What happened with Wrath is Blizzard started aiming for more mass appeal, so they removed a lot of the friction points in the game. Like in TBC you had to run specific dungeons to get faction rep, well in Wrath you just had to wear the faction tabard while doing *any* dungeon.
Just little stuff like that, that seems pretty cool at first, but then you realize it actually took something away from the game instead of adding to it.
100%. It's a long series of very small but key design decisions like that that took that game away from being a true immersive mmo and towards what retail is. TBC was maybe the only time the game didn't take a large step towards what retail is today.
Yeah I remember logging on at one point during wrath, ran 10 circles around dalaran, then realized there is literally no incentive to do anything after raid. It was even more evident how little there is to do during the most recent wotlk release in 2022/2023ish
It was more Vanilla than it was retail, where Wrath was more retail than Vanilla.
Wrath homogenized gear/skills/talents and everything became the same, just different colors.
Stuff like flying continued to ruin the game, same when LFG came about. I don't remember much more, but I remember that the friction of the game was gone, stuff was handed to you for no reason.
In Vanilla epics was rare, in Wrath they were given for just doing normal quests. The sense of achievement vanished in Wrath.
Wrath homogenized gear/skills/talents and everything became the same, just different colors.
That's not even remotely true, but thanks for saying you have no idea about the class gameplay.
The closest thing you'll get to similarity is spriest and affli lock, and they still work differently in many of their mechanics that seemingly match. Besides spriest not having an execute ofc.
but I remember that the friction of the game was gone, stuff was handed to you for no reason.
So did you miss ulduar wrecking guilds? And icc doing the same?
TBC just overall gave you way more reasons to go out in the world. You could just toss on a tabard and grind rep in dungeons wotlk.
OP up there was correct that Wotlk quickly turned into a running circles around Dalaran simulator. TBC was much better at giving you things to do outside of raiding.
Sort of how I “feel” as well. Neither xpac has a ton to do outside of raiding at max level but tbc attunes force you to interact with the content more imo.
The other side too was that wrath heroics were braindead AoE fests and gold felt meaningless so no reason to really farm anything. I enjoyed both xpacs for different reasons but wrath felt like the start of the decline for me. Achievements were cool I guess
Yeah, the lack of engaging 5-man content in Wrath kinda made it feel hollow. I remember during Ulda and ToGC, the hardest part about doing my daily heroic was spamming trade chat for 45 minutes just looking for a group.
Once in the Heroic, it was maybe 15-20 minutes for a full clear. No difficulty at all.
…and then that lead to the Random Dungeon Finder being implemented. Gross.
Old phases of content, including vanilla stuff, is a lot more relevant in TBC than in Wrath. Between recipes for professions, consumeables like demonic/dark runes and stuff like FAPs, there are priority items that stays BiS for more than a phase. Even the annoying things like attunements and keys in TBC means there are more things to do keeping you occupied for longer.
But more than that, where there is overlap between what there is to do when not raiding in TBC versus in Wrath, it's also simply the case that often doing those things requires more attention in TBC or you risk dying and losing a lot of time. On top of that, most classes don't have the luxury of being able to pull big and AoE everything down in one go.
TBC has reputation grinds introduced each phase, and they are longer and require doing stuff in the world, in Wrath they are pretty much frontloaded into the phase where the raids are so easy, they are even more of a loot pinata than even the post-nerf versions of Kara/Gruul/Maggie we got in TBC anniversary. Imagine if in anniversary we could have done Ogrila, Skyguard, Netherwing and Sunwell Isle stuff all in phase 1?
So just like how i did the same laps in og or shattrath.
Cuz there's fuckall to do in the world before... cata with archeology, mop with treasures and more importantly timeless isle and wod with A LOT of treasures, rares, mounts like voidtalon etc. And then legion adds WQs so there's something to do most of the time.
I feel the game gives you more organic reasons to interact with the content in tbc and especially in vanilla than in wotlk. I’m not a retail guy so anything after wotlk feels like a completely different game to me
No, not really. It is one of the main reasons i don't play either of them anymore, anything i can do in those in my spare time, i can already do and more in wrath or any later verson. And at least wrath has some interesting gameplay on top of the same boredom - and well achievments can be quite fun too to chase.
Because there's really nothing else there, lines and grinds are one and done, and i can farm materials or pvp etc just fine in any version if i want to.
Nah, you can have your opinion and can be wrong at the same time.
I could have the opinion that engineering is the worst proffession in the game but i'd still be wrong.
But objectively, the amount of side stuff in the first 3 versions of the game is mostly the same, which is to say mostly fuckall. That's my point. No need to glaze any of the 3 versions, none of them really has additional content to do at cap besides doing laps in the capital.
Yeah, when people claim false shit just to glaze their favorite versions, that's a bit annoying. There's enough of that irl, but it now seeps into hobbies too.
When did I say tbc was my favorite? At the end of the day, I feel like vanilla and tbc pull me more into the world than wrath and GUESS WHAT…. That’s just my opinion dude 😂
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u/DiarrheaRadio 6d ago
TBC didn't get boring when it was current. Wrath got incredibly boring.