"Technically you can make any boss a hard mode by just doing it wrong" probably the best quote ever in one of your video

I think the one thing you missed is the update made to transmog in legion. It was really convenient to be able to change the appearance of gear without having to have that gear stashed away in your loot in order to do so. It gave a reason for people to run older content, especially on alts in order to just get transmog gear and be able to change a character's appearance pretty much anytime.

"Technically you can make any boss a hard mode by just doing it wrong" LOL. oh geez.

"Technically you can make any boss a hard mode by doing it wrong" And I took that personally

I miss dungeon hubs. A themed area with multiple 5-man's and sometimes a raid tied to it. Scarlet Monestary, Tempest Keep, Ulduar, etc...

The mage tower challenges single handedly made me an altoholic.

God, Timeless Isle was so beautiful and funny, the music was great, the lore, EVERYTHING!

I think the achievment system atleast needed a spot on this list, if not the number one spot. For a lot of people this just opens up the game in so many ways! Great list anyway :) love these videos.

I think the first iteration of a "mage tower" challenge was the warlock quest for the fel fire

6:18 interesting note, Glyph of the Geist for DKs was meant to be a cosmetic glyph, but it made the minion appear instantly, meaning you could macro the Raise Dead ability with Death Pact and get an instant 50% heal. I think the macro went something like this: #showtooltip /cast !Raise Dead /cast Death Pact

you're on fire with these videos lately, well done hiru

when the mage tower was gone and I couldnt get the druid bear form that I wanted more than anything else it made me feel so bad. normally I accept that a lot of stuff is temporary, but THAT was some bullshit

I don't understand why there are no mage tower type challenges anymore. It was one of the best thing ever in my opinion. It was challenging but fair and at the same time rewarding af because those appereances not only was awesome looking but also kinda prestigious.

I really love what you're doing Hiru, I recently quit again and have no interest of playing but I always come back for these vids.

Oh, God, just looking at the Mage Tower rooms make my nightmares come back I want something like that again, but still... I used to legit have dreams with Agatha

Its fitting that the Timeless Isle is the best, and is also called, the Timeless Isle, truly is timeless

"Technically you can make any boss a hard mode by just doing it wrong." Idk if that was supposed to be hilarious but god damn I was not ready for that.

Lowkey mad that I started playing just when Legion was ending. I see all the cool mage tower appearances and I'm super salty that they're no longer obtainable, especially the firey warglaives for demon hunters.

As someone who joined after MoP I would love to see a Reforging system re-added to the game, many players already have the Yak mount it was used for and sure getting new items would be annoying to deal with getting to a reforger but you don't get gear until the end of a dungeon in M+ so would cause little to no problems there but raids could be a bit of a problem, some raids have limited space where you can mount and would draw out raids if you had to have someone run to that area where you can mount to reforge with the Yak.

They did try to make a new Mage Tower Challenge. Horrific Visions and the special Torghast wing.

Would like to add legion riddles , arenas introduced in tbc , badge of justice system introduced in tbc as well with heroic dungeons, pandaria challenge mode dungeons , dual talent spec in woltk, achievements added in woltk prepatch, dots made able to crit with woltk prepatch as well (locks and shadow priests loved that one) , mini cinematics in raids and quests, transmog system, and the most recent is the chrono babbon to store worlds buffs in classic. A lot more as well I bet

Damn I miss Timeless Isle, so much PVP fun

proof that legion was the best expansion ever.

As compensation for this 9.1 delay, they should give us mage towers in the meanwhile waiting for 9.1.

HIru, you're absolutely killing it with the amount of uploads recently! I've been a huge fan for over six years now but even legends need to take a break every now and then, bro! ;)

god I just want reforging back

I love this video because at the time of writing, people are are so negative about the game it's hard to even recognize when something is good in game We need more of this XD

4:20 Hiru taking shots at Wowhead / US general forums daaamn

For some reason, this video makes me want to repurchase my WoW subscription and start playing again. Nice video.

There are two things I fondly remember about the Timeless Isle. First was that if you were a small enough race (IE goblin or gnome) or used a toy to get small enough, you could squeeze through the top of the interactable cave-in to go grab the mallet needed to demolish the cave-in. I would do this so many times while grinding in there, and even told others how it's done. Since the place is abandoned nowadays, you may need to do this to get that event done... Second was grinding in the western side of the Ordon sanctuary, where a bunch of elite mobs were, a chest at the back end of the "room", and sometimes a rare spawn at the entrance to it. As non-rare mobs, these dropped the most rep for Emperor Shaohao, and as a Hunter were not too hard to defeat. I spent countless hours and days grinding up there, and when I finally reached exalted I was so sick I stopped playing for a week or so.

I love the part where you're talking about how useful mass summoning was while the footage is someone going full-tilt Symmetra troll on their raid group.

"and fitting the currently existing armor to the races" As a pandaren main I can tell you right now blizz doesn't really care about that

I miss Mage Tower :( So many cool transmogs to get are lost :(

Thanks for all the recent content Hiru, I really wish we can have Reforge back, I believe that would make a lot of players appreciate the gear they get a bit more, since there are a lot of secondary stats that are no longer used, so customizing your gear would be a LOT easier

"Even Blizzard thinks they go too far with conveniences added to the game, and will pull them back even if everyone likes it." Was there anyone who didn't already believe Blizz has no problem removing popular conveniences?

Chromie’s timewalking campaigns are great, but the way they suddenly break the level scaling and throw you out at level 50 is such a kick in the nuts. If they can’t let you stick around in old content at 50, they should at least warn you before you miss the opportunity to disable xp.

Great video! One thing I would add to the list is transmog. I often don't even think of it as an added system because its just become so integrated into the game, but after playing a bit of classic it feels insane that you can't customize your character's gear appearance, you're just stuck with whatever you're actually wearing. It's also a major motivator for people to do content (both old and current), trying to get a specific mog.

Fun fact: I went to level in Legion, with help from DMF. Completeing the 4 main leveling zones and every sidequest I found *didn't get me to Lv50*; in fact; I had to do multiple dungeons beyond the dungeon quests to even hit 48.

You totally skipped the part about Challenge Modes system introduced in Mists of Pandaria which eventually became Mythic Plus system. Give the proper credit where it's due :D

I'd like to point out that the grand majority of these are gone. Figures.

Nazjatar was never intended to be sandbox like Timeless island. Before 8.2 became live, devs said that Nazjatar was a regular zone and Mechagon was the Sandbox zone this time, and they did it well. Mechagagon brought to me many memories of timeless islands: Everyone working together to kill rares and solve hidden events/puzzles, camping rares and many things to craft. Also, you forgot to mention that Mythic+ feature came from Pandaria/WoD challenge mode. In fact, Mythic+ is just a improvement of it.

chromie time is arguably my favorite feature period. i love having a different leveling experience every time i level an alt

Okay so, where is "Group Finder" system? It was one of best system they ever added to the game back in WoD

In my opinion challenge modes are also up there. The first type of challenge in dungeons in wow and the true original version of what is m+ today

#3.1: Warlock's green fire questline

I missed the original glyph system. My main had inscription, and the change seemed designed to make inscription worthless. My jewelcrafter and enchanter could continually make money selling new gems and enchants, but that wasn't possible for my scribe. Making card decks was an RNG crapshoot that took up too much storage and was made worthless with the revamped Darkmoon Faire repeatables.

Final Fantasy 14 gear system is similiar to #9, essentially doing any high end content gives you a quantity of something called a Tomestone. You then turn in Tomestones for gear, as high as around 900 Tomes for a chestpiece to around 400 for an accessory. You can then upgrade said gear to higher levels by turning them in with Materials from raids. But raids ALSO give you gear. So your raid group is almost always progressing in inventory upgrading regardless of raid results It's a pretty satisfying system. I hope WoW goes in a similar direction

MoP had Challenge Mode dungeons, which you could say were the predecessor to Mythic dungeons.

Your video makes me realise how good MoP was at intergrating new systems. New Mythic difficulty for raiding and flex raiding, challenge modes being the OG Mythic dungeons, timeless isle, legendary questlines for all classes, your own farm/some sort of player housing, reforging, world bosses as we know them, battle pets and even the green warlock fire quest being more or less the original solo class challenge. I bet I'm missing some but you get the idea

While not a "system" so I get why it's not on the list, the warlock green fire quest was the most fun I've had solo on WoW. I hope more difficult class quests make it into the game one day.

Not sure if it counts as a system, but the ring of blood has always been one of my favorite parts of the game.

Now now, originally Have Group Will Travel worked everywhere, even in raids. What ended up happening was guilds would send a rogue in to skip all the trash and summon everyone to the boss. That did not last long before being nerfed.

I loved the Classic Dungeons being big. Lower and Upper Blackrock Spire, the Blackrock Deeps, Dire Maul, Maraudon… loved them all so much. It felt like real adventure, not just running through. And you always found something to do or secrets. Now, even when the Dungeons are new and hard, it’s basically just running through.

I agree that Mechagon was the closest they managed to re-creating another Timeless Isle, they just seem to not get it at all that the fact it was pretty much a flat terrain made it so much more easier to get around. People really hate annoying and complicated terrains. I think Nazjatar is the best example of what NOT to do. Honestly, before I managed to unlock flying, that zone was a nightmare to get around in if you're stuck on the ground.

This video made me happy and sad, lots of great memories of all the best things to be added in this game

I did Fire, Frost and Arcane Mage, and Outlaw Rogue. I'd never properly learned Frost or Arcane until this point, and boy howdy was I in for a learnin'; each one took me 30 or so attempts. I also did my wife's Ret Paladin for her, despite not even having my own Pally. I would have done Assassination Rogue but I could not face the Sigryn fight a third time. I overgeared Fire and was goddamned good at it, and had the Dragon's Breath legendary and crit talent, so wiping out the Imps was effortless. Took me all of twenty seconds lmao

the difficulty with the mage tower was there were some fights that were clearly better for some classes, but the gear progression of the expansion meant that by the end of the expansion you could absolutely get good on a class and do it, but it would still be tough. I remember my pally's dps challenge was extremely tough but the tank challenge turned out to be quite easy

Chromie-time (along with the level squish) is imo the best feature of Shadowlands.

I never had as much fun with the game as I did with Timeless Isle. It was pure sandbox joy. It was like a small town full of rilvalries and trolling.

System that I would consider as one to be candidate for top of this list is dual spec. For sure it is thing I miss most in classic.

I was that person summoning 39 others to kill the King of SW, oh it felt so good. Made the For The Horde/Ally achv so much fun. 2 groups 80 people with 2 button clicks.

7 years, 10 months, 13 days since timeless isle was released, truly timeless

The best system is flex raiding, before flex my guild would always struggle to get enough for 10 man and when we did get more, people had to be benched, after flex people turned up more as they always got a spot.

the key to the timeless isle was the amount of interesting things they added to it… and the biggest thing was the fact that you could earn gear for you alts on your main, in korthia you can technically do that but it costs stygia and it’s not exact pieces, the implementation of that system makes absolutely no sense.

How did you forget to include the timed dungeons in mop and wod that awarded gear and mounts and it s the grandad of mythic +???

I remember swimming to the timeless isle on my level 85 character at the time to farm grubs to power level. Went from 85 to 90 in two hours lmao

Hit caps 'without' reforging made gearing more interesting. You had to somewhat think about your upgrades beyond just ilevel. Reforging and to a lesser extent gems are what made hit cap (and gearing generally) into busy work, because there was no scenario were you weren't meeting it. It went from a meaningful factor in choosing upgrades, to a little chore you did after every piece of gear you picked up.

The Mage Tower was probably my favorite thing to ever be put into Warcraft. I loved the Holy Paladin and tank challenges! I remember enjoying the Isle of Thunder more than the Timeless Isle but both were awesome.

I honestly think one of the big reasons people loved the Timeless Isle was that it was pretty. It was genuinely pleasant to spend time there; it was beautiful. Tanaan Jungle? Argus? Being in those places is depressing. I wanted to get my shit done and leave. What I would LOVE would be say, the Dragon Isles in a Timeless Isle sort of sandboxy, do what you want because it all rewards you, _beautiful_ minizone.

I only did one mythic dungeon in my entire life and just for the story but then never did another one because I'm too lazy and too tired to do something where I need to use more than ten percent of my brain power.

Reforging was also used to get casters to hit their haste soft-caps or hard-caps exactly and then switch to whatever stat they value most after that e.g. crit. That way their main filler spell would be at the minimum 1 second cast (soft-capped), or their GCD would be at 1 second (hard-capped) and they would not be wasting stats through overcapping haste.

Best/challenging mage tower fight was for the protection paladin. The class and spec with the lowest single target DPS in the game was given a DPS race against not one but two bosses, and during the entire fight you would have to deal with instant death mechanics from multiple mobs at the same time (you'd get knocked out of the arena and die if you got hit by any of them). It was a massive mess that you couldn't just outgear, and it was so much fun.

24:00 the true issue with Cataclysm's dungeon difficulty was that stat rating scaled so bad at the beginning of the expansion that unless you were in full dungeon gear, dungeons were brutal, to heal especially. Haste was so little and mana regen was so slow that every pull felt like Mythic 10 trash. I personally despised it, I admit.

The mage tower was easily my prime of WoW. Getting 36/36 is probably my best ever achievement to date.

"Technically you can make any boss a hard mode by just doing it wrong" my guild killed Council of Blood in such a weird order that was way harder than what most people were doing, literally a hard mode for no reason lolol finally someone was like uhhh you know we don't have to kill them this way right

I miss the Mage Tower every day

I think they might be able to hit another timeless Isle right this expansion, given they have far more options to go with given the shadowlands is supposed to be infinite.

What I miss the most are Challenge modes from MoP. Those were the best fun I had in wow....

Mage tower was so amazing, i wish it eas added thru chromie just for fun, not asking for the wep skins, just do it for fun, maybe some toys. I did it back then on every class / spec in the game. So much fun.

Mythic+ was a ton of fun when it came out in Legion. It was new and gave you something else to do while getting gear and just chilling out. Now I loathe Mythic+, the toxic min/max attitude around it, and repeating the same dungeons for the same loot for the rest of the game. Plus now it seems like they are creating dungeons with MDI in mind more than anything else. Maybe its nostalgia but i miss challenge modes and the unique gear that you could get from them. I think limited unique gear/appearances have more incentive to do them like the mage tower proved (though the fact the mage tower was hard for each spec also made them super fun).

transmog and the collection tab. Being able to empty my bank and inv was so wonderful

"Have group will travel" actually worked in the instance you did not have to run out. You just needed to stand close to the entrance portal. IMHO they should just nerf if that you can use it only near raid entrances so you can no longer port entire raid to opposite faction capital.

The mythic dungeon system didn't start in Legion. It was first tried in MOP.

The Mage tower was so good. I had not really played my druid since TBC heavily, but I had to have that guardian druid skin. Was fun getting good enough to earn it. Mage tower type incentives need a return.

commenting because I've been here on this channel for ages and I want to nudge the algorithm to help hiru get more views, keep going king!

Transmogrification is one of the best things ever added to WoW imo

Future features people are going to love: Unyielding characters, you can make a character where all quests and open world content is an order of magnitude harder, items drop a lot less common but once you complete a zone with the character you unlock an "unspoiled bounty" buff which allows you to get MUCH more loot from open world zones you completed with your Unyielding character. This is to breathe air into older content by not only making it difficult, but also giving an incentive to do it. Fresh servers: Most people can't imagine playing a new character, but on these special realm groups everything is 100% completely fresh, not a single characters exists on them and you can only play with other people from that realm group, creating a brand new economy with a ton of new challenging goals and incentives. Hardcore Characters: The much liked challenge of levelling a character without dying just got serious, can you do it officially? If you do your reward will be your name in the ledger of legendary characters (a bit like how the Wintergrasp book kept track of wins / losses), and a toy where you could summon a copy of the ledger for people to read.

I was on a PvP server when the Timeless Isle was put in. It was fun despite being killed by other players farming the Blood Coins. I also did enjoy being able to gear up so easily yet having to deal with several really tough elite NPCs.

Their was challenge mode back in MoP and WoD their was pretty fun to do, where you get cool tmog

Mythic + is my favorite part of the game now

The Prot warrior challenge was one of the hardest things I ever did in wow. That was after (I think) the first set of nerfs to the tank challenge. When I did it a year later on a friends undergeared alt (similar gear to what I had back then), the challenge was a shell of its former self and I was able to completely steamroll through it only resetting the health reduction once.

I don't know a single person that likes PvP gearing in SL, just because PvE players start doing PvP doesn't mean it's a good system, people do it because they want gear, just like Ashran in WoD, everybody did it because of the rewards not because they liked it.

Reforging was so cool. An engi item would have fixed the problem of not equipping a new item instantly. Or make reforging a part of jewelcrafting to begin with.

Ohhhhhh! A good system that I think was added was the whole scaling in raids, flex raids I think it’s called? To where you can have 15 if you want or 30 if you want, instead of a boss tuned to 10 or 25 as far as difficulty and drops and such. It’s pretty nice to now be able to pick up a person or two if they log in late or still be able to do a guild run without having to pug 5 people, even if it’s only useable for normal/heroic raids.

I’d love reforge to come back it was my favorite. And the old school talent system vs the new talent system.

I’d love to see a top 10 oldest npcs lore wise

Please bring back mage tower 2.0, I still have my profile picture of getting my mage tower appearance I just noticed. That shows alone how happy I was and how enjoyable / rewarding completing a hard challenge like that is, I think they could even possibly create a Mage tower + where it's like a solo m+ keystone except its just some bosses designed for your class and you can keep upgrading your level whenever you want similar to m+. (Side note I only just came up with this idea and i think it's brilliant, If this had a similar Raider.io system attached it could help prove potential for a lot of players since it's Solo content)

Though debatable as to whether it led to mythic+, challenge mode was a tier of harder mode (above heroic) that was introduced in WoD (pre-cursor to Legion which started the mythic+'s). To me, the challenge mode was blizzard prototyping/testing for mythic+'s

Not gonna lie, Brawler Guild was awesome and was fun when everyone could cheer you on (or laugh)

Best thing added to game post-cata was transmog system