I get the impression that people think wotlk was a turning point for wow. Can someone explain what they mean by this?

a year ago by neon_nova to c/wow

I’m a super casual player, I played original wow back in high school and a bit of burning crusaded but level 41 was probably my highest ever level.

I’m currently self hosting wotlk and a lot of people speak about that one as if everything after it got worse.

I’m just playing solo on my own server now and was interested to learn more about this.

rescue_toaster 7 points a year ago

I would say that mostly applies to the story. Warcraft 3 introduced the epic Arthas story line and wotlk is the conclusion to that. Nothing else they've done with wow on the story side has really compared to that. Though if you never played warcraft 3, this may not have as much impact on you. Oh and the story in some later expansions really stinks, such as shadowlands.

However, from the actual gameplay side, I would argue retail is infinitely superior now. Classes have mechanical depth and options. Max level content is much more varied with raids, mythic+, and delves. Warband features make the game so much more casual friendly, allowing you to hop around on alts.

If all you care about is the leveling experience and you don't want to really play much at max level, then classic and especially wotlk is kinda peak wow at that, but otherwise, retail is an improved game as a whole.

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glimse 3 points a year ago

I'm playing for the gameplay, not the story, so I agree that Retail is infinitely better in nearly every way...but there is definitely one aspect of Classic that can't be beat: Community.

OP isn't experience that playing solo but it's the one thing I miss. With cross-faction/server guilds and dungeon queueing, you aren't really "forced" to interact with your neighbors. I liked seeing familiar names and having a reputation. I also liked when entire factions would band together to deal with griefers/douchebags

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neon_nova 2 points a year ago

Thanks for the explanation.

I hardly care about story in any game tbh.

I just like exploring the world and questing.

I’m way too casual to make the monthly subscription worth it. I’ll play for a month and then forget about the game for a couple years 😅

But it’s really nostalgic for me. I used to play it on my g4 Mac mini.

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