13:50 "The best game the raid has ever seen" hahaha. I love you Bel.

>Trial of the Crusader >Remembered for its music I don't remember this.. What music is he refer- >I AM JARAXXUS, EREDAR LORD OF THE BURNING LEGION Ohhhh... Right...

That moment when you realize that 3.1 brought more to the table than the whole of BfA so far. #WishForWotLKServer

The MMO are dying because new gen wants fast games, short queue times, lots of loots. and MMO needs TIME, is a more slow gameplay, take time forming groups. Most of players dont want this, and the other players dont have the time.

Oh man, I remember doing 3 drake. Due to how pets worked at the time and how stats scaled with them, my guild had my pet (was a warlock) main tank the big dragon. My voidwalker had more HP then top main tanks at the time when I was in my stamina gear and also had a 95% chance of avoiding all AoE damage meaning it could cheese almost every mechanic in the raid while tanking. Goes to show, even back then Blizzard had no idea what they were doing when it came to class design and mechanics.

Big ups to the green audio light in the background lulling me to sleep!

You're experience in Wrath is completely 100% exactly how mine was. Awesome Video Bellular!! Oh and I have the Swift Horde Wolf you get for the old achieve. "A tribute to insanity"

Over all World of Warcraft is the best game i've ever played. I started in WoTLK and yeah got called a wrath baby but I didn't care, had some real life long experiences in that expansion. Even to this day i'm still making tons of new experiences despite the lows and highs. Love this game.

The Argent Tournament was my favourite part of the entire game. The ambient and battle music is of unbelievable quality, and though the jousting mechanics were a little wonky, it felt like an immersive Medieval faire. Just look up Tournament of Ages, the RP servers keep it going every year and really make the most of the area.

Damn 3.1 had more content than 8.0 and 8.1 together...

Dat sneaky commercial insertion! You’re a commercial ninja. Love it! 😆👍🏻

Fantastic work with this documentary series, it’s informative and compelling, I’ve loved all the ones I’ve watched

No king rules forever, its been a long fun ride.. goodbye wow F PepeHands

Love the video, keep up the good work!

I really enjoy these. I'm no longer playing but still really enjoy you content, and take on things old and new.

With the mention of Citizens of Dalaran, I was yelling. With the play of that audio, I was *screaming*

"Algalon was rock hard." Are we not doing phrasing now Bells?

I still remember the last moment when I felt that WoW was still on the rise. It was patch 3.1. After that patch, everything slowly started to get worse and worse. There were always little positives but the average trend from that moment onward was a slow downward spiral. I think people can say that Vanilla was best or TBC was best or early Wrath was best but they were all GREAT. The people that favorite one of those three can usually agree on stuff and find a lot of common ground. But the latter half of Wrath, starting with 8.2, is the point where most people collectively start complaining about the game going downhill.

really good video, thank you bellular

That was the most seamless transition into a sponor message I’ve ever seen 😂 well done

OMG that back ground music just gave me chills. So many hours of my life spent listening to that. I miss those days.

awesome content as always! :)

That Skill Share Segway was epic lol, in all seriousness keep up the good work.

Awesome. Love this kind of video.

In this vid I noticed the amp/recorded in the back left of the vid. And for most the vid I have been staring at the green ring as it lights up when Bel talks and fades when he breathes.

In the previous video, you precisely -- and I think, uniquely -- contrasted Wrath's popular and effective progression pacing with modern WoW. This video, you totally resist conventional wisdom about Argent Tournament and recognize it for the triumph of setting and theatrics that it was. Bravo.

There was something so satisfying about finding 4 or 24 other person and traveling to instance entrance.

Funny to watch this video and see you talking about the tournament dailies. I've been doing them every day for the past week or so trying to champion all factions. They're still a lot of fun today and that says something.

i remember getting the gear score breaker addon and running around in dalaran messing everyones gear score addon haha

does someone else also register a high amount of mini sound lags in every of Bel´s new bideos ?? or do i have to check my i -netXD

In Wrath, Blizzard should have added an item called "Magical Earplugs" that gave you a perma-buff that lasted through death and prevented you from hearing the boss kill callouts.

good video mate

Algalon didn't unlock from beating Yogg btw. It was a quest dropped by the harder Hard Mode of the Assembly of Iron that required you to beat the Hard Mode of all 4 Keeper bosses.

TBC still my favourite era of WoW. Hope se can have a tbc server in a year or two after classic

Loved this video!! This was about the time I started playing, and man the nostalgia hit me hard

God how I miss Old World of Warcraft.... Take me back to 3.1 please.

The same week Icecrown Citadel was introduced I came to the troubling realization that *WoW was eating my life* and even negatively impacting my RL job. I suddenly quit raiding, dropped out of my guild and vowed to only play casually a couple times a week. Completely missed Icecrown Citadel. Never even saw the inside of the place until spring 2018. So, looking forward to learning about it in your next video =)

Trial of the Crusader was where all went to shit, they introduced gear that made the best Raid ever ignorable and a lackluster mini raid/instance. For me this was the beginning of the end for wow

I think overall Wrath was a fantastic expansion. Arguably the high point for WOW (although I prefer TBC), BUT, I also think it was the beginning of the end for wow and starting with the tail end of Wrath Blizzard started to prioritize convenience over everything that made the game great.

Can you do a series like this for vanilla and tbc?

green light in the background ques when he speaks. you cant unsee it

Thank you very much for these videos. As someone who wasn't allowed to play WoW during that time, being able to see and experience this through someone else's eyes is greatly appreciated!

Their fatal misstep was getting caught in the accessibility trap and playing towards the wants of whingers too much. LFG / LFR / Sharding / Cross - Realm micro servers instead of just merging smaller realms together. They also used to care about pre-expansion events. The best event I ever experienced in WoW is still the undead plague, it was just fun and, yes, annoying as hell. The real truth is though, life is annoying, it's supposed to put obstacles in your way, and by overcoming these obstacles you find meaning and satisfaction. Blizzard just took all of the obstacles and turned them into tiny hurdles that you could walk around in most cases.

The one thing I hated about Wrath was the raid progression. One raid per tier began here. Also, I didn't like that the heroic dungeon in the Coliseum totally killed Ulduar. Back in Burning Crusade, raiders were still running Karazhan right up until the night before Wrath started... but in Wrath, nobody ran Ulduar after the Trial of the Crusader raid debuted. I thought that sucked.

*sigh* this was my rookie time. I started playing this summer. Yes I know I'm a Wrath baby.

Watching this makes me think of what could have been - if Azjol Nerub had been a zone and 8+ boss raid, between Ulduar and Icecrown (perhaps instead of Trial of the Crusader, despite my personal love for that raid). It would have been epic, like the adventurous maze of BrD in raid form!

Early Wrath was what you get when you throw a little spice in to your favorite dish, 3.2 and especially Cata was what you get when you dump the whole bottle of spice on your dish.

Damn that skillshare segue was smooth

Stars is the same end game guild from Everquest on the Tunare server.

you forgot to mention that they originally remade the previously level 40 mount of 60% to level 30, before changing it again to level 20.

Lol that was the most seamless sponsor I’ve ever seen

"Algalon was rock hard" oh my...

Who's here before Asmongold reacts to this?

20:35 this is what I said in my tweet today to watcher and the dev team. I said "how I long for the days when you actually had to work for your ilvl (vanilla, BC). before you could step into naxxramas: dungeons < MC < BWL < AQ40 < naxx. same in BC. But now in BFA: Heroic dungeon < Battle For Dazar.. There is no progression anymore." 23:55 ywah, it blew my mind so much, I instantly quit the game after hearing about what cataclysm was going to be, I didn't play WoW again until patch 5.3 or 5.4. I instead waiting almost a year for the long anticipated Star Wars the Old Republic and it after almost a year of waiting, it did not disappoint, it was so much fun, I didn't miss WoW at all. after about 2 years of playing it, finally had enough for a while after bioware nerfed all the classes I likled playing, the game wasn't as fun anymore. long story short. Cayaclysm was the beginning of the end for WoW, 12.5 million subs at the end of Wrath and they have never reached that number since, I think they got 10 million in Legion, but now we must be below WoD numbers for sure.

Please don't miss talking about Dungeon Finder in 3.3.0

Shout out to the players that were playing as soon as vanilla launched, its just time to let go no hate whatsoever, wow was a beautiful experience for my childhood. R. I. P

good content bell

I cant wait for a Wrath server.

> kill boss quicker. > press a red button. Really heroic!

Hmm, April 14 to August 4 is just under 4 calendar months, not 5. So even quicker than you said in the video.

This is when dailies didn't feel like a chore. To me anyways.

I know its a tiny thing, but theres' a green flashing light in the bottom left of the studio shot that's REALLY distracting. Can you cover it next time?

A bit more digging, Bellular, and you will see that it started in TBC actually. Wrath was actually a CONTINUATION of QoLs and massive re-design implemented in TBC. Flying was introduced in TBC, and with it, the "need" for "speed" led to LFD in Wrath. Arena was introduced in TBC, and with it, the "need" for "less people" led to 10 men raids in Wrath. Heroic modes were introduced in TBC, and with it, the community was even more split. And so on.

I always thought that Cataclysm was the begginning of the end for World of Warcraft, not Wrath of the Lich King.

all i can see if that green light flickering in the corner when you talk.

still a little surprising how many design decisions they got right in Wrath but didn't try again. GDC just posted an interesting lecture by Travis Day discussing how the reward system of WoW/D3 evolved and some of the mistakes they made over the years. It adds a bit more behind the scenes context to gear of this era.

In trial of The crusader you coud do 10 and 25 same week aswell as hc and normal for both. My guild did all 4 versions evry week for some months.

They removed all the RPG elements of the game and dumbed it down to this piece of crap we have today.

Blizzard removed the RPG aspects of the game and made it more Action RPG

I think that instead of being a full tier, it would've made sense for the Trial of the Crusader to be used narratively to grant a special weapon from the Kirin Tor for the player to use in Icecrown. You know, like Legion but it would've made more sense. It also wouldn't have made Ulduar irrelevant and literally skippable.

Just my opinion, but I don't think they cut the life of ULDUAR short by releasing trial of the crusader. I think many guilds found ulduar intimidating due to it's size/scale/time involved, and also much more difficult compared to NAXX. Big change from Naxx easy mode to Ulduar being hard even on regular mode. If anything, I think TOC extended Ulduar playability at the time before the release of ICC. Reason being people could knock out TOC early in the week, and then work on ULDUAR the rest of the week. TOC got many people back into raiding that ULDUAR was just a bit too overwhelming for them. Ulduar still had so many cool things to do, achievements to earn, etc... that TOC gear helped people progress on it that perhaps struggled before. I think it paired quite well together before ICC came out.

Quality of Life=Erosion of sense of world, immersion, and sense of gratifying progression. This video made me realize that WoW was truly an immersive, epic and meaningful MMO experience from launch until the release of Wrath.

What that red flower behind you?

So far i have watched countless videos but no one ever mentioned thr actual part content people enjoyed... Spirit beasts... Was a big thing to do Exlusive items like BMAH And TCG market blizzard droped these things long time now and its sad

Is that a router in the bottom left?

13:53 "One of the best games that the raid had ever seen." ???

You forgot about the tabards reputation system on WOTLK. I think it was the best way blizzard created to work on reputations ever.

Ugh I hated gear score so much... I had taken a break from the game and when I came back everyone was talking about gear scores and then no one would let me raid which really pissed me off because they were raids I was used to being top dps in and now I was being told I wasn't geared enough to join and I was just so dumbfounded and angry...

Activism would be proud of that shameless plug at 1:40 lol

Wrath brought overall a lot of good features from my memory, it did make the game more casual (which probably catered to me being a kid in school and never that good/hardcore), I think what did start to kill the game was too much lfg, it killed immersion and wows outside world that you could just sit in dalaran queue and be teleported to a dungeon without ever having go there on your mount

You forgot to mention developers like Eyonix leaving at the end of Ulduar and the subsequent drop in raid content quality.

How dare you make me have these feels

I wonder how/if the future course of the game would have been changed if they'd kept their finger on the pulse and delayed Call of the Crusade until Ulduar had been more thoroughly cleared.

Wow blast from the past gears scores haha i forgot all about that its been so long

Omg your right ear got so much screen time . Hell i forgot what your left ear looks like ! Do you have a left ear ?

I can't believe you talked about trial of valor without mentioning the most important feature to change wow in the future: Looking for group.

I guess I quit wrath before Argent Tournament because I had no clue that even existed.

Raiding should never have had a Heroic mode imo, but if there is a way to make it harder to get access to more loot Raids should have continued with the Ulduar “hard mode trigger.” Why they didn’t follow that model greatly confuses me.

I was a progression raider from Vanilla up until Ulduar. I HATED Ulduar. So much so that I haven't been a progression raider since.

You.....I remember you......in the mountains!

April - August is not 5 months, it is 4. Time between 3.1 and 3.2 was just under FOUR months

Wrath was my favorite for ease of asses with hardcore modes. PvP was a fun time to what I remember.

Also, gearscore was the downfall of the entire system and was when we stopped looking at stats as a whole. It was a slippery slope. You can hear more about it from a dev that worked on the game: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/qqd_Y9loys_ZlYU.html

Gear score was much more worse then people understood. People could be geared by their friends to get into runs that they had no idea how to deal with because they lacked the skill. I could out damage and out live other people in blues because I had far better player skills and yet I would sometimes be turned out just because my gear score. The worse part was when I had to posted meters for fights just to prove that even thought I had a low gear score I sure as fuck wasn't the weak link as I was always at the top of the meters. It was annoying for like 3-4 weeks after that I was pretty much geared in the best, but it does change how shitty of an experience it was.

I loved soo much those days... Even being casual, it allowed me to do raids and heroics which where fun and entertaining. By the way, I play wow since patch 1.10 LOL

I think you missed out on something with the approach of Cataclysm. The player base despised a lot of the proposed class changes. The forums were on fire about many of them. Which is one contributing reason subs fell so sharply. I'm sure there were many others. Hunter changes and the addition of focus + casted shots is a good example. We all absolutely abhorred some of the class changes and pleaded, threatened, cried, complained, posted and screamed about them to no avail. You might have been too young at the time to pay attention? However the vibe from the Cata prepatch was that. Dread, not hype. We begged and pleaded for a lot of changes to be reverted. Didn't take too long after it launched for the numbers to dive. The game for many of us just wasn't fun anymore. I don't recall hype, I recall a lot of very loud "this isn't fun" complaints. Let's not forget the last dance of the trees in Dalaran. Some changes just didn't make sense. Still don't. The game was and still is somewhat less fun than it was in WotLK thanks to those class changes. That's the vibe as I felt it. It's obvious other people saw different vibes at that time.

Great vid. Well done.. like.. more than normal.. like.. weller done. r rr

ah the memories hit me now...and yes, onyxia was such fun...super epic...u gather a group of people from the server( bring server community back and quit guilds) and go have fun basicly

pretty sure we called them "hard modes", not "heroic modes". In Ulduar.

I think he looks his best in these. Get back to this look Bell!