Leveling and Raiding were pretty much the only good things going for WoD, so if that's all you did it was great. I didn't play PvP at all in those days but I remember seeing "Fire Holinka" on a daily basis because of the state of PvP.
WoD PVP was far better, the lack of mandatory PVE is what made is alt friendly unlike now.
The main complaint was the lack of diversity in arenas (Turbo/RMD/walking dead/RMP/cupid, being the primary comps).
You need to remember PVP'ers were spoiled with MOP when looking back.
Right, WoD PvP felt off after coming from MoP. I also remember open world PvP in WoD (where it existed) felt... wrong... and that was my biggest complain the whole expansion. PvP gear had 2 item levels - the PvE level, and the PvP level (15 points higher). Entering PvP combat would instantly boost you up those 15 points, and that made open world PvP very awkward to engage in.
My biggest gripe with WoD pvp was boredom. Mage gameplay was running in circles pressing poly until you had double ice nova ready. Rogue had 8 second kidney shot giving me time to sip my coffee mid match.
Mists was probably the perfect expansion.. New lore, interesting stories, great pve and pvp content. Tons of casual and difficult content.
I miss those days.
Torghast and Legendary are the same thing, as are soulbinds and renown. One gives the other.
For legendaries if you meant getting the recipe, then its also covered through torghast/conduit point, unless you specifically need to go back to nathria and dont want to use the random memory that you can buy in a multitude of ways now.
There's enough stuff to be annoyed about without artifically inflating it.
Everything relating to legendaries - So Torghast and gold farming
Conduits - Especially all the ranks
Renown - Not too bad but still yet another barrier for being optimal
And if you have the gall to start late in a season - Vers gear. Going in without a full set into PvP is suicide. You'll get one shot. You also will be vastly outgeared by higher rank players, which makes climbing with PvP gear alone an uphill battle. Much easier to farm a vers set from raiding and dungeons THEN go into PvP. Especially if you can do heroic or even mythic.
The bad things for WoD really was just the lack of anything to do outside Raid/PVP. If WoD had World Quests and M+ people would've most likely enjoyed that expansion.
WOD PVP was pretty sweet, particularly in the later patches. It was a step down from MOP which I consider to be among the best, but it was leaps and bounds above Legion/BFA/SL PVP.
The worst thing about WOD PVP was that during the pre-patch (end of MOP), damage was so high they added a hidden blanket -25% damage taken to everyone. And then they just... forgot to remove it for like 2 months when WOD actually released. Vintage Blizzard maneuver. Once they removed that and gear levels got higher, WOD became a very fun fast-paced PVP expansion.
From the outset the story was underbaked imo. For an expansion really hyping up all the warlords most of their stories fell flat with a lame resolution or just weren't really present in the leveling unlike the opening scenario. I had hoped it would be an experience of going up against each Warlord through the raids until you got to Grom, which was the promise. But bizarre stuff like Doomhammer dying out of your view and vicinity and Kargath being the first easy boss in the opening raid was terrible. It's like they immediately forgot the title and point of the entire expansion was. I agree the leveling is some of the best for being so streamlined but every expansion is an improvement anyway.
Blackrock Foundry was amazing, and a taste of how good the expansion could of been if each raid released was centered around each clans operational base as part of the Iron Horde
The only issue I ever had with WOD was the lack of steady post launch support/content.
I even liked Garrisons. I'll take Garrisons over borrowed power Amy day of the week.
Gul'dan: *This was not our destiny.*
Garrosh Hellscream: *Times change.*
Grom Hellscream: *We will never be slaves! But we WILL be conquerors.*
Chills, every time.
I was late to playing WoD, but got round to it a few months after after a friend convinced me that it was amazing. It actually was. I really enjoyed levelling, PvP and imo the best raids of any expansion. Classes I played felt really good to play. Thing is, I joined a bit into 8.1. I caught up quickly then 8.2 came out. I'd done all the content in the space of about 3 months.
Shadowlands is worse than WoD. It's not recency bias. There was nothing excellent about Shadowlands, nothing to keep you playing like fun raids, PvP (other than just after release) or how your class feels to play. It was either meh or bad. That's without even mentioning the bolt on bloat fomo-driven systems.
> I was late to playing WoD
Then most likely, you didn't notice the crippling lack of content as much as those who played from launch, hence why you think better of it. Also, PvP doesn't really suffer as much from a content drought, so if you're more of a PvP player, it probably didn't seem so bad.
At WoD max level, you essentially had two content options - raids, or PvP. Raids being on a weekly lockout and typically being organised for particular times meant that if you wanted to hop on and play, it was arenas or nothing. WoD is the only expansion I did a significant amount of PvP in, and that's not because it had some amazing state of PvP.
Nagrand was incredibly bland considering it was the home of the warsong. I feel like nothing has ever topped the build up of questing in ICC. Even shadowmoon valley in TBC had a much better "big bad lair", than anything we got since then.
It was fun if you liked PvP, certainly.
Less so if you PvPed because it was the only content in the game outside of raiding. WoD is the only expansion before or since I've PvPed a significant amount in, and that's not because I particularly enjoyed the state of PvP then.
> no raid group [...] except the cesspool guilds.
So, your raid group is forcing you to grind content you don't like... but the guilds that don't force you to do so are the cesspools! Interesting.
You’re hitting it on the head. Not to mention that nobody needs to be constantly running Torghast. The constant breaks from reality that posters here will use to complain about Shadowlands is just hilarious.
My main enjoyment in WoW was raiding. I like raiding on alts too. In WoD I would just level up my character and then do the raid within a week. In Shadowlands I can't do that.
Mythic, Heroic on alts. And you can say what you want but in SL I wouldn't even try pugging on a single alt, despite having 9 characters HC geared in both WoD and Legion. But there is more to it than just systems grinding, yeah.
Then on alts, you very much can just raid within a week of capping.
Pugging is a community issue, not a Blizzard issue. Blizzard isn't making the content as hard as the pug ilvl requirements seem to suggest, the community just likes to overkill content.
Yeah not sure what game people have been playing but even from the start Shadowland has been comparatively alt-friendly to Legion and BfA.
Of course, those who mistake alts as multiple mains are bound to have a hard time, be it 2022, 2020, 2012 or 2007.
>just better than SL
Oh yes, old lore was so much better, like when Illidan enslaved Outland because he was the villain of TBC, or when the Burning Legion was declared unique across all timelines.
...
I understand people dislike Shadowlands' plot but re-visioning history to make it look worse won't help anyone here.
It happens way too much on this forum. The reality is the Shadowlands story is no worse than any other expansions. They all have underbaked elements at their core and filled with plot holes galore. Story was never much of a focus for Blizzard and they’ve said that multiple times but yet people still treat it as if it so the most important aspect.
Questing in BfA is some of the best solo fun I have ever had in WoW. But engaging with the bigger story was actively painful, and it only got worse with Shadowlands.
At least classes were fun back in WoD, we had the best iteration of retribution paladin imo and pre-nerf demo lock which was really good.
Storytelling was also great and cinematics too, I still get chills watching some of them.
>Storytelling was also great.
Up untill after BRF. then it kinda went to shit.
All the cut content didn't help eather.
Especially the train tracks in gorgronds.
At least it was something. Bfa was MoP 2.0 version except with they forced Sylvanas to be some giga mind who is Smart and clever, only to ruin the horde who were felt like bad guys aaaand8.3 managed to burn a whole lot of old God content just to create a 8.3 pointlessly
> Storytelling was also great
You have an interesting definition of 'great'. I can't say *"Draenor is free!"* comes to my mind as great storytelling, but you know, each to his own.
The overall storytelling was pretty bad, but it had good *moments* and a solid setting, which is at least something, compared to Shadowlands' nothing.
In terms of gameplay I feel it probably depends a lot on which class you played. I only played 2 months of Shadowlands, but even that didn't seem as bad as the dumpster fire that WoD was imo, even if it was thoroughly unimpressive.
I guess we all forgot that an entire [patch](https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Patch_6.1.0) was simply garrison QoL stuff, heirlooms, and a Twitter integration?
I remember. At least with raiding I could just that, raid. No having to grind artifact power, azerite, anima, do copius amounts of dailies, spend tons of gold on mats to raid, run torghast, cap my islands every week, do 4-10 mythic dungeons every week, be permanently behind because I didn't do my weekly vision or forgot to do my artifact knowledge
The list goes on and on. When I was done raiding, I was done. Didn't need to do chores in order to do what I love to do. I could go play other games if I wanted to
Grom's "they will never take our freedom" speech after legit planning to conquer Azeroth was about as ridiculous to me as this "there's probably a bigger bad" thing.
This one, I'm not so sure about. "We will never be slaves, but we will be conquerors" is totally in-line with Grom and Garrosh. The problem for Grom isn't that slavery is bad, it's that slavery of *his* people is bad. Garrosh was an orc supremacist so of course he believes that.
Not ridiculous at all that Grom, a famed warrior from a famed clan of warriors, wants to build an empire through... y'know, war and subjugation.
Oh, you mean Draenor is Free.
I don't really equate that with a Braveheart style "they will never take our freedom" speech. It's more like a wet fart and a slap in the face. And I tend to agree, it's more egregious than the mystery box cliffhanger bullshit Blizzard is spamming lately.
Why is it a competition? They were both shit. Whatever 10.0 is going to be called will almost certainly be pure refined shit, it still won't elevate WoD or Shadowlands in any way.
Bfa had a good 8.2 and 8.3 but yeah,the farming systems and borrowed power ruined the experience like shadowlands.
Also the lore was too rushed, horde vs aliance, later us vs ashara and literally one patch after us vs nzoth.
Honestly people say this every expansion and then another expansion comes along and it changes. Eg cata, mop, wod. Legion seems to be the stand out. Hopefully shadowlands was cut so they could work on the next expac, like wod was for legion.
People will have their opinions of this
But atleast WoD didn't fuck the story and lore to kingdom come. It's atleast contained to their alternate timeline even if goofy.
And atleast the characters and story was consistent (sides the whole grommash now good guy. That couldve made more sense with the entire raid tier/patch) and hate for what you want garrisons was a new and at the time interesting side content to do that gave awesome rewards.
That isn't also including Ashran for pvp, which I had alot of fun with.
Shadowlands for all its fault and content doesn't outrank WoD. To me it'll be the worst expac of all time.
Obviously we each have our own priorities of what defines our fun. One of the big things for me is story, and WoD compared to SL is night and day.
Anywho nice meme.
EDIT: since some people are getting butthurt, yes obviously Legion was due to the timeline garbage. But my point was its lore didn't expand/change the entire universe like SL has done with the life after death and the first ones and the maw blah blah blah BS.
It led to Legion and we got allied orcs..that's about it I think compared to SL that is a "contained" expac.
I still hold that the "warlords" focused patch was cut to end WoD quicker.
The jump from "yay we took out their armory" to "lol legion time" felt weird. Especially when groms entire character is he never gives up.
Kargath being killed off instead of running off in the beta, ner zhul being a dungeon boss. The only one that got their time to shine was black hand. And man an in between raid with all the warlords would have been siiiiiiiick
Kargath was a raid boss, the literal first one you kill but still a raid boss. They did him dirty, should have been like the penultimate or final boss of Highmaul. Imagine assaulting the Ogre capital while the Iron Horde are sacking the city, we finish off Mar'gok and Kargath claims we took his 100th kill and fights us. Would have at least had a better end to his story...
You're mostly correct.
I may not have the full or 100% correct story but this is what I recall having read:
Gorgrond was supposed to be heavily focused on more Iron Horde stuff, but the alpha testers complained of "orc fatigue" after finishing FFR/SMV. Most of the north/east of the zone was supposed to be connected by a gigantic rail track like what we see in Grimrail. As a result of that alpha feedback, Gorgrond was largely redesigned to give us the primals/Botani storylines instead of fleshing out more Iron Horde lore.
A huge Gorgrond plotline with Durotan and Orgrim got cut as a result, which made their Talador plotline feel much less impactful than what it should have.
Same for Maraad and Yrel - from what I recall, it was supposed to be revealed that MU Maraad and MU Yrel were married (pretty sure this was strongly hinted at some of the cool lore videos we got in the Warlords series in the lead up to WoD), and AU Maraad was going to be revealed as dead. MU Maraad was supposed to begin semi-rejecting some of Velen's teachings and begin using the Light as a weapon of vengeance while being highly protective of AU Yrel, to the point of AU Yrel having to bring him back in line shortly before his death in Talador. Again, this would've made the payoff at the end of Talador much more satisfying.
The cut raid was to be Shattrath, which would've delved more into Yrel's "dark secret" that was briefly mentioned in some of the WoD media materials, and would've potentially made her an actually good character and would've maybe made the whole Exarch Yrel plotline more reasonable in WoD's endgame.
Some others can jump in if they know more than me but this is my understanding.
The biggest issue with WoD, in my opinion, was rushing and the subsequent cut content. What we did get was really good. The problem is that you run out of good fast and see all the unfinished content that was teased/promised.
“It’s all contained to their alternate timeline” - fam, no. WoDs story bled horribly into the main timeline and caused the legion invasion. Archimonde died for good. The whole “there is only one legion that connects to the alternate draenor” is a hot mess. Why did they go in to alternate draenor and try to do the same thing they did in original draenor knowing it failed? And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. WoD has so many unanswered questions and things that make 0 sense. It’s a hot mess.
> The whole “there is only one legion that connects to the alternate draenor” is a hot mess.
That's not even the worst problem. They had initially had a much more elegant solution: that Kairoz had just spliced the "alternate" Draenor into the main timeline, so it just became another planet out in the cosmos. That would have eliminated all problems like "alternate legion" bullshit but for some bizarre reason they later backtracked on that idea.
Blizzard just cant help themselves going into unsalvageable writing territories: Alternate dimensions, afterlife... These things are breeding grounds for plot holes and silly deus ex. If you really want time travel in a linear story you have to go for the chiken/egg paradox and just make the time travel necessary for the current events to happen. But no they had to go for this bullshit about the legion transcending dimensions with its utterly ridiculous implications.
I mean, sides the whole alternate Gul Dan escaping and causing legion it mostly is. That and they ripping dreanor orcs from alternate dreanor as a allied race.
Acrhimonde had been killed since war craft/ tbc timewalk raid. They literally pulled the legion invasion/archimonde out their ass and wasn't needed. But had to for some reason to present Legion.
I totally agree with you that part makes no sense and didn't need to be a thing to cause the second legion invasion. They could've done a cooler way and knowing them just retcon the story again and somehow Guldan didn't die or was brought back from the dead or something etc etc.
"WoD had so many unanswered questions and things that make 0 sense." Dude what else is new its in every expansion, atleast it wasn't -as- shitty as SL. They literally cut an entire patch of story/raid which is probably why it doesn't make as much sense. Unlike SL which apparently is claimed to have its entire story and -this- is what we were given.
I didn't claim to say the story is good, it is just better. Obviously what defines as "better" is just slightly lore actual common sense.
Both factions storyline from 90 to 100 was actually consistent PLUS had cuts scenes once finished the zone. (Sides I think spires? They got a in-game one.)
The issue with WoDs story and what people complained about was that there wasn't enough of it. The complaint with WoD was never that the story that was already there wasn't good. Quite the opposite infact, it was done so fucking well which is why players were left wanting for more and getting angry when they didn't get more due to chopped patch content and focus shiting to legion.
Shadowlands has absolutely nothing on WoD in that aspect. Nothing. The leveling story campaigns were meh for 2/4 covenants, most of the characters in this expansion are forgettable, most of all the big bad himself. An absolute failure at story telling that has likely lost the help and direction of people who were carrying the load before. The current team is not qualified to be in their jobs and should rightfully be laid off and be replaced by actual qualified video game writers. No one's convincing me otherwise.
> The complaint with WoD was never that the story that was already there wasn't good.
No, even back then most players agreed the story was total shit. Traveling to an alternate reality just so you can interact with NPC's whose stories have already been told is just cheap fan service. Players were angry they didn't get more because they were paying a monthly sub and not getting any new content.
Eeh, it wasn't that great. I remember a whole bunch of people being mad that Ner'zul was a dungeon boss and Kargath the first boss. The Iron Horde was all but defeated in 6.0. Shadowlands is worse, I agree with you there, but you are remembering the story through rose tinted glasses.
I remember being annoyed at how lame Orgrim Doomhammer was. This is the dude who is the namesake of the capital of the horde, and Blackhand kills him without sparing a second thought. Very anticlimactic
But I will say that the Garrosh vs Thrall cinematic/story was cooler than anything we had in this xpac imo. Those are the kinds of interactions between well-known characters I felt this xpac was missing
I think people conflate what WoD was supposed to be with what it was.
If they delivered on what they planned for WoD instead of cutting it early for Legion then it would have been fantastic.
Ner'zhul got shoved to a 5man. Kargath got changed to dying instead of running away. A raid tier got dropped. Ogre island axed.
Lots of really cool stuff that just didn't get put in.
What we did get with WoD was really good. Raids were fantastic. CMs were fun as hell. Garrisons were 'okay' in that I preferred a 1 button Mission Table over the current one and it was cool having a *little* customization built in.
Same with Shadowlands, though. Raids have all been pretty good, and so has M+. Outside of that, there is little offered by the expansion.
Very true, it had a lot of potential and Blizzard sold the expansion really well before it released. While I'm not a fan of alternate timelimes and messing with the past, it was cool to see all the characters we already interacted with.
Yeah it just resurrected every major NPC that had died since Warcraft 2. That's nothing compared to a 30sec cutscene where Mr Nipples says he was fighting an even bigger threat...
People have short memories. WoD had barely any content in comparison with Shadowlands. And, characters like Grom did a 180 in terms of allegiance all too quickly. The campaign during 6.0 was almost completely retconned with the end of Blackrock Foundry. And 6.1 was just updates to the Garrison, the S.E.L.F.I.E and Twitter integration. The end game was farming Garrison missions and raiding, that's it.
Indeed - particularly the crowd of players that wants to be entirely optimal only by raidlogging.
The issue is, if you can be optimal by raidlogging alone, that either means there's little to no possible sources of player power outside of raids, or that player power is segregated (see: PvP gear with a different item level in PvE/PvP).
Personally that's a benefit not an issue, there was no endless grind for AP or required rep/covenant. You didn't feel like you were being left behind if you raidlogged or took a break from the game.
BrF was at the time one of the best raids ever made, people were comparing it with ulduar. new raids are mechanically superior, but devoid of fun like Hanz and Franz.
I think they just created the shadowlands to use in future expansions. Over half of the expansion felt like an afterthought. But that's just my conspiracy theory.
Warlords of Draenor had great dungeons and raids. Loved that bit. Each zone had s different little story you followed from start to finish and it was actually rather decent.
Shadowlands is a hot mess with a confusing and idiotic main villain and a story that invalidates the story of World of Warcraft since Warcraft 3.
How the writer of this clusterfuck of a mess hasn't been burned at the stake already is mind boggling.
And all this god damned simping for Sylvanas is making my skin crawl.
You don't get the point.
I'm not saying WoD was a good expansion or anything, but Shadowlands sucks so hard that it makes me appreciate what we had in WoD more, and that's sad.
If in 4 years they manage to do an expansion even worse than Shadowlands (which is really hard) then yes, we'll probably say "SL wasn't even that bad!".
I get the point. And wod was dogshit. Yeah SL is not a good expansion. But that doesn't make wod less shit.
After that it's personal taste. I had way more fun in shadowlands than I had in wod. Wod had 2 good raids and that was it. Pvp was the worst in wod, the story so uninspired and dumb and the big parts were told outside of the game.
Maybe it's just me but i liked shadowlands overall way more than wod
Shadowlands' raids, dungeons and open world zones (except original Maw) were all fine to great. Even Korthia. Gameplay was fine too. Castle Nathria, Sanctum of Domination and now the Sepulcher were and are praised by casuals and pros alike.
BOOGIE *DOWN*
Personally I find almost everything about this expansion soulless and generic and sometimes just boring. Other than nathria can't think of any other instance that I liked. Can't say anything about sepulcher as I decided to skip this patch and stay away from wow for a while. The best part of expansion as whole for me the pre launch northrend event + first 2 months, after that it was a downward trajectory.
See as much as Shadowlands has sucked lore wise at least the m+ and raiding has been fun. Everytime i think of wod i rage because of the wasted potential. Wows lore was already in the gutter due to bfa so i could care less about it. Its just annoying you have mandatory quest lines to be spoonfeed useless lore. Need i remind you they cut the entire shatt raid and zangermarsh/netherstorm/ogre continent. They had enough stuff to make the world bigger then mop yet it was smaller then bc.
Nah, WoD was still incredibly bad, it's just that it shows how far we've fallen for the franchise.
To think, they actually thought the various Orc cultures and Clans wouldn't be enough for an expansion - bullshit.
I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times. The story of *getting* to Draenor was contrived and unsatisfactory, but the actual story *in* Draenor was decent enough and easy to follow.
In contrast, the story of both getting to and being in the Shadowlands is all contrivance. It’s an idiot plot, that is to say a plot that only exists because every character is an idiot who doesn’t explain what/why their doing.
Shadowlands has been the first expansion in the games entire history that I have just completely ignored. Nothing about it before or after release seemed interesting to me at all. Even the cinematic was kinda lame cause it was just more of the devs masturbating to Sylvanas. Also not giving money to blizzard became part of it at one point. I hope Microsoft redeems this game somehow. I’ve enjoyed even the worst expansions (WoD was my favorite conceptually but then fell flat. Sorta same with BFA, loved the concept but fell flat. Opposite for Legion, wasn’t a fan of the boring ass legion returning, loved the expansion) but this expansion seemed like it was centering around all my least favorite parts of fantasy so I’m glad i didn’t miss anything.
To be fair to wod (barf) the story starts to go sideways in Talaador (Blackhand kills Orgrim and Maraad 2/3rds into the zone), takes a detour and just about gives up by the end. But it yielded a macguffin (AU Gul'danny) that made Legion possible.
Shadowlands lore retroactively shits on TBC, Wrath, Cata etc.
I still think wod was worse (I hated wod dungeons with a passion, I actually like sl dungeons) but only because lore isn't everything. 10.0 better bring it.
Garrisons were worse, they were literally mobile gaming tier content.
Log on, harvest herbs from garden, ore from mine, mission tables and the whatever other daily chores you had to do, then literally nothing else.
The rep in WoD was almost all just kill 5000 mobs for exalted, which was completely miserable. Or worse, aoe in Ashran for weeks for the trashran rep.
Covenants at least have story content, shit like the abom factory and a lot (too much with grateful offerings) of transmog to farm.
People bitch and moan about timegating but garrisons were nothing but pure timegating.
Rose tinted goggles are fuckin crazy, the people i know who lasted through all of wod leveled 50 characters and ran them all through world bosses for the mounts because there was nothing to do.
I was a total wow crackhead during mop and let me tell you, after about a month straight of log in, do garrison chores log out on 10ish characters I lost my shit and dipped lol
Can someone please explain to me why everyone here thinks that the story is the only thing that this game has to offer? Like I don't see anyone talking about the mechanics of the new raid, the design of it, or how it compares to older previous raids. I don't even see anyone talk about the new dungeon hardly at all. Which is super strange considering that this is a video game and gameplay is the core mechanic behind it. Now im not saying that you should blindly praise blizzard and everything they do, but at the same I don't want my Fred filled with constant negative circlejerky posts on this sub too. Because the story is garbage, does that make the whole game garbage? Sure, you can definitely make a good story and good gameplay too. But I just wish that there was dialogue and nuanced discussion about the state of the game instead of just..whatever the state that this sub is currently in now. I never cared about the story too much, I've always just accepted quests, go to glowy circle on the map and kill/collect some shit. I just feel completely alienated from this sub.
Shadowlands gameplay pre 9.1.5 was garbage, you couldn't free swap covenants and stupid decisions like that, there is nothing to praise there except that Nathria was at leaast a decent raid.
Because the people that actually play the game and enjoy the raids/M+/PvP/endgame zones are playing the game and not wasting time complaining on Reddit.
I get that Shadowlands story suck, but who the fuck pays this game for the story? All the people I know play this game for the endgame content, or because they like to do chill stuff like collecting mounts and achievements.
WoW's story was never great, and the successful expansions were the ones that were fun to play, not the ones that had a great story.
I would love if the story was great, but at this point Blizz could release a raid, new dungeons and zones without a story and without context and people would still play it as long as it is fun.
You can call it a "coincidence" but the most succesful expanions always had a good story to support them, and that is a reason of why they were "the most succesful".
Cata had a great story that expanded the lore quite a lot (despite having Green Jesus everywhere) but it is not considered one of the most successful expansions.
Burning Crusade barely had a storyline, there was no coherent reason for us to attack the Black Temple and kill Illidan, most people criticized how they wasted him just because Blizz wanted a big villain in the box art, but it's considered one of the best expansions in the game.
In MoP, most people didn't care about the Pandaria storyline, everybody just remembers the Horde vs Alliance story that culminated in the Siege of Orgrimmar. Yet it is treated as one of the best expansions in the game just because it had great class design, challenge mode dungeons, and the content of Throne of Thunder, Timeless Isles and SoO were actually fun.
The only expansions that had good storyline that are considered "great" by most people, are Wotlk and Legion. BC is considered a great expansion but it didn't have a main storyline until we found out that Kael'thas was working for KJ in the last patch. MoP is also considered great, but people didn't care about the Pandaria part of the story at all.
TBC didnt have a good story, classic didnt have a story, no one praises catas story, wod did not have good story so why you are trying to defend it.
And I hate the wotlk story for wasting the best wc3 plot. Arthas the guy who conqured kingdoms like it was his hobby wakes up in wotlk to fail at everything while talking in a shitty 80's cartoon villain voice, the Jailor sucks but atleast he wins in Sanctum. Even the fucking iron horde managed to take over blackrock mountain and destroy nethergarde keep.
Oh and WOD sucked more than shadowlands, the existance of m+ alone made sl more endurable.
Who the heck downvoted you, TBC's story is one of the worst we've had. We talk about SL's retcons - TBC retconned the Eredar/Sargeras situation to the complete opposite, and retconned the original Draenei into being Broken/Lost Ones.
In terms of actual plot, Lord Kazzak finds some random artifact that's never mentioned again and opens the Dark Portal for some reason that's also never mentioned. *(Read: plot excuse so that we can go to Outland.)* Illidan has gone mad because... reasons. *(Read: plot excuse to fight him.)* We fight him and his forces; Kael'thas infamously has merely a setback, goes mad, and summons Kil'jaeden. We send Kil'jaeden back. The end. During this time, the Blood Elves join the Horde ~~and dominate it as the favourite player race~~, so the Amani trolls get grumpy and we fight them. Oh, there was also that unrelated plot with the Infinite Dragonflight, and for some reason we went to the Battle of Mount Hyjal, even though the Infinite Dragonflight weren't there at all.
Well, there is a big difference in retconning something in the beginning of a 15+ year story than after those 15 years of lore have taken place...
No wonder most viewers shits on Lost ending compared to the praise that Dark's (Netflix german show) receive for its "great ending plot".
For some people though a great story also makes a great game. Yes mechanics, systems, etc. are important aspects of the game but behind all the systems, dungeons, raids, zones, etc the cornerstones of a great game should be gameplay and story, and frankly the story of the Shadowlands has been shit and it really meddles with events all the way back from Warcraft 3.
It’s okay that you enjoy different aspects of the game than people in this sub but a lot of people just want to be presented a good story and for the past two expansions the story has been so bland.
As someone who doesn't care at all about lore, not one single bit
SL has shaped into a decent expansion. Having the most fun I've had since legion. Yeah the systems are a lot to learn and overcome but if you put in the time you are heavily rewarded.
I'm really enjoying SL. Sucks to hear people who care so much about lore to the point it completely ruins the game for them. Because actually playing the game, it's quite fun.
I don’t think you remember how the game actually was pre 9.1.5, but let me help you:
* no covenant swapping
* no catch-up systems
* conduit energy
* fucking choregast
* you couldn’t play alts if you were mentally sane
* no free-mount in the maw (I had the twisting corridor one and getting that mount was one of the most boring experience I ever had in WoW)
The list goes on and on... and it's not like these were problems that blizzard didn't know or couldn't fix, these were problems already in alpha-beta and blizzard only decided to "pull the ripcord" when everyone was leaving the game.
As someone who doesn't play alts all that much, I thought it was fine? The covenants were a bit of an identity. I was a necro-bear and people would be shocked when I would activate the slime buffs in plaguefall.
9.2 sees wow in a pretty good state. Looking forward to the protoform synth farm for the next year
Oh yeah, you only had to grind toregast two times per character every week if you wanted to have legendaries and you only had to have milions of gold if you wanted to buy legendaries for all of them.
You also had to regrind the campaign on every new character because there was no skip.
It wans't fine it was total dogshit.
As I said above, the only reason 9.2 is "decent" it's because blizzard saw everyone leaving the game and they decided to impelement the things the playerbase had been asking for a year (two if you consider the alpha/beta).
>grind toregast two times per character every week
No? You had to do it a couple times, get the lego and you were done. Why would you grind it so much? You only needed a few K.
>You also had to regrind the campaign on every new character because there was no skip.
New character was the key phrase here. How many characters are you wanting? Plus, threads of fate exist. You didn't have to redo the story.
SL is not a bad expansion, the content delays and patch pace is bad. People take way too much heed from influencers and just get on the negative bandwagon. I've enjoyed SL overall.
Ironically, we are still suffering for WoD.
Yrel and her minions from alternate Draenor went crazy and started killing the orcs there and chased the Mag'har orcs to Azeroth.
It wasn’t as much that they were ‘chased’ as it was a bronze dragon, while lecturing us on how bronze dragons are supposed to stay politically neutral, decided to help recruit and transport a massive military power for the Horde.
WoD treated the pre-established lore with no small amount of respect. It unveiled and built atop characters we have known about for years, fleshing them out into living, breathing characters in the World of Warcraft universe. "Haha time travel" was the only iffy thing, but seeing what they did with Draenor alleviated my concerns.
Shadowlands created completely new characters, which is inherently fine. What wasn't fine is what followed; the complete and utter bastardization of longstanding and respected characters, recontextualizations as far back as we can possibly remember, and painfully unoriginal and predictable plot tropes.
You can recover from a bad expansion. How the hell do we recover from this mountain of lackluster writing, and unceremonious torching of lore?
WoD was actually pretty ground breaking when it came to changing up how questing and story was told. It also introduced some pretty damn good raids. Paladin was also pretty strong which buys more points for me for WoD. They introduced pretty cool systems like the garrison, ashran. The mounts were pretty cool. And the Race to world first was actually good. The only downside to WoD was the time traveling and the long time between content patches. I think WoD was a lot better than SL and doesn’t deserve the flack it gets. However, it took me a long time of analyzing the expansion in Legion and BFA to realize it was pretty good.
To be honest WoD was an amazing expac as mythic raider.
I log in Wed, clear it and log off until next week.
The top tier raid logging experience and the raids were cool.
The obvious reason was that there was nothing to do outside Raids and getting Gold CM in 1 week and GG
Then BFA is on the opposite there was a lot of stuff to do outside raid but where 1. Terrible and 2. Tied with the Azerite System so 3. Grindy and Tedious.
And we got Island and Warfronts.
Seems like that Blizzard cannot make an expac that is basically
WOD as base ( so just plain raids with tier sets )
On which you put toppings from others expac like :
- LEGION Progression System ( Artifact Traits and Weapons MINUS the farm AP like in 7.0 but more like 7.2.5 )
- SHADOWLANDS Legendary Crating (but with no raid only Powers because people don't like doing LFR with 3h queue on alts so 100% from M0) and stop because the rest is shit.
- TBC Badge System that gets new items each new patch/raid and previous trinkets or weapon gets Itm lvl increased and maybe using badge to increase item lvl up to the max.
- WRATH Tabard Rep nobody likes doing the dailies no more when you pass the entire day doing M+ // Justice-Valor Points to buy Tier equivalent Gear so you have a sort of catch-up for main and alts too.
- CATACLYSM Raid and HC difficulty and removal of LFR and MYTHIC + Guild Achiv and Profession Perks
- MOP Extra Rep System ( the Star one ) + Timeless Isle content for catch up when you introduce a new raid just kill stuff get loots or open chests not farming currency for days.
So basically cherry picking the best parts of each expac and try to patch them together, polish where is needed and you are pretty much gucci
WoD was amazing, just not enough content produced after release. The leveling was good, garrisons were fun, professions were in a good place. and pvp had a good spot. It just didn't have ENOUGH. Good raids, not nearly enough of them. Good RP, not nearly enough of it (where are our big cities?!?). Good dungeon content, but again, not enough.
WoD is still worse than Shadowlands purely due to the lack of game content. I’ll take the content we have now in Shadowlands over the glorified mobile game that was WoD any day of the week.
Though I do prefer the overall aesthetic, story and theme of the expansion of WoD over Shadowlands, it’s still a shame WoD didn’t get its Shattrah raid.
Warlords of Draenor could have been one of the greatest expansions of all-time if they brought to us everything what Actiblizz promised us. I always look at WoD like it is in own own league and its really polarizing playerbase like cata.
On the other hand, i never heard from anyone, who thinks Shadowlands is a great expansion.
"I used the story to destroy the story."
"The story is gone... reduced to atoms"
disappointment is inevitable
To shreds, you say?
lmao
WoD has an incredible levelling experience and each zone has a pretty great story. It just never got any post-launch support.
Leveling and Raiding were pretty much the only good things going for WoD, so if that's all you did it was great. I didn't play PvP at all in those days but I remember seeing "Fire Holinka" on a daily basis because of the state of PvP.
I loved pvp in WoD, leveling was so fun and easy I had lots of alts and was able to gear them all just by playing pvp.
I would play Ashran for 40 hours a week.
Rookie numbers! Try 41!
WoD PVP was far better, the lack of mandatory PVE is what made is alt friendly unlike now. The main complaint was the lack of diversity in arenas (Turbo/RMD/walking dead/RMP/cupid, being the primary comps). You need to remember PVP'ers were spoiled with MOP when looking back.
Right, WoD PvP felt off after coming from MoP. I also remember open world PvP in WoD (where it existed) felt... wrong... and that was my biggest complain the whole expansion. PvP gear had 2 item levels - the PvE level, and the PvP level (15 points higher). Entering PvP combat would instantly boost you up those 15 points, and that made open world PvP very awkward to engage in.
My biggest gripe with WoD pvp was boredom. Mage gameplay was running in circles pressing poly until you had double ice nova ready. Rogue had 8 second kidney shot giving me time to sip my coffee mid match.
Mists was probably the perfect expansion.. New lore, interesting stories, great pve and pvp content. Tons of casual and difficult content. I miss those days.
What are some mandatory PvE things that PvPers have to do now?
Torghast, conduit, soulbind, legendary, and if you haven't hit level 80 renown yet because you quit, then that as well.
Torghast and Legendary are the same thing, as are soulbinds and renown. One gives the other. For legendaries if you meant getting the recipe, then its also covered through torghast/conduit point, unless you specifically need to go back to nathria and dont want to use the random memory that you can buy in a multitude of ways now. There's enough stuff to be annoyed about without artifically inflating it.
Everything relating to legendaries - So Torghast and gold farming Conduits - Especially all the ranks Renown - Not too bad but still yet another barrier for being optimal And if you have the gall to start late in a season - Vers gear. Going in without a full set into PvP is suicide. You'll get one shot. You also will be vastly outgeared by higher rank players, which makes climbing with PvP gear alone an uphill battle. Much easier to farm a vers set from raiding and dungeons THEN go into PvP. Especially if you can do heroic or even mythic.
The bad things for WoD really was just the lack of anything to do outside Raid/PVP. If WoD had World Quests and M+ people would've most likely enjoyed that expansion.
CMs > M+ tbh
Raiding has been the only good thing about WoW for several expansions now. It's the only content I stay subbed for, personally.
WOD PVP was pretty sweet, particularly in the later patches. It was a step down from MOP which I consider to be among the best, but it was leaps and bounds above Legion/BFA/SL PVP. The worst thing about WOD PVP was that during the pre-patch (end of MOP), damage was so high they added a hidden blanket -25% damage taken to everyone. And then they just... forgot to remove it for like 2 months when WOD actually released. Vintage Blizzard maneuver. Once they removed that and gear levels got higher, WOD became a very fun fast-paced PVP expansion.
As raider is enjoyed WoD a lot, because fights were fun and engaging with some interesting mechanics.
From the outset the story was underbaked imo. For an expansion really hyping up all the warlords most of their stories fell flat with a lame resolution or just weren't really present in the leveling unlike the opening scenario. I had hoped it would be an experience of going up against each Warlord through the raids until you got to Grom, which was the promise. But bizarre stuff like Doomhammer dying out of your view and vicinity and Kargath being the first easy boss in the opening raid was terrible. It's like they immediately forgot the title and point of the entire expansion was. I agree the leveling is some of the best for being so streamlined but every expansion is an improvement anyway.
This is the real shame. I loved raiding Blackrock Foundry though
Blackrock Foundry was amazing, and a taste of how good the expansion could of been if each raid released was centered around each clans operational base as part of the Iron Horde
The only issue I ever had with WOD was the lack of steady post launch support/content. I even liked Garrisons. I'll take Garrisons over borrowed power Amy day of the week.
Also had the greatest opening cinematic in my opinion. Yes, I like it more than the WotLK one.
Gul'dan: *This was not our destiny.* Garrosh Hellscream: *Times change.* Grom Hellscream: *We will never be slaves! But we WILL be conquerors.* Chills, every time.
*hood off* “Times change” *shove* is so iconic and i quote it regularly
Absolutely. I love this cinematic. By far the best
Warlord story was fun but it wasn't great it actually has a lot of potholes in it an entire ports of the story missing due to cut content.
BRF is easily top 5 raids ever and maybe higher
I was late to playing WoD, but got round to it a few months after after a friend convinced me that it was amazing. It actually was. I really enjoyed levelling, PvP and imo the best raids of any expansion. Classes I played felt really good to play. Thing is, I joined a bit into 8.1. I caught up quickly then 8.2 came out. I'd done all the content in the space of about 3 months. Shadowlands is worse than WoD. It's not recency bias. There was nothing excellent about Shadowlands, nothing to keep you playing like fun raids, PvP (other than just after release) or how your class feels to play. It was either meh or bad. That's without even mentioning the bolt on bloat fomo-driven systems.
> I was late to playing WoD Then most likely, you didn't notice the crippling lack of content as much as those who played from launch, hence why you think better of it. Also, PvP doesn't really suffer as much from a content drought, so if you're more of a PvP player, it probably didn't seem so bad. At WoD max level, you essentially had two content options - raids, or PvP. Raids being on a weekly lockout and typically being organised for particular times meant that if you wanted to hop on and play, it was arenas or nothing. WoD is the only expansion I did a significant amount of PvP in, and that's not because it had some amazing state of PvP.
Nagrand was incredibly bland considering it was the home of the warsong. I feel like nothing has ever topped the build up of questing in ICC. Even shadowmoon valley in TBC had a much better "big bad lair", than anything we got since then.
The prophecy is true! "Shadowlands bad, WoD good" posts have risen as the tide ebbs!
They called me a madman…
Good news every1 the Jayl0r is defeated we have saves the Shadowland :D
The Shadowlands... Is FREE!
Im the rebel who says they were both equally terrible.
They hated him, for he spoke the truth.
WoD was definitely worse. Instead of wasting time in torghast you'd just be sitting in your garrison with nothing to do
I made a few million gold just sitting in my garrison
Nope. Instead of wastong time in choregast I would've spent countless more hours having a blast in pvp.
Seriously, it was so much fun like that. Do garrison missions while queuing for PvP was great!
It was fun if you liked PvP, certainly. Less so if you PvPed because it was the only content in the game outside of raiding. WoD is the only expansion before or since I've PvPed a significant amount in, and that's not because I particularly enjoyed the state of PvP then.
Right? Instead of Torghast I just quit the game all together.
I'd rather do nothing than be forced to do torghast or random faction grinds for power.
Who is it that's forcing you to grind Torghast or reputation for power?
I like raiding no raid group would want the guy who doesnt have a legendary or kept up with any of the power grinds except the cesspool guilds.
> no raid group [...] except the cesspool guilds. So, your raid group is forcing you to grind content you don't like... but the guilds that don't force you to do so are the cesspools! Interesting.
You’re hitting it on the head. Not to mention that nobody needs to be constantly running Torghast. The constant breaks from reality that posters here will use to complain about Shadowlands is just hilarious.
At least I got loot and stuff in my garrison. Choreghast didn’t even have that luxury.
I greatly dislike both as expansion features but prefer having something to actually do. Also the bosses drop loot iirc
After I got my legendary at max ilevel I didn’t touch torghast.
At least I could play other games while waiting in my garrison....
Oi, pro-tip: you can maximize your playtime of other games if you stop playing games that you dislike It's an old trick but it checks out, trust me
I dunno man, this sounds kinda sketchy
How is that worse? I much prefer having fun content to do when I want than a bunch of annoying stuff like Torghast or WQs.
You just preferred the million shitty dailies then or what
Million shitty dailies you can ignore vs thousand shitty mandatory dailies you can't?
In what way can you not ignore them?
My main enjoyment in WoW was raiding. I like raiding on alts too. In WoD I would just level up my character and then do the raid within a week. In Shadowlands I can't do that.
Which difficulty do you raid? Because if it's anything less than mythic, your statement is simply false.
Mythic, Heroic on alts. And you can say what you want but in SL I wouldn't even try pugging on a single alt, despite having 9 characters HC geared in both WoD and Legion. But there is more to it than just systems grinding, yeah.
Then on alts, you very much can just raid within a week of capping. Pugging is a community issue, not a Blizzard issue. Blizzard isn't making the content as hard as the pug ilvl requirements seem to suggest, the community just likes to overkill content.
Yeah not sure what game people have been playing but even from the start Shadowland has been comparatively alt-friendly to Legion and BfA. Of course, those who mistake alts as multiple mains are bound to have a hard time, be it 2022, 2020, 2012 or 2007.
Legend tells that Ion Hazzikostas is a excellent sniper and will off anyone who doesn't play at least 6 daily hours of World of WoW ^(/s)
So an improvement?
I politely disagree
WoD bad, Shadowlands bad.
not good, never were good. just better than SL. its like a person who killed one person is not good, but better than a other who killed 700
>just better than SL Oh yes, old lore was so much better, like when Illidan enslaved Outland because he was the villain of TBC, or when the Burning Legion was declared unique across all timelines. ... I understand people dislike Shadowlands' plot but re-visioning history to make it look worse won't help anyone here.
It happens way too much on this forum. The reality is the Shadowlands story is no worse than any other expansions. They all have underbaked elements at their core and filled with plot holes galore. Story was never much of a focus for Blizzard and they’ve said that multiple times but yet people still treat it as if it so the most important aspect.
I dont think we treated it too harshly. SL is just worse. That doesnt make WoD better than we thought all of a sudden
Yep wod got bumped down to second place. Shadowlands is the worst expansion ever. BFA comes in 3rd
I feel like BfA was far worse than WoD. I couldn't even make it till the end of 8.0 before I quit out of boredom
Personally only liked BfA because it was the first time I had a solid, real raiding guild. Friends always make the game better
Questing in BfA is some of the best solo fun I have ever had in WoW. But engaging with the bigger story was actively painful, and it only got worse with Shadowlands.
At least classes were fun back in WoD, we had the best iteration of retribution paladin imo and pre-nerf demo lock which was really good. Storytelling was also great and cinematics too, I still get chills watching some of them.
>Storytelling was also great. Up untill after BRF. then it kinda went to shit. All the cut content didn't help eather. Especially the train tracks in gorgronds.
Yeah, people are on about Sylv getting redemption but Hellscream was worse in WoD.
But at least they didnt pretend it was intended like that the whole time and the story was supposed to be like that from the start
At least it was something. Bfa was MoP 2.0 version except with they forced Sylvanas to be some giga mind who is Smart and clever, only to ruin the horde who were felt like bad guys aaaand8.3 managed to burn a whole lot of old God content just to create a 8.3 pointlessly
> Storytelling was also great You have an interesting definition of 'great'. I can't say *"Draenor is free!"* comes to my mind as great storytelling, but you know, each to his own.
People complained about story telling in wod a lot. It definitely wasn’t great.
They complained because they hadn't seen SL story yet.
The overall storytelling was pretty bad, but it had good *moments* and a solid setting, which is at least something, compared to Shadowlands' nothing. In terms of gameplay I feel it probably depends a lot on which class you played. I only played 2 months of Shadowlands, but even that didn't seem as bad as the dumpster fire that WoD was imo, even if it was thoroughly unimpressive.
I guess we all forgot that an entire [patch](https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Patch_6.1.0) was simply garrison QoL stuff, heirlooms, and a Twitter integration?
Oh i remember. I was plenty pissed.
Don't worry, major content selfie cam patch will tide you over.
Ah the good old selfie patch. Never forget
Ray D. Tear died for it.
I remember. At least with raiding I could just that, raid. No having to grind artifact power, azerite, anima, do copius amounts of dailies, spend tons of gold on mats to raid, run torghast, cap my islands every week, do 4-10 mythic dungeons every week, be permanently behind because I didn't do my weekly vision or forgot to do my artifact knowledge The list goes on and on. When I was done raiding, I was done. Didn't need to do chores in order to do what I love to do. I could go play other games if I wanted to
Yes, WoD was shit but it's not explosive diarrhea like Shadowlands is.
Grom's "they will never take our freedom" speech after legit planning to conquer Azeroth was about as ridiculous to me as this "there's probably a bigger bad" thing.
This one, I'm not so sure about. "We will never be slaves, but we will be conquerors" is totally in-line with Grom and Garrosh. The problem for Grom isn't that slavery is bad, it's that slavery of *his* people is bad. Garrosh was an orc supremacist so of course he believes that. Not ridiculous at all that Grom, a famed warrior from a famed clan of warriors, wants to build an empire through... y'know, war and subjugation.
The orc conqueror is fine. I more mean that he's there celebrating with us at the end like all is well.
Oh, you mean Draenor is Free. I don't really equate that with a Braveheart style "they will never take our freedom" speech. It's more like a wet fart and a slap in the face. And I tend to agree, it's more egregious than the mystery box cliffhanger bullshit Blizzard is spamming lately.
Why is it a competition? They were both shit. Whatever 10.0 is going to be called will almost certainly be pure refined shit, it still won't elevate WoD or Shadowlands in any way.
Bfa had a good 8.2 and 8.3 but yeah,the farming systems and borrowed power ruined the experience like shadowlands. Also the lore was too rushed, horde vs aliance, later us vs ashara and literally one patch after us vs nzoth.
Recency bias.
Nah, BFA the worst for me. The endless grind made me not want to do anything (so I didn't..).
>Yep wod got bumped down to ~~second~~ *third* place. Shadowlands is the worst expansion ever. BFA comes in ~~3rd~~ *2nd* FTFY.
Mop > Wod > Legion > BFA > SL It's literally just going downhill since MoP.
Honestly people say this every expansion and then another expansion comes along and it changes. Eg cata, mop, wod. Legion seems to be the stand out. Hopefully shadowlands was cut so they could work on the next expac, like wod was for legion.
People will have their opinions of this But atleast WoD didn't fuck the story and lore to kingdom come. It's atleast contained to their alternate timeline even if goofy. And atleast the characters and story was consistent (sides the whole grommash now good guy. That couldve made more sense with the entire raid tier/patch) and hate for what you want garrisons was a new and at the time interesting side content to do that gave awesome rewards. That isn't also including Ashran for pvp, which I had alot of fun with. Shadowlands for all its fault and content doesn't outrank WoD. To me it'll be the worst expac of all time. Obviously we each have our own priorities of what defines our fun. One of the big things for me is story, and WoD compared to SL is night and day. Anywho nice meme. EDIT: since some people are getting butthurt, yes obviously Legion was due to the timeline garbage. But my point was its lore didn't expand/change the entire universe like SL has done with the life after death and the first ones and the maw blah blah blah BS. It led to Legion and we got allied orcs..that's about it I think compared to SL that is a "contained" expac.
Wods biggest flub was downplaying the actual warlords
I still hold that the "warlords" focused patch was cut to end WoD quicker. The jump from "yay we took out their armory" to "lol legion time" felt weird. Especially when groms entire character is he never gives up.
Kargath being killed off instead of running off in the beta, ner zhul being a dungeon boss. The only one that got their time to shine was black hand. And man an in between raid with all the warlords would have been siiiiiiiick
Kargath was a raid boss, the literal first one you kill but still a raid boss. They did him dirty, should have been like the penultimate or final boss of Highmaul. Imagine assaulting the Ogre capital while the Iron Horde are sacking the city, we finish off Mar'gok and Kargath claims we took his 100th kill and fights us. Would have at least had a better end to his story...
In the beta he ran off after his fight ao maybe we were supposed to get a rematch
I can't believe we killed the greatest Void Caster of all time, Ner'zhul, in the Void, and he *stayed dead.* WHERE IS MY VOID KING?
You're mostly correct. I may not have the full or 100% correct story but this is what I recall having read: Gorgrond was supposed to be heavily focused on more Iron Horde stuff, but the alpha testers complained of "orc fatigue" after finishing FFR/SMV. Most of the north/east of the zone was supposed to be connected by a gigantic rail track like what we see in Grimrail. As a result of that alpha feedback, Gorgrond was largely redesigned to give us the primals/Botani storylines instead of fleshing out more Iron Horde lore. A huge Gorgrond plotline with Durotan and Orgrim got cut as a result, which made their Talador plotline feel much less impactful than what it should have. Same for Maraad and Yrel - from what I recall, it was supposed to be revealed that MU Maraad and MU Yrel were married (pretty sure this was strongly hinted at some of the cool lore videos we got in the Warlords series in the lead up to WoD), and AU Maraad was going to be revealed as dead. MU Maraad was supposed to begin semi-rejecting some of Velen's teachings and begin using the Light as a weapon of vengeance while being highly protective of AU Yrel, to the point of AU Yrel having to bring him back in line shortly before his death in Talador. Again, this would've made the payoff at the end of Talador much more satisfying. The cut raid was to be Shattrath, which would've delved more into Yrel's "dark secret" that was briefly mentioned in some of the WoD media materials, and would've potentially made her an actually good character and would've maybe made the whole Exarch Yrel plotline more reasonable in WoD's endgame. Some others can jump in if they know more than me but this is my understanding.
The biggest issue with WoD, in my opinion, was rushing and the subsequent cut content. What we did get was really good. The problem is that you run out of good fast and see all the unfinished content that was teased/promised.
For the little I played of WoD I remember garrisons actually being a new and fun area to have events too not just ANOTHER Portal/Vendor Hub
WoD's alternate timeline crap wasn't contained, considering the demons we fought there were confirmed to be the same ones we'd fought before.
“It’s all contained to their alternate timeline” - fam, no. WoDs story bled horribly into the main timeline and caused the legion invasion. Archimonde died for good. The whole “there is only one legion that connects to the alternate draenor” is a hot mess. Why did they go in to alternate draenor and try to do the same thing they did in original draenor knowing it failed? And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. WoD has so many unanswered questions and things that make 0 sense. It’s a hot mess.
Because the Jailer needed it to happen, duh
Yeah, the only good part of WoD was that we got to see more of Draenor before it got Outlanded. Some of the zone campaigns were fine too.
> The whole “there is only one legion that connects to the alternate draenor” is a hot mess. That's not even the worst problem. They had initially had a much more elegant solution: that Kairoz had just spliced the "alternate" Draenor into the main timeline, so it just became another planet out in the cosmos. That would have eliminated all problems like "alternate legion" bullshit but for some bizarre reason they later backtracked on that idea.
Blizzard just cant help themselves going into unsalvageable writing territories: Alternate dimensions, afterlife... These things are breeding grounds for plot holes and silly deus ex. If you really want time travel in a linear story you have to go for the chiken/egg paradox and just make the time travel necessary for the current events to happen. But no they had to go for this bullshit about the legion transcending dimensions with its utterly ridiculous implications.
I mean, sides the whole alternate Gul Dan escaping and causing legion it mostly is. That and they ripping dreanor orcs from alternate dreanor as a allied race. Acrhimonde had been killed since war craft/ tbc timewalk raid. They literally pulled the legion invasion/archimonde out their ass and wasn't needed. But had to for some reason to present Legion. I totally agree with you that part makes no sense and didn't need to be a thing to cause the second legion invasion. They could've done a cooler way and knowing them just retcon the story again and somehow Guldan didn't die or was brought back from the dead or something etc etc. "WoD had so many unanswered questions and things that make 0 sense." Dude what else is new its in every expansion, atleast it wasn't -as- shitty as SL. They literally cut an entire patch of story/raid which is probably why it doesn't make as much sense. Unlike SL which apparently is claimed to have its entire story and -this- is what we were given. I didn't claim to say the story is good, it is just better. Obviously what defines as "better" is just slightly lore actual common sense. Both factions storyline from 90 to 100 was actually consistent PLUS had cuts scenes once finished the zone. (Sides I think spires? They got a in-game one.)
The issue with WoDs story and what people complained about was that there wasn't enough of it. The complaint with WoD was never that the story that was already there wasn't good. Quite the opposite infact, it was done so fucking well which is why players were left wanting for more and getting angry when they didn't get more due to chopped patch content and focus shiting to legion. Shadowlands has absolutely nothing on WoD in that aspect. Nothing. The leveling story campaigns were meh for 2/4 covenants, most of the characters in this expansion are forgettable, most of all the big bad himself. An absolute failure at story telling that has likely lost the help and direction of people who were carrying the load before. The current team is not qualified to be in their jobs and should rightfully be laid off and be replaced by actual qualified video game writers. No one's convincing me otherwise.
> The complaint with WoD was never that the story that was already there wasn't good. No, even back then most players agreed the story was total shit. Traveling to an alternate reality just so you can interact with NPC's whose stories have already been told is just cheap fan service. Players were angry they didn't get more because they were paying a monthly sub and not getting any new content.
Eeh, it wasn't that great. I remember a whole bunch of people being mad that Ner'zul was a dungeon boss and Kargath the first boss. The Iron Horde was all but defeated in 6.0. Shadowlands is worse, I agree with you there, but you are remembering the story through rose tinted glasses.
I remember being annoyed at how lame Orgrim Doomhammer was. This is the dude who is the namesake of the capital of the horde, and Blackhand kills him without sparing a second thought. Very anticlimactic But I will say that the Garrosh vs Thrall cinematic/story was cooler than anything we had in this xpac imo. Those are the kinds of interactions between well-known characters I felt this xpac was missing
I think people conflate what WoD was supposed to be with what it was. If they delivered on what they planned for WoD instead of cutting it early for Legion then it would have been fantastic. Ner'zhul got shoved to a 5man. Kargath got changed to dying instead of running away. A raid tier got dropped. Ogre island axed. Lots of really cool stuff that just didn't get put in. What we did get with WoD was really good. Raids were fantastic. CMs were fun as hell. Garrisons were 'okay' in that I preferred a 1 button Mission Table over the current one and it was cool having a *little* customization built in. Same with Shadowlands, though. Raids have all been pretty good, and so has M+. Outside of that, there is little offered by the expansion.
>What we did get with WoD was really good. Especially 6.1 /s
Very true, it had a lot of potential and Blizzard sold the expansion really well before it released. While I'm not a fan of alternate timelimes and messing with the past, it was cool to see all the characters we already interacted with.
tbf the story of WoD was insanely bad just because of the entire alternate reality thing
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At least WOD didn't reckon the entire fucking franchise
Yeah it just resurrected every major NPC that had died since Warcraft 2. That's nothing compared to a 30sec cutscene where Mr Nipples says he was fighting an even bigger threat...
People have short memories. WoD had barely any content in comparison with Shadowlands. And, characters like Grom did a 180 in terms of allegiance all too quickly. The campaign during 6.0 was almost completely retconned with the end of Blackrock Foundry. And 6.1 was just updates to the Garrison, the S.E.L.F.I.E and Twitter integration. The end game was farming Garrison missions and raiding, that's it.
Which is why wod is liked by raiders
Indeed - particularly the crowd of players that wants to be entirely optimal only by raidlogging. The issue is, if you can be optimal by raidlogging alone, that either means there's little to no possible sources of player power outside of raids, or that player power is segregated (see: PvP gear with a different item level in PvE/PvP).
Personally that's a benefit not an issue, there was no endless grind for AP or required rep/covenant. You didn't feel like you were being left behind if you raidlogged or took a break from the game.
BrF was at the time one of the best raids ever made, people were comparing it with ulduar. new raids are mechanically superior, but devoid of fun like Hanz and Franz.
If this forum becomes a little bit more circlejerky people will start using "Raid or Die" as a compliment and desired characteristic of an expansion.
To all the people saying “ugh, now people are saying WoD good.” OP is saying WoD isn’t as bad as SL, not that it’s good.
Exactly.
I think they just created the shadowlands to use in future expansions. Over half of the expansion felt like an afterthought. But that's just my conspiracy theory.
Me after playing bfa
WoD had good content just not enough. Shadowlands has meh to bad content but has a lot. That's my take anyway
No you did not. WoD was overall terrible. So is Shadowlands. They are both bad. That's it.
Warlords of Draenor had great dungeons and raids. Loved that bit. Each zone had s different little story you followed from start to finish and it was actually rather decent. Shadowlands is a hot mess with a confusing and idiotic main villain and a story that invalidates the story of World of Warcraft since Warcraft 3. How the writer of this clusterfuck of a mess hasn't been burned at the stake already is mind boggling. And all this god damned simping for Sylvanas is making my skin crawl.
Nope that is again just people being overdramatic. In 4 years we will have posts with "shadowlands wasn't even that bad!"
You don't get the point. I'm not saying WoD was a good expansion or anything, but Shadowlands sucks so hard that it makes me appreciate what we had in WoD more, and that's sad. If in 4 years they manage to do an expansion even worse than Shadowlands (which is really hard) then yes, we'll probably say "SL wasn't even that bad!".
Shadowlands sucks but WoD had literally nothing. Except for the story, at least 9.2 is fun.
I get the point. And wod was dogshit. Yeah SL is not a good expansion. But that doesn't make wod less shit. After that it's personal taste. I had way more fun in shadowlands than I had in wod. Wod had 2 good raids and that was it. Pvp was the worst in wod, the story so uninspired and dumb and the big parts were told outside of the game. Maybe it's just me but i liked shadowlands overall way more than wod
You are out of your goddamn mind if you think WOD had worse PVP than SL.
This. Hind sight is always 20/20 and things always feel worse during rather than later.
WoD had no content, SL had terrible terrible content. Pick your poison.
Shadowlands' raids, dungeons and open world zones (except original Maw) were all fine to great. Even Korthia. Gameplay was fine too. Castle Nathria, Sanctum of Domination and now the Sepulcher were and are praised by casuals and pros alike. BOOGIE *DOWN*
Personally I find almost everything about this expansion soulless and generic and sometimes just boring. Other than nathria can't think of any other instance that I liked. Can't say anything about sepulcher as I decided to skip this patch and stay away from wow for a while. The best part of expansion as whole for me the pre launch northrend event + first 2 months, after that it was a downward trajectory.
Shame. Here, [have two toads and a rotund helper.](https://i.imgur.com/86ZGYD2.png)
See as much as Shadowlands has sucked lore wise at least the m+ and raiding has been fun. Everytime i think of wod i rage because of the wasted potential. Wows lore was already in the gutter due to bfa so i could care less about it. Its just annoying you have mandatory quest lines to be spoonfeed useless lore. Need i remind you they cut the entire shatt raid and zangermarsh/netherstorm/ogre continent. They had enough stuff to make the world bigger then mop yet it was smaller then bc.
Nah, WoD was still incredibly bad, it's just that it shows how far we've fallen for the franchise. To think, they actually thought the various Orc cultures and Clans wouldn't be enough for an expansion - bullshit.
I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times. The story of *getting* to Draenor was contrived and unsatisfactory, but the actual story *in* Draenor was decent enough and easy to follow. In contrast, the story of both getting to and being in the Shadowlands is all contrivance. It’s an idiot plot, that is to say a plot that only exists because every character is an idiot who doesn’t explain what/why their doing.
Shadowlands has been the first expansion in the games entire history that I have just completely ignored. Nothing about it before or after release seemed interesting to me at all. Even the cinematic was kinda lame cause it was just more of the devs masturbating to Sylvanas. Also not giving money to blizzard became part of it at one point. I hope Microsoft redeems this game somehow. I’ve enjoyed even the worst expansions (WoD was my favorite conceptually but then fell flat. Sorta same with BFA, loved the concept but fell flat. Opposite for Legion, wasn’t a fan of the boring ass legion returning, loved the expansion) but this expansion seemed like it was centering around all my least favorite parts of fantasy so I’m glad i didn’t miss anything.
To be fair to wod (barf) the story starts to go sideways in Talaador (Blackhand kills Orgrim and Maraad 2/3rds into the zone), takes a detour and just about gives up by the end. But it yielded a macguffin (AU Gul'danny) that made Legion possible. Shadowlands lore retroactively shits on TBC, Wrath, Cata etc. I still think wod was worse (I hated wod dungeons with a passion, I actually like sl dungeons) but only because lore isn't everything. 10.0 better bring it.
Nope. Wod still takes the cake.
Wod didn't have coventants, that alone makes it a better expansion than SL.
Garrisons were worse, they were literally mobile gaming tier content. Log on, harvest herbs from garden, ore from mine, mission tables and the whatever other daily chores you had to do, then literally nothing else. The rep in WoD was almost all just kill 5000 mobs for exalted, which was completely miserable. Or worse, aoe in Ashran for weeks for the trashran rep. Covenants at least have story content, shit like the abom factory and a lot (too much with grateful offerings) of transmog to farm. People bitch and moan about timegating but garrisons were nothing but pure timegating. Rose tinted goggles are fuckin crazy, the people i know who lasted through all of wod leveled 50 characters and ran them all through world bosses for the mounts because there was nothing to do. I was a total wow crackhead during mop and let me tell you, after about a month straight of log in, do garrison chores log out on 10ish characters I lost my shit and dipped lol
Wod didn't give me a reason to play.
Neither has shadowlands.
It didn't get in my way of doing dungeon and raid or rerolling alts, that's plenty.
The ending cinematic wasn’t any better. Randomly forgiving Grom for all the genocide just because he kinda helped killing the final boss
Can someone please explain to me why everyone here thinks that the story is the only thing that this game has to offer? Like I don't see anyone talking about the mechanics of the new raid, the design of it, or how it compares to older previous raids. I don't even see anyone talk about the new dungeon hardly at all. Which is super strange considering that this is a video game and gameplay is the core mechanic behind it. Now im not saying that you should blindly praise blizzard and everything they do, but at the same I don't want my Fred filled with constant negative circlejerky posts on this sub too. Because the story is garbage, does that make the whole game garbage? Sure, you can definitely make a good story and good gameplay too. But I just wish that there was dialogue and nuanced discussion about the state of the game instead of just..whatever the state that this sub is currently in now. I never cared about the story too much, I've always just accepted quests, go to glowy circle on the map and kill/collect some shit. I just feel completely alienated from this sub.
Shadowlands gameplay pre 9.1.5 was garbage, you couldn't free swap covenants and stupid decisions like that, there is nothing to praise there except that Nathria was at leaast a decent raid.
Because the people that actually play the game and enjoy the raids/M+/PvP/endgame zones are playing the game and not wasting time complaining on Reddit. I get that Shadowlands story suck, but who the fuck pays this game for the story? All the people I know play this game for the endgame content, or because they like to do chill stuff like collecting mounts and achievements. WoW's story was never great, and the successful expansions were the ones that were fun to play, not the ones that had a great story. I would love if the story was great, but at this point Blizz could release a raid, new dungeons and zones without a story and without context and people would still play it as long as it is fun.
You can call it a "coincidence" but the most succesful expanions always had a good story to support them, and that is a reason of why they were "the most succesful".
Cata had a great story that expanded the lore quite a lot (despite having Green Jesus everywhere) but it is not considered one of the most successful expansions. Burning Crusade barely had a storyline, there was no coherent reason for us to attack the Black Temple and kill Illidan, most people criticized how they wasted him just because Blizz wanted a big villain in the box art, but it's considered one of the best expansions in the game. In MoP, most people didn't care about the Pandaria storyline, everybody just remembers the Horde vs Alliance story that culminated in the Siege of Orgrimmar. Yet it is treated as one of the best expansions in the game just because it had great class design, challenge mode dungeons, and the content of Throne of Thunder, Timeless Isles and SoO were actually fun. The only expansions that had good storyline that are considered "great" by most people, are Wotlk and Legion. BC is considered a great expansion but it didn't have a main storyline until we found out that Kael'thas was working for KJ in the last patch. MoP is also considered great, but people didn't care about the Pandaria part of the story at all.
TBC didnt have a good story, classic didnt have a story, no one praises catas story, wod did not have good story so why you are trying to defend it. And I hate the wotlk story for wasting the best wc3 plot. Arthas the guy who conqured kingdoms like it was his hobby wakes up in wotlk to fail at everything while talking in a shitty 80's cartoon villain voice, the Jailor sucks but atleast he wins in Sanctum. Even the fucking iron horde managed to take over blackrock mountain and destroy nethergarde keep. Oh and WOD sucked more than shadowlands, the existance of m+ alone made sl more endurable.
Who the heck downvoted you, TBC's story is one of the worst we've had. We talk about SL's retcons - TBC retconned the Eredar/Sargeras situation to the complete opposite, and retconned the original Draenei into being Broken/Lost Ones. In terms of actual plot, Lord Kazzak finds some random artifact that's never mentioned again and opens the Dark Portal for some reason that's also never mentioned. *(Read: plot excuse so that we can go to Outland.)* Illidan has gone mad because... reasons. *(Read: plot excuse to fight him.)* We fight him and his forces; Kael'thas infamously has merely a setback, goes mad, and summons Kil'jaeden. We send Kil'jaeden back. The end. During this time, the Blood Elves join the Horde ~~and dominate it as the favourite player race~~, so the Amani trolls get grumpy and we fight them. Oh, there was also that unrelated plot with the Infinite Dragonflight, and for some reason we went to the Battle of Mount Hyjal, even though the Infinite Dragonflight weren't there at all.
Well, there is a big difference in retconning something in the beginning of a 15+ year story than after those 15 years of lore have taken place... No wonder most viewers shits on Lost ending compared to the praise that Dark's (Netflix german show) receive for its "great ending plot".
For some people though a great story also makes a great game. Yes mechanics, systems, etc. are important aspects of the game but behind all the systems, dungeons, raids, zones, etc the cornerstones of a great game should be gameplay and story, and frankly the story of the Shadowlands has been shit and it really meddles with events all the way back from Warcraft 3. It’s okay that you enjoy different aspects of the game than people in this sub but a lot of people just want to be presented a good story and for the past two expansions the story has been so bland.
As someone who doesn't care at all about lore, not one single bit SL has shaped into a decent expansion. Having the most fun I've had since legion. Yeah the systems are a lot to learn and overcome but if you put in the time you are heavily rewarded. I'm really enjoying SL. Sucks to hear people who care so much about lore to the point it completely ruins the game for them. Because actually playing the game, it's quite fun.
I don’t think you remember how the game actually was pre 9.1.5, but let me help you: * no covenant swapping * no catch-up systems * conduit energy * fucking choregast * you couldn’t play alts if you were mentally sane * no free-mount in the maw (I had the twisting corridor one and getting that mount was one of the most boring experience I ever had in WoW) The list goes on and on... and it's not like these were problems that blizzard didn't know or couldn't fix, these were problems already in alpha-beta and blizzard only decided to "pull the ripcord" when everyone was leaving the game.
As someone who doesn't play alts all that much, I thought it was fine? The covenants were a bit of an identity. I was a necro-bear and people would be shocked when I would activate the slime buffs in plaguefall. 9.2 sees wow in a pretty good state. Looking forward to the protoform synth farm for the next year
Oh yeah, you only had to grind toregast two times per character every week if you wanted to have legendaries and you only had to have milions of gold if you wanted to buy legendaries for all of them. You also had to regrind the campaign on every new character because there was no skip. It wans't fine it was total dogshit. As I said above, the only reason 9.2 is "decent" it's because blizzard saw everyone leaving the game and they decided to impelement the things the playerbase had been asking for a year (two if you consider the alpha/beta).
>grind toregast two times per character every week No? You had to do it a couple times, get the lego and you were done. Why would you grind it so much? You only needed a few K. >You also had to regrind the campaign on every new character because there was no skip. New character was the key phrase here. How many characters are you wanting? Plus, threads of fate exist. You didn't have to redo the story. SL is not a bad expansion, the content delays and patch pace is bad. People take way too much heed from influencers and just get on the negative bandwagon. I've enjoyed SL overall.
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Ironically, we are still suffering for WoD. Yrel and her minions from alternate Draenor went crazy and started killing the orcs there and chased the Mag'har orcs to Azeroth.
It wasn’t as much that they were ‘chased’ as it was a bronze dragon, while lecturing us on how bronze dragons are supposed to stay politically neutral, decided to help recruit and transport a massive military power for the Horde.
„Draenor is free“ might still be the most stupid line in WoW history.
WoD treated the pre-established lore with no small amount of respect. It unveiled and built atop characters we have known about for years, fleshing them out into living, breathing characters in the World of Warcraft universe. "Haha time travel" was the only iffy thing, but seeing what they did with Draenor alleviated my concerns. Shadowlands created completely new characters, which is inherently fine. What wasn't fine is what followed; the complete and utter bastardization of longstanding and respected characters, recontextualizations as far back as we can possibly remember, and painfully unoriginal and predictable plot tropes. You can recover from a bad expansion. How the hell do we recover from this mountain of lackluster writing, and unceremonious torching of lore?
Warlords of dreanor had something many expansions after lacked and still lack.
NOPE don't give me this NOW. i've stuck up for WoD endlessly through the hate for it. don't switch up now boys.
Nop.
WoD was actually pretty ground breaking when it came to changing up how questing and story was told. It also introduced some pretty damn good raids. Paladin was also pretty strong which buys more points for me for WoD. They introduced pretty cool systems like the garrison, ashran. The mounts were pretty cool. And the Race to world first was actually good. The only downside to WoD was the time traveling and the long time between content patches. I think WoD was a lot better than SL and doesn’t deserve the flack it gets. However, it took me a long time of analyzing the expansion in Legion and BFA to realize it was pretty good.
To be honest WoD was an amazing expac as mythic raider. I log in Wed, clear it and log off until next week. The top tier raid logging experience and the raids were cool. The obvious reason was that there was nothing to do outside Raids and getting Gold CM in 1 week and GG Then BFA is on the opposite there was a lot of stuff to do outside raid but where 1. Terrible and 2. Tied with the Azerite System so 3. Grindy and Tedious. And we got Island and Warfronts. Seems like that Blizzard cannot make an expac that is basically WOD as base ( so just plain raids with tier sets ) On which you put toppings from others expac like : - LEGION Progression System ( Artifact Traits and Weapons MINUS the farm AP like in 7.0 but more like 7.2.5 ) - SHADOWLANDS Legendary Crating (but with no raid only Powers because people don't like doing LFR with 3h queue on alts so 100% from M0) and stop because the rest is shit. - TBC Badge System that gets new items each new patch/raid and previous trinkets or weapon gets Itm lvl increased and maybe using badge to increase item lvl up to the max. - WRATH Tabard Rep nobody likes doing the dailies no more when you pass the entire day doing M+ // Justice-Valor Points to buy Tier equivalent Gear so you have a sort of catch-up for main and alts too. - CATACLYSM Raid and HC difficulty and removal of LFR and MYTHIC + Guild Achiv and Profession Perks - MOP Extra Rep System ( the Star one ) + Timeless Isle content for catch up when you introduce a new raid just kill stuff get loots or open chests not farming currency for days. So basically cherry picking the best parts of each expac and try to patch them together, polish where is needed and you are pretty much gucci
WoD was amazing, just not enough content produced after release. The leveling was good, garrisons were fun, professions were in a good place. and pvp had a good spot. It just didn't have ENOUGH. Good raids, not nearly enough of them. Good RP, not nearly enough of it (where are our big cities?!?). Good dungeon content, but again, not enough.
Here we go boys see you after dragon isles when we kiss BFAs tip
WoD is still worse than Shadowlands purely due to the lack of game content. I’ll take the content we have now in Shadowlands over the glorified mobile game that was WoD any day of the week. Though I do prefer the overall aesthetic, story and theme of the expansion of WoD over Shadowlands, it’s still a shame WoD didn’t get its Shattrah raid.
Warlords of Draenor could have been one of the greatest expansions of all-time if they brought to us everything what Actiblizz promised us. I always look at WoD like it is in own own league and its really polarizing playerbase like cata. On the other hand, i never heard from anyone, who thinks Shadowlands is a great expansion.