt like was good. The quests felt more meaningful and gear too. If they would make some of these changes I’d play it all day.

4:08 big true its hard to pin point what it is exactly maybe alot of small things together

I do like the way they have released Wrath, I do wish they would have put in LFD but I also understand why it wasn't. I like most just raid log now and play other games...

I would point out that, outside of the Heroic+ versions being run mostly by people who don't need the equipment and are only running for the badges, dungeons ARE dead. The normal throughline of world>dungeon>Heroic dungeon>raid got nuked off the map when H+ came out and most of the minmaxing-as-hell playerbase stopped running Heroics.

The meta reason everyone forgets ontop of this is that flying mounts destroy surrendipody in the world, reducing the game to a "teleport" simulatory between parts of the world. If all you do is fly up and down then there's no room left to find life in the world. Which creates a dead experience. I realised this in TBC. Flying seems like a good thing, but actually it destroys the old saying, a straight line is the shortest distance between 2 points, but it is by no means the most interesting. And in a game where you are trying to be interested, flying breaks wow.

I maintain to this day that raid prep is the only thing you can consistently get people online before or after raid for. Both raid prep and power incentives are seen as chores though, but I feel that being underprepared (lacking buffs) has a far more tangible feeling every week than missing a piece of gear you could technically have if you did your daily and weekly checklist. World Buffs and the consumable mill in Vanilla was the best solution for handling raid logging. To play Devil's Advocate, part of the reason people played way more was because they literally had to stay indoors and either didn't work or worked from home. Also the incredible hype that was behind Classic was a big help. Despite that, I believe that raid prep needs to be something that is more than a trip to the bathroom followed by a trip to the AH lol. I often sit on a month's worth of consumes which means I can log in 5 minutes prior to raid.

I'm 90% I'm just going to quit after wrath again.

I like raidlogging but I have to say that as a protection paladin I have really loved the challenge of soloing or farming old/new content and blizzard sadly destroyed most of that content. Only old raid solos like aq40, ssc, tk and some world bosses remain. Every old dungeon is pretty much dead due to the perma stun mechanic and soloing any of the current dungeons with a difficulty above just basic heroic is also impossible since you need 5 players to klick the stupid orb. I wouldn't really mind that if the dungeons in hc++ would pose a real challenge for a group of current raid tier equipped players but they don't since they are exclusivly a catchup mechanic. I would really like a hc+ version that absolutly demolishes the tank and requires kicks, stuns,ccs, or some movement. A bit like the hc dungeons in tbc felt at the beginning of the expansion when you went in there with just your dungeon gear

We need to have a talk about your ui

They lost me when they removed the RDF at the beginning. I won’t Level another character through all the zones with 1x Exp. rates. It’s such a time waste !

I just want to point out that ToC came out the same time Blizzard became Activision-Blizzard, the company that made Cataclysm, which is best known for "retail WoW". "Retail" started to grow in Wrath, came into full bloom in Cata, and withered in Draenor... or something like that. (Plz don't hate, I just had to pick an expansion and Draenor is a simple choice)

I've been saying this for a long time. Wrath was the "peak" subscriber count but it was the lowest player growth since release. The gameplay loop wasn't engaging for the majority of players, so they started quitting. Our guildies love raiding, but they don't want 1 tier with 2 sizes every few months, they want the ZG/AQ20/ZA etc., even MC with only 25 people. They want variety, not monotony. Wrath is Diablo 3 at release, nothing worth doing was fun. And nothing fun was worth doing.

1st Era: Vanilla 2nd Era: TBC - WOD 3rd Era: Legion - Shadowlands 4th Era: Dragonflight Every era of WoW from vanilla to the expansions has abided by a different game design philosophy, and I think DF is the best they've ever done. This is coming from a "wrath baby" who avoided retail to play even more wrath on private servers.

As always love the video as always people are always gonna say this expansion is best or better I love vanilla bc and wrath because that's where I have my most fond memories but I'll never be able to recreate them like the first time playing so I just play and enjoy what aspect I feel like playing when I wish

The H++ system was such a good idea. Actuslly running dungeons on higher gs characters is great. Theyre fast, and fun.

As you say, it's the latter half of WotLK, player attrition is noticeable. Raid logging isn't exactly a unique or new phenomenon. 🤷‍♂If you've geared up to current and the only thing left is raid night, then there's little point to investing more unless you want to bring up an alt.

I'm pretty happy with how it was back in the day and i also really like the new Stuff they added and changed now in wrath. The only Thing i miss is RDF and Crossserver Dungeons/Raids because i'm on a small Server and that sucks here and there. I would play more if there were more People and Raids. Maybe its a good Thing cause i already play to much 😂

I hope the cata version of xmog we get is a more retail like complete version and not the horrible cata launch version.