I started playing WoW during the end of MoP. Before I hit 90 (about 82 I believe) WoD came out and my friend bought it for me and another friend of ours and we grinded WoD everyday. I ofcourse went back and did the raids of TBC+ and compared to WoD it was just chaotic. The rolls were cancerous compared to the looting system I got used to in WoD. I'm just wondering why majority of private servers are WOTLK and the most popular. What makes it so much better than the other expansions? I personally just came here for MoP because I wanted to try out the Raids and get some nostalgiaa and maybe some PvP.
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Member
Why WOTLK?
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Member
Well most of the wotlk content is fully scripted and working properly so one of the reasons. Secondly the nostalgia of WOTLK and dunno about the gearing system in WOD but wotlk is just awesome to get the drop you were farming for a month or two and you know you have some kind of advantage.
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Member
I'd say there's a few factors
1) Regardless of whatever people's opinions are about what the 'best' or most enjoyable expansion was, WOTLK had the highest player base during retail. Therefore, there are more people to be nostalgic about the expansion
2) There was a fairly common dislike of Cata when it was live because people didn't necessarily like the direction it was taking the game (whether or not these perceived negative changes actually began in WOTLK or not). Having such a widely disliked expansion increases the extent to which people view WOTLK through rose-tinted glasses.
3) Lore wise, WOTLK is something of a continuation of an already extremely popular Blizzard title: Warcraft 3 and its expansion The Frozen Throne. Therefore, the lore is both extremely accessible to those who played those two games AND connects with an already pre-existing investment in said lore.
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Member
wotlk era had the advantage of massive warcraft 3 fanbase, lore wise it was the last expansion that had anything to do with the RTS franchise
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Field Medic Moderator
That's why Blizzard went in the Warlords of Draenor and Legion direction though.
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Member
Lore wise it's the most expanded of the original universe, and some people doesn't like changes that came with Cata and carried beyond (my guild talked about Gilneas Worgen yesterday, voicing how they don't like the idea), which includes cool questlines such as Legend of Stalvan etc. As personal note, we also lost a Fortress of Solitude in Stormwind (The Park).
Some people also found that Pandaren inclusion is a bit silly
Gameplay wise, I kinda missed the talent system that came with vanilla while playing MoP. That truly made your characters unique than others.... while you level anyways. Also, Cata starter gear and WoTLK endgame gear stats gap is WAAAAAAAAAAAY too much
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Member
yea but it was more like a wolfenstein style "hey gais what if we went back in time and changed the future" alternative scenario
have you tried the new xpacs?
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Member
On top everything others have mentioned... the dificulty of the content introducen in both early Cata and MOP, including dungeons and simple 10 mans in normal mode have a higher dificulty than on WOTLK. People who go casual mode don't like dificulty, specially pugs because this pushes them out of enjoying the content... and eventually it got to the point they created LFR where the encounters are dumbed down to the extreme for the sake of allowing more people to do the content. This is, by many, viewed with spite and hate, regardless how much it actually helped lone wolves and casuals.
Other thing... In Cata, and up, all classes, from the most basic to the complex ones, recieved major overhauls that changed the way they play and moved up the dificulty bar in most cases. The easiest (And therefore, the most popular) classes and specs (Read as: Paladin, Arcane Mage, Demolock, Disc Priest, Hunter, Rshaman, Rdruid, DKs) got really brutal ups in dificulty and knowledge required in order to play "optimal",n core mechanics were updated and you could no longer play with 2-3 buttons and 2-3 oh**** macros. People severely disliked this and moved on to other games.
I still remember how bad was the popularity drop for Paladins, Warlocks and RDruids on early Cata. It was just brutal. The complaints and QQ were unreal. People take change badly.
WOTLK didn't change much from It's ancestors, it just "updated" things up, it feels like an extension of TBCEdited: December 25, 2016
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Member
sir ur way over ur head on this matter
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Field Medic Moderator
I've had and continue to have an active subscription for WoW since 2007.
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Member
There are many reasons, for arena-oriented players however, WOTLK in the case of MOST classes offered a higher skill-cap than any previous or later expansion. This essentially meant more power in the hands of the player to both grow in skill and control their own destiny on the ladder, to not feel quite so restricted by meta and composition. Not that these things didn't exist at all, but you could go against the grain, while feeling like there was plenty of room to grow and continue to improve. It's relatively easy to master most classes in Legion, which holds a lot of good players back in a way. The recipe for success in Legion is just, have partners to queue with consistently who are capable of breathing without machine-assistance, and play a top tier comp.
Wrath PvP was more complex and that complexity allowed for there to be a wider bell curve or spread in how player skill manifested itself. It also just plain made it more fun for anyone who doesn't shy away from competition. It has/had it's problems with the S8 PvE gear and whatnot, but even that is worth the trade-off over scripted/pruned WoD or ultra-pruned Legion. Another thing to note that is Cataclysm began a trend towards homogenization between classes. All healers having dispels, all melee having kicks etc. this contributed to the degradation of PvP as well in my opinion.
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Member
"Wrath PvP is more complex"
Smourne TSG ftw!!
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Member
It's called counter-play you 2200 rat. Yeah like I said there were problems caused by the PvE gear mostly in mid to late season 8, but I'll take that over a game where there may not be PvE gear in arenas but it doesn't matter because there's no room for variance in player skill level anyways.
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Member
I would argue that S15 MoP 3v3 was the most balanced period of the game. Nearly every spec is viable, and there is no PvE item nonsense. WotLK only has a handful of comps that can actually even be competitive, e.g. LSP or Godcomp. Let's not talk about 2s, because that's just the cap bracket.
It baffles me why people aren't playing MoP instead.
Shoutout to Bork and Nara, you know who you are.
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Member
I didn't play much in MoP because the ladders were dead for the first part until they did the battlegroup merger and started allowing cross realm queues in a later season. I came back to play the tail end of the last season with some friends for a couple months and it was pretty fun, the damage rotation for my class at least though (warrior) was pretty dumb and not well designed like the WOTLK or Cata ones. The prevalence of short, easy to use stagger CCs also got out of hand in MoP.
You can argue that it was more "balanced" than WOTLK and that's fine, I don't know enough about that season to argue but there's a difference between balance and skill-cap, and when you have more flexibility or a higher skill cap you get to take balance more into your own hands. E.G. higher possibility for outplaying counters.
