Wrath, Your Honest Opinion.Follow

Pretty good. I enjoy it a lot more than TBC. The storylines are better, questing was amazingly better. My biggest complaint is that it felt like it was still in Beta when it was first released. Even now Crystalsong is basically an unfinished zone. Vehicle fights were touted as being awesome but many ended up sucking. There is still no point to some of the reputations.

Still overall a lot better than TBC; and this is speaking mostly from a non-raiding perspective (I've only cleared Nax and half of Ulduar). I enjoy it. 8.5/10.

This.

Too large of a jump between normal and hard to make it worthwhile. A default "Easy" mode, followed by "Normal", followed by "Difficult" would have suited us personally much better.

Four and a half out of five stars. I think they did a good job with a lot of it, and also started a few things I hope the next expansion will, um, expand on.

I haven't raided in many months and haven't seen anything post-Naxx, so all the controversy surrounding easiness and purples and all that isn't something I'm qualified to talk about.

Highlights of the expansion for me really have to do with the atmosphere of Northrend more than anything else. With few exceptions (Dear Borean Tundra: Go die in a fire) I love the landscapes, NPC's, music, etc. I just like doing stuff in general, whatever it is, a lot better than I did in the Outland. Also greatly prefer Dalaran to Shattrath, and to Orgrimmar and Thunder Bluff for that matter.

I think achievements were a fun addition overall. I think it would be fun if they would make the points spendable in some way. Pets, silly hats, whatever.

Disclaimer: I did not do much PVP until after this expansion. However, the lowlight of the expansion for me is the current state of PVP. I think the elevation of arena over all other types of PVP is a big mistake. It's caused a ton of class balance issues, and it's annoying to me personally that PVP success can only equal arena. I feel that it's such a very narrow, compartmentalized thing to have such a big place in the game.

I don't want to take arena away from the people who enjoy it, or the rewards that come with it, because I know that they are hard earned. But I'd also like to see PVP get bigger and become a more integrated part of the world and story. Whereas arena feels more like a game-within-a-game, I think objectives, battles, and tangible effects like zone-wide buffs make PVP feel like an actual part of the game. I'd really like to see more of those spontaneous, unscheduled skirmishes integrated into zones people actually play in, like you had in the Outland zones, and I think in vanilla as well (I wasn't there then). Pre-Lich King Halaa remains the most fun PVP experience I ever had. And Wintergrasp is great, when you can cast an instant in less than 20 seconds. More stuff like that, except without the lag, would be good.

I'm excited by the prospect of rated battlegrounds because I think battlegrounds in their current state are largely wasted, as few people are motivated to play them at all, let alone form premade teams for them. The idea of an Arathi Basin where people who know what they're doing fight other people who know what they're doing actually makes Arathi Basin sound fun to me. It's a step in the right direction, and I hope Cataclysm will solve a lot of these complaints of mine.

Raiding: Certainly easier than before. Hard modes were a nice addition, but they kinda hit me as a bandaid for the problem of appealing to both hard-core and casual types. Ulduar is still my favorite raid. I can't say I care much for ToC.

PvP: I still prefer the old battlegrounds. I don't hate the vehicle stuff, I just feel they are 'gimmicks' sometimes, and don't add much.

Quests: Love the questlines, phasing, etc. No complaints here.

Others: I'd rather be in just about any zone in Northrend over Outlands. The artwork is a lot better.

It is one of my favorite sins.

I have mixed feelings about Wrath.

Syle-wise, I think it's a fantastic return to the flavor of vanilla WoW. I like all the Northrend zones. I don't even mind the usually unpopular Borean Tundra, as even it is better than most of the Outland zones. I love the detail and feel of the scenery.

Quests and story-line is much improved over Outland, for the most part. I'm not huge into lore, but I never could get too into the Outland stuff. It just seems so out of place in the WoW world. Northrend brings story back to its roots, imo.

Class mechanics and "bring the player not the class" are related things I am critical of with Wrath. In my opinion, homogenization of classes is not really a good thing. I understand the philosophy and the appeal of it, but I think it's taken away some of the interesting aspects of individualism and its effect on group play. There are two related aspects that I think detract from Wrath. The first is the virtual removal of CC from the game. The game changed to round 'em up and AoE everything. For me, I enjoyed the challenge of CC. Second is the simplification of instances in Wrath. Sure, it's nice to blow through a heroic in 30-45 minutes. But, it's pretty mindless. Personally, I enjoyed running BC heroics where it was necessary to actually think and use tactics. Even when BC heroics were at farm stage, it still took a little thought and effort to be succesful.

I can't really comment on raiding, since I quit raiding about the time Ulduar was released. I don't have a big problem with Naxx. I never saw the original, so it wasn't a retread for me. I do think it was a step back,for the most part, from the raids in BC. The little I've seen of Ulduar was definitely better than Naxx, though.

Achievements, on the whole, are a great addition. They breathe life into old content, to an extent, as well as give people mini-goals to pursue.

Overall, I rate Wrath as 8 out of 10. It has short-comings, but overall is an improvement over Burning Crusades.

Music and Voice Acting- 8/10 In general, I love the music (some of it I don't, though). But the VAing, in general, is god awful. For instance, the infinite dragon boss in CoS that you fight in the Town Hall. That voice SO doesn't fit. And Sylvanas' new voice sucks to an infinite degree. I like Rhonin's, though.

General Gameplay- 7/10 I think Blizz did a great job as far as quests go (the exception being IC, imo. They are just spread all over the place and you rarely know where to go to get the next one. Though, they are fun once you find them). I think mounted combat has been very hit or miss, with an emphasis on miss. WG combat? Fun. Jousting? Suck. Dragon dungeons? Suck. I don't know how the vehicle combat worked out in Ulduar, but I'm not a fan of it in the BGs. [EDIT] And not being able to skip all events in instances? Suck. CoS is like 30 minutes of listening to the same thing I heard in WCIII. And Arthas bugs more often than not, which makes the timed run actually close in a steam roll group. Sitting around for 7 minutes, waiting for him to run to the town hall isn't fun.[/EDIT]

Casual Gameplay- 8/10 I love that things have been opened up so casuals can get involved, but I don't like how a lot of it has been done. As I said before, I HATE jousting. And, if a casual doesn't want to do 10 mans, they eventually hit a stop in the road. There really isn't anything to do at endgame besides dungeons or PvP, and that bothers me (though I wouldn't know how to fix it). Plus, the jump in gear tiers has made GS seem important, which can hurt the casual player.

Raider Gameplay- 9/10 (speculative). In this group I place the people who struggle in the heroic raids, and MAYBE hard modes. They are the ones that actually get the challenge and reward of raiding, with there still being future content they plan to cover. They'll eventually down hard modes, but not too long before the next content patch.

Hardcore Gameplay- 7/20 They are the ones who even find hard modes easy a month or less after release. But there's so few of them that this value doesn't mean much.

Professions- 7/10 I think Blizz made them better, in that there is actually worthwhile crafted gear for some professions after the initial gearing process. Dailies for JC were nice. But I want to see dailies for all the professions, personally.

PvE Balance- 8/10. You never really want to pass up a class for any reason other than already having one or two of them, and that's great. And almost all the trees are viable for PvE and PvP now, which is great. But, there is still a BIG issue with Arena/PvP mucking up balance in PvE. As a DK, I've had major changes to my class every patch. And it gets annoying. I don't mind small changes and fixes, but when you have a list of 20 things each patch, half of which are changes to an ability that was changed the previous one, it gets annoying to keep up with.

PvP Balance- 6.5/10. NOTE-THIS IS NOT ARENA, WHICH I HAVE NEVER DONE AND BARELY KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT. Druids and Pallies are still huge powerhouses in BGs and WG, which really irritates me. When 4 better-geared players can't kill a single unit, focus-fire, there's an issue. And, in terms of WG, ranged classes get a HUGE advantage due to terrain. They also need to give players a way to damage walls and such without vehicles. I don't care if that means buffing the health 500% and giving the wall a 95% mitigation. It's so annoying when the opposite team won't venture out so you have to try and kill the NpCs to get tanks. Plus, as a melee class, you can't even kill the guns or the ranged classes that are shooting at you from the platforms.

I'm gonna give it a 7.5/10 overall. I think questing was great, and casual to psuedo-raider content is decent. But, there are a lot of problems that I have to take the "grin and bear it" approach to every day.

Edited, Nov 16th 2009 2:19pm by idiggory

I was pondering making a post like this, good idea!

Overall, I think it had a lot of great things about it, and a few problems.
MEDIA:
The zones are marvelous, probably some of the best work in the game yet. Howling Fjord, Grizzly Hills, Storm Peaks were all awesome and epic. Icecrown should go in there too. I liked Sholizar. Borean tundra was... eh, it has some good stuff, if it hadn't been along with such awesome zones it would seem more decent.

The quests flowed well and had interesting stories. I don't think the stories themselves were a step up, the arc was overall better than BC, but having recently been leveling a character up through old content, I have to say that vanilla had some damn good storytelling.

When the expansion was new, I was ok with the gear, because it was mostly lower level stuff and it looked it. That stuff fit well, but I have to say that a lot of the armor sets and weapons have been a big letdown for me. They have this very generic texture they use on _everything_. It looks like a cross between mottled stone and play-doh with some chips in various places. It's been used for cloth, plate, nearly every weapon blade, etc. In vanilla metal things were made out of metal, so I've been disappointed by that. The new shaman gear of course is an exception, it's really good.

Honestly, the pvp gear in this expansion I have liked more than the 'epic' looking gear. It, as stated, looks like stuff handed over by your faction's officers, and it actually looks like real equipment. Equipment doesn't all have to look ubar epix to be good. It doesn't have to have lightning and flaming bears and spikes and skulls all over to be good. A little subtlety goes a long ways. The pvp gear has that. A lot of the pve gear doesn't. I don't know what they were thinking with some of the weapons.

The music was very well done in this expansion too. I've had several places where I stopped and listened to the music for a while. The music in Sholazar Basin, some in dragonblight come to mind. That Sholazar reminds me so much of FFXI music. The dragonblight music is just _perfect_ for the mood of the zone. And of course, I'm sure nobody can forget the Grizzly Hills music. Honestly I think the music was one of the best things about the expansion.

MECHANICS:
I think that a lot of the problems they had here were more endemic to the game in general and just have started manifesting more in WotLK because of stats being inflated.

I'm glad they're simplifying gear a lot for Cataclysm because one complaint is that with so much constant tweaking to combat it was hard for anyone to follow what stats were actually worthwhile and gear became more iLevel than making choices about what gear would actually improve you. If you didn't have something like rawr at your fingertips you were basically shooting in the dark.

The constant tweaking has been a little troubling too. I understand the need for balance, but balance means you adjust some abilities by a few % or so to get it inline. They've been constantly redesigning whole classes, its not surprising that doesn't actually solve any balance issues as instead of inching closer to balance they're basically redrawing the map and tossing a dart. It's an educated dart, but still tends to put them farther away as often as closer. People have been getting tired of that too.

Now, for some cases I totally understand. Redesigning retribution paladin was much needed, and they did awesome with that. They turned it from an obviously underpowered spec that only some people who enjoyed a big challenge used to a very popular spec. Sure it was overpowered, but they've done pretty good at scaling it back. Might have needed another week of PTR or something.

One thing I mentioned elsewhere is I feel they need to revise all stats. They need to cut them on all gear by a factor of 10. Having stats added in the hundreds is just silly. a thousand attack power? sheesh. Personally I think if they slashed the stats from gear, but still gave the same from player level it would solve a lot of the gear gap issues too. You'd still need to upgrade your gear to do harder stuff, but there wouldn't be such a huge gap from the geards and the geared-nots, and getting stuff from ulduar25 would, while not being as cutting edge, still make someone close to the competence of someone with ToC25. Much more viable raiding = more content = broader endgame = profit(fun).

As far as raids go, there's been a lot of innovation on new ways to structure endgame, and some I agree with and some I disagree with, which people probably already know. I really like the way that they're making raids have normal and hard modes. I wish the normal modes were slightly more challenging (and if the gear stats weren't so drastic people could more adjust to the difficulty and it wouldn't put you so far behind if you didn't trash a place each entry~ upgrades would give you that epic feeling all day).

I don't like the 'hamster wheel' progression type where each new tier of content they make the 'really easy to get level' a step higher, I feel it cheapens the overall experience of accomplishment. I know some people don't mind that though.

Also as an effect of the constantly inflating stats, PvP is still basically a FPS game. I have so much more fun with pvp at low-mid levels than endgame because of that. Slashing gear stats would also make the geared to the teeth and not as geared have a smaller gap and emphasize technique much better.

Oh, as for vehicle combat, I thought it was a good idea, and they apply it well in some places and not others. I like the FL fight in uldar, I think they add a great dimension to pvp combat in Wintergrasp, SotA, and IoC. I think that it just sucks in Oculus, because you have basically one button to spam for a very long and boring dungeon. For EoE, the discs are pretty fun. The dragon part is meh. If people do it right it's something to bear, if not its torture. I like a lot of the quests where they use it. The frost wyrm in the DK starting area is tons of fun. Scatter little crusade peons! Scatter!

And of course the phasing is amazing. Being able to have a permanent effect of your actions is just game changing and hopefully will be used to great extent in the future.

Overall, I have to give it a 'Very Good'/10.

Edited, Nov 16th 2009 12:42pm by digitalcraft

What Anobix said. Loved the solo content. Regular dungeons were quite good. PvP seems a lot more fun now. Not too fond of how raids are currently, and I think TBC was the high point of raiding, but still not too bad. The one thing I did really like about raiding in WotLK was the addition of 10 man modes to every raid, which opened up the raids to more casual folks.

Edited, Nov 16th 2009 2:23pm by Poldaran

I didnt start playing WoW until the middle of TBC and Wrath came out before I was capped so all of Azeroth and Outlands were spent leveling as fast as possible. I have always wanted to experience the end game raids cause of the teamwork and challenge. I never has the chance to do any end game of BC and old world cause it was pointless. I think the game is a blast however. I love the landscape, the mobs, the quests, etc. I have no complaints. Unfortunately i really dont have anything to compare to as far as my goals in game. I do appreciate the ease of questing, everything is close together but still challenging. The mobs are way cooler and evil looking. I love the lore of the factions. It just really fun game.

Compared to what? At the end of the day, WoW in its current incarnation is so far ahead of any other MMO out there in every way that it doesn't matter what you do and don't like about it, if you want to play the best then this is it.

Another note. While I agree the story-telling and quest chains were great, there are some things that have annoyed me for a long time.

1. You never really get much explanation of the Vrykul or Kvaldir (the latter especially). You find out they were human ancestors and that they went to sleep like earthen. But that's about it.

2. The war between the giants isn't explained. We know it happened. We know Loken stopped it. But we don't know why it happened, or what went on during it.

3. They don't even address what kind of ramifications will occur now that the Aspect of Magic is dead. They were supposed to play an extremely important role in governing the world, and Alexstraza is just like "Pity."

4. Varian Wrynn.

5. Garrosh Hellscream.

These two just generally suck. And they are getting bigger roles in Cata. Yay. I can't help but feel like Blizz could have offered more persuasive characters to make us want to go to war. You know, instead of two guys with daddy issues?

6. The fact that almost every DK NPC in NR treats DK characters like they aren't one. It drives me INSANE. Seriously. As a lore lover, it's like "Dude... I was there." I'm not expecting completely different quest text, but slight changes to certain sentences would have made you FEEL like you were a part of the Ebon Blade.

7. The Tourney. Worst. Idea. Ever. "Hey, guys? I have an idea. Let's build a colliseum where we'll fight eachother." "Okay, where?" "IDK, how about that zone that's full of the undead agents of the LK that's dead set on killing us all?" Really? REALLY? You couldn't have put it in DB, or CF? And it seems like an excellent use of resources when a massive war is going on.

8. The fact that there are always random camps of quest givers two feet away from the mobs that want to rip them apart. They SERIOUSLY haven't been noticed by those flying scouts?

9. The fact that the Worgen story line just dies.

10. The fact that the dragons have had no involvement with the LK battle, even though they are 3 feet away, protectors of life and order and don't have to deal with Maly anymore.

Most people won't care about most of these, but I'm a lore lover.

The worgen stuff just ended? We found Worgen, discovered that Argual had been revived to make more, and smacked him down again. What more is there to do?