Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Poll: Which expansion do you like best?
MeTed
Member Posts: 129
Out of Vanilla, Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, and Cataclysm. Which did you like best?
I liked Wotlk the best because it had more fun content for a wider audience. Cataclysm fell short imo because of the emphasis on the new MMO but that is another topic.
Comments
Cataclysm is by far the best expantion. improved all vanila zones, no other comany tried to do something like this, add beter questing, cataclysm zones(including wargen and goblin starting zones) have the best quests in game and funier.
People complain it is more of the same, but BC was more of the same, just like WotlK.
BC For the end game experience especially early on, pre Nerf Kael thas 25 and such.
WOTLK for questing
Vanilla for community
Cata for? cut scenes and not having to ever be sociable, for not having to speak or engage with fellow players and for removing all consqiuences for being a dick. while making the game stupidly easy and repetative.
Vanilla is the only time this game was somwhat challenging and fun to play
C
I voted for the expansion I had the most fun in, and that was BC. I actually really enjoyed the tiered progression of the expasion, which began by earning faction reputation to unlock entry into certain heroics. Follow that up with my favorite raid instance in the game, Karazhan, which was surprisingly difficult for the first couple months before they made adjustments. Gruul and Mag's lairs were great, quick supplimentary raids. In my opinion, Vashj and Kael in SSC and TK were the two most fun, interactive, engaging and rewarding PVE boss encounters ever developed in an MMO. I felt both Hyjal and BT suffered a little bit of a drop off, but that is mostly the restult of being the act that follows the awesomeness of Kael and Vashj. I can't say much about Sunwell as I stopped playing shortly after its release. I downed Brutalis and Felmyst on the PTR though, and they were both fairly engaging fights. And I remember subbing in for Eredar Twins one night. That was crazy fun to heal.
Vanilla:
My love for vanilla WoW is mostly grounded in nostalgia. A memory of a great community exploring a new world together in wonder and awe. Fun memories include 20 man UBRS raids, opposing faction city raids, massive guild vs guild world pvp outside of raid entrances, and our first Twin Emps kill. Other than that I can objectively admit that Blizzard has refined and improved their product tremendously.
Wrath:
I really enjoyed the lore advancment that came with Wrath. Geographically, Northrend features several of my absolute favorite zones and music. Wintergrasp was a neat addition. But pve wise, it was a huge letdown. While I loved the addition of 10 man raids (it's a much more intimate setting, and your individual actions have a greater impact), especially from a healing perspective, the content was just way too easy. The fact that we were able to enter 10 man Naxx on day 3 of the expansion with just 7 people wearing quest blues + crafted gear, and we killed every boss except thadius, saph, and KT, was just sad. Malygos was fun. Ulduar hard modes were actually amazingly fun. I'd put Firefighter just behind Vashj and Kael. ToC, normal and hard modes were way too easy, as was Icecrown, barring 2 or 3 encounters.
Cata:
I give cata a lot of credit, even if I'm not currently playing. I understand the arguments against phasing, but I'm a fan of it. The quest model in MMOs itself is not conducive to group play. If you're on a different part of a quest chain than your friend, with or without phasing, you can't quest together unless one of you stops and waits, which almost never happens. Questing in MMOs has largely become a solo affair. As such, Cata's phasing makes the solo quest experience much more interactive than the former "gather 10 quests at the local quest hub and go out to complete your quest circuit." Instead, each zone offers an over-arching story that you get to actively participate in, like Westfall's murder mystery, which culminates in revealing Edwin Van Cleef's daughter Vanessa's consipiracy. I approve of the old world changes, and I loved the new zones as well.
I also enjoyed the fact that they made all end game content significantly more difficult to the point where players have been complaining. I dare say that Cata is WoW at it's most difficult. Another step in the right direction. I defy anyone who mocks WoW's difficult to play and compare some of WoW's most difficult raid encounters to "difficult" content in other games.
Pretty sure "Vanilla" isn't an expansion.
Anyhoo, I had the most fun in BC. WotLK saw Warcraft hit peak numbers by allowing everyone to see all the content without making it feel like you had to work 2 jobs. Cataclysm was just boring.
Vanilla was the best WoW ever was, IMO.
BC was where they made the first big issue, the huge power jump for gear and told us that they would not be doing that again.
That was the first big lie.
Now they should just port it to the Xbox, its not realy played as an MMORPG any more.
Vanilla is not an expantion :P
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
Final Fantasy 7
How about none of the above?
As much as I loathe the game like the plague, I still have fond memories of the original game when it still had a world feel to it.
I won't forget the first time I saw Ragnaros in Molten Core. That was one of the few times I was awed in that game, as much as I hate admitting it. Killing him was even more satisfying.
Vanilla was fun, even if many of the classes were just boring to play.
BC was fun for me with the addition of flight in outland, the 10 man raids (I have a small guild), and many of the class changes to attempt to make more specs fun and viable. However, not being able to see the content available, because I am in a small guild made much of the content irrelevant to me.
WotLK was very nice for my guild since we were able to do 10 man progression. I also love the Death Knight, the caster and melee combined aspect of it, very fun class to play for me. I also very much enjoyed how often we actually faced the Lich King. He was present in nearly every zone during some type of quest. You knew who the ultimate bad guy was for the expansion, and he was interested in making his presence known everywhere.
Cata is amazing in the essence that they completely revamped the 1-60 experience, which was sorely needed. I love my goblin, fun race to play. Overall though, the expansion is disappointing. The new zones were mostly fun the first time through, but become extremely tedious in a hurry. I really don't like how they gutted the talent trees without giving us an alternative form of character advancement. The talent tree reduction would have been more easy to bear if they had actually been able to get the Path of the Titans system in. Also, aside from a few quests, Deathwing's presence is largely not felt. The events in which he appears are somewhat interesting, but we don't have the interaction with him like we did the Lich King.
Personally, WotLK was the highlight of my time in WoW.
I prefer BC over Cata, but I voted Cata just because of that expansion brought Vashj'ir. My favourite zone of all game, no doubt.
Cata didn't hold my interest enough to stay in WoW, played only for 1 month after exp release.
Tweet at me - Visit my website
As noted in another thread, I am a long-time "semi-retired" WoW player, and most of my experience was in "vanilla", with only a few months' experience in the other expansions combined, so my views are not representative.
Vanilla: I nearly voted for this, as it was the one I played the most, and had the most enjoyment in. But a big part of that was just the enjoyment of playing an MMO for the first time (yes, I was one of those) and exploring WoW. As fun as it was, it has to be admitted that "vanilla" had severe balance problems, lots of little glitches and irregularities, and once the charm of the game world wore off, was just a bit too much of a grind (e.g., the Fire Resist grind for end-game . . . sigh.)
The Burning Crusade: I voted for TBC, because I think it is the expansion where Blizzard got an excellent balance. The new zones were great fun for both solo PvE, group PvE, instances, PvP, etc. And while I only did just a little bit of the end-game, it felt just as much of a challenge as "vanilla" end-game, but less of a grind.
Wrath of the Lich King: Only played a little of this one, just enough to experience a couple of the new zones. I enjoyed it, and the zone design and instance design is impressive, but I have to admit that gameplay felt all too familiar, rather than the innovation that TBC was.
Cataclysm: Literally only played it for a couple of weeks, and haven't even seen the new zones. I liked the redesigned "old world" zones, though. My general feeling is that the changes are mostly cosmetic, other than the more difficult end-game (or so I have heard).
Overall, I wish I had subscribed a year later than I did; both to avoid the headaches of the launch, as well as to have enjoyed more of TBC. But the game has definitely moved on since then, and as I don't think I want to be where it is now, I remain more or less stuck in the past.
I'll take TBC overall, but I would love a hybrid model of Vanilla and TBC. Take TBC for PvE, quests, and class changes (horde needs paladins and Alliance Shaman). However, get rid of Arena, and the cross-server BG's. Go back to server only BG's and incorporate some more World PvP activities. I'd also take the old honor system over the current one, but I acknowledge it had way more flaws. I just miss the overall feel of the PvP in the game meaning a lot more to the community on the server.
I wouldn't want to give up flying mounts, dailies, or go back to 40 mans raids (it was just 25 people carrying 15 for the most part anyway). TBC had better quests, and better PvE overall. I loved heroics in their orignal form, even though the quest rewards sucked. It just sucked that TBC was just the start of destroying the community feel on the servers with the cross-server junk.
I only played WoTLK for about 6-7 months total. I can't even play Cataclysm. I actually feel insulted that the game (Blizzard) thinks I am inept, and need my hand held the way this expansion does.
Though not an expansion, I would take vanilla over all....
Blood Elves gtf out of my Horde! = BC
Nerf DK! = WotLK
Move your Giant Drake* (insert other over sized flying mount) off the vender/quest giver = Cata
Definitely vanilla. Lots of class trees were useless, balance was fucked and the game was hilariously messed up, but it's the "roughness" of an MMO that makes it great. Doing Stratholme with a raid of level 55s and getting your first piece of dungeon kit, running UBRS and trying to make sure that people didn't die on piece of piss bosses etc etc.
An MMO doesn't have to play like an arcade game to be fun. Just make me feel like I'm at a LAN tournament with a bunch of guys progressing through content and I'm happy.
I started playing Vanilla in Feb 2006. I had 2 60's and a 50-odd when TBC came out, but I had never had the time or the guild for raiding up to then. I bought TBC the day it came out, installed it, played a few hours of the lagfest in HP and then stopped for a few months. When I logged back in, it was with the intention of deleting all my toons. I just started playing my mage for a bit of nostalgia, one last hurrah ... 4 hours later I had a full quest log and was *right* back into it!
TBC ... This was my most abject period of being a WoW no-lifer. And I loved it. I badly wanted to get into end-game in Vanilla, but never overcame the obstacles. The TBC end-game was balanced perfectly for someone with my ability and time to spare. I also loved the attunements, the growing importance of fishing and cooking (I had always maxed them out on my chars), the BoJ system, Heroic modes, IQD Dailies ... the list goes on. TBC is my number 1 favourite exp.
Vanilla ... next best liked. But as others have stated, mostly because of the community and what became possible in the world because of an adequate number of skilled, friendly, well-socialised players. Three words: Late Night PUG. Either you did them and know how wonderful they could be, or you didn't and missed out on what I think was the most satisfying aspect of WoW to me: Taking a risk and finding cool people to play with. Almost all of my fond memories of WoW in the early days were down to randomly grouping with people and finding out that they were friendly and clearly knew their class. [1]
WOTLK ... levelled my mage to 80, started the heroic grind, lost the will to live. Gave it a break for a few months. Deleted all my toons, gave away 20k gold. I'm not going to say anything against it, but it wasn't for me.
CATA ... I thought I would buy this when it came out, just because I have the other 3. But I haven't. Yay, I must be cured!
TL;DR - 1 = TBC, 2 = Vanilla, 3 = WOTLK, 4 = I quit after WOTLK
R
[1] #1 favourite experience in WoW was kiling Alexei Barov in Scholomance with only 4 people. Late night PUG, hunter was a nob (some things never change) and left before we got out of the first room. We decided to carry on, no real problem being light on DPS, first boss wen't down easy enough, so we never bothered to get a 5th. The fight against Barov was stunningly executed by all concerned. I was de-cursing, and if I hadn't had De-cursive (still hadn't been crippled at the time!) we would have been toast. But I did. And we weren't.
I loved Vanilla and there is huge bias in this as I started then and obviously I got to experience the game for the first time. So I would have the fondest memories for Vanilla.
However, I liked TBC a lot and voted for it. Karazhan was one of the best raids ever. I loved it. I have done it so many times and I never got bored of doing it. I loved the heroics dungeons, those were brutal.
I haven't tried Cata. I don't know if it would have been my favourite if I had played it.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
I think I much prefer the open world gameplay and the overall vision for the game in Vanilla (even early Vanilla, before the Battlegrounds), but I still voted BC.
Well, that's because I somehow happen to love Outland (I know, I know, that's not popular at all!). I loved some of the zones there, I loved the music... I remember going through that portal and stepping into Hellfire Peninsula leaving a genuine impression on me, probably more than getting to my first capital city. I liked Shadowmoon Valley's depressing apocalyptic tones and funereal music. (So, you see me "farming primals in Shadowmoon Valley?" You betcha! :P) I kept several of my characters' hearthstone bound to Shattrath well into Cataclysm!
As for the endgame content being hard - well, I really liked it that way. I remember Karazhan being a bit of a frustrating experience initially, but there was still progression and every inch of it felt good. The encounter mechanics made sense, CC was vital and avoiding aggro because your character's life actually depended on it was a game onto itself.
Vivid memory: Karazhan, first pull, an early Flash Heal, a sudden charge sound effect, and "insta-death" ensues. I normally abhor the acronym, but I think a silent mouthing of WTF!? was in order.
Yeah, BC was probably the last period of WOW I truly enjoyed a lot.
I liked Outland quite a bit, as well, myself. I know it's not your typical setting in a medieval fantasy game. However, HFP, Nagrand, Terrokar, and Zangarmarsh are some of my favorite zones in the game - with their overall aesthetic feel (the music, sounds, NPC's, graphics, quests etc.). The game just hasn't brought anything new in the past two expansions on the level TBC did. Blizzard had a really good quality product going with TBC, but from there they decided to start watering the game down. I used to sub at least every 6 months just to log on and at least level a character for a while, but I can't even stomach that anymore.
I find it hilarious how WotLK/Cata has got so few votes.
I started towards the end of Vanilla and ended almost at the end of WOTLK and BC was pretty fun to me but Vanilla was ok to, good mix of pvp and pve, decent world pvp but the end of all things good game with the first wotlk pre expansion patch. After that everything after was a steaming pile of poo.