Bucket Guild | FUBU BH Forums

aestu's definitely right about wow's accident being a success. the only other mmo's at the time were stagnant eq's and daoc's which only the hardcore still played, and jack shit else was going on in the mmo stage.


enter a beloved franchise from a dependable developer and blam. billions and billions of dollars.

There's definitely some truth. But let's look at it objectively:

Vanilla
Pros: Expansive world environment. Good community. Level of challenge commesurate to playerbase skill. Feeling of epicness. Easy to pick up and define one's e-identity. Mood-setting music and atmosphere. Cartoony yet plausible graphics.
Cons: Very insular. High barriers to entry and progression. Stupid and wonky mechanics. Music and graphics were primitive. Terrible game balance. Horrid itemization.

TBC
Pros: Challenging content. Much more meritocratic and upwardly mobile than Vanilla. Decent balance between access and prestige. Better music. Well-designed encounters. Improved PvP and class balance. Better itemization.
Cons: Worst world environment of any expansion. Very unforgiving game community.

WotLK
Pros: Easy access. Certain ten-man achievements allowed individual and small groups of players an opportunity to be awesome. More mounts, pets, titles, and other cool stuff.
Cons: World environment had "Disneyland Syndrome". Music and world environment was often really, really overdone. Game pace and change was way too fast. Overwhelming majority of content was trivial. Community went downhill due to poorly designed game. Skill dependency in different classes and spec went way out of whack. Endgame PvE became horribly shallow and grindy.

Cataclysm
Pros: Easy access. Great music, great graphics, great environments. Well-designed and engaging encounters in both fivemans and raids. Lots and lots of humor. Best world quests, ever, especially Uldum. Cut scenes and RP are well integrated without being obnoxious - these are the first cut scenes I've WANTED to watch in this game. Excellent casual and hardcore content; a lot of content that can be enjoyed at many levels. Abundance of fun and interesting daily quests. Lots of random cool stuff.
Cons: UI is a bit intrusive and makes the game feel a bit shallow. LFD is still a highly destructive influence on the game. Game still feels too focused on gearing.

Overall though, I think Cataclysm did a pretty good job of capturing the best elements of each of the previous expansions and pushing them forward. We will see, however, how future tiers of content, and gradual gear inflation, will impact the expansion as it progresses.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that I am one of a very few people who made a reputation from the WotLK expansion that transcended the expansion and its LCD design, and the only reason that happened, was I played before WotLK and was above the level of the expansion itself.

Puggable content and things like Argent Defender or Herald of the Titans or (lol) the Plagued Proto opened the door for individual players to take the initiative to be awesome, but almost everyone who wasn't a serious raider before the expansion was satisfied to just get Kingslayer and a 6k badscore and think they were amazing.

It's kind of ironic, really. The worst expansion ever, below my level, and yet it's the one that made my reputation - even now into Cataclysm, where almost all the "winners" in WotLK will wither away.

That's my portion of waxing egotism. Just had to put that reflection down.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/B ... s/advanced

Jealous?

That's actually kind of impressive.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

Never noticed that "prestigious" raid title thing before.

Still, I think it's bullshit. Mine is apparently "Kingslayer" but I value "Champion of the Naaru," completed pre TBC nerfs to be WAAAAYYY more prestigious.

Same.

Herald is much more prestigious than Kingslayer...

Of the stuff I did, I can't think of anything at level 80 that wasn't horrible in WotLK compared to other expansions. The only thing that was nice was the ability to get invited to heroics as a DPSer without CC. Glad to hear people find Cataclysm is better, I don't even feel like finding out what 85 is like right now after playing WotLK.

Leveling was alright. Way better than vanilla, pretty much the same as TBC though.

Cataclysm LFD random heroic queues are no less than 30-45m for DPS.

At least that's what they tell me. My queues are always instant and I always have several DPS sending tells begging for queue boosts

<3

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

My typical queue for my lock is about 35 minutes. Right now that is fine by me since I am finishing off a few rep grinds as well as back tracking to quest zones that I have not finished yet. It could get annoying later in game but I will just have to fly around mining to kill the time. And yes, the times I have run on my pally I see the button click and the enter dungeon screen comes up.

9 level 90s and 10 85s, Damn I need another hobby.

In all honesty I cannot think of one "winner" from WotLK off the top of my head. Most of the WotLK institutions were relics from TBC or composed of various TBC guilds and by the time WotLK was in full swing, any sense of server cohesion had entirely dissolved thanks to LFD. The only reason I heard about you was because of the ex-Dissensioners that were in Tempest that bitched about you.

My absolute favorite part of this xpac is that you can pick it up, dick around for a hour or two, then put it down and actually get shit accomplished. The game has gotten really casual and I like that.

I have no idea as to why they decided to make gearscore mandatory in queuing for LFD. Its like they're taking all of the bad aspects of the game and condensing them into a ball of fuck that I need to use to get blues.

RETIRED.
[armory loc="US,Bleeding Hollow"]Mayonaise[/armory]
[armory loc="US,Bleeding Hollow"]Jerkonaise[/armory]

TBC remains my favorite expansion. The only things I didn't like about it was squidgoat and the Alliance getting shamans. Cata's definitely better than WotLK, but TBC was all shiny and new and had the advantage of being WoW's first expansion.

I liked Outlands. I'd be interested in what you disliked about it.

I also really enjoyed never doing PvE ever. It was the best time of my life. For TBC's entire runtime, I did Karazhan a dozen times with friends only after we all hugely outgeared it to throw loot at alts, ZA twice, and nothing else ever.

If destruction exists, we must destroy everything.
Shuruppak Yuratuhl
Slaad Shrpk Breizh

tbc sucked because of all the purple shit, the space ships, the squidgoats and the butt elves.


Also, flying mounts vs world pvp.

I assume you realized it was bullshit too that Horde got Paladins....right

Game has hopscotched imo. Bad -> Good -> Bad -> Good

Vanilla - Was only awesome because it was brand new and for most of us was the first RPG that was so massive. Otherwise, stuff was awful.

BC - Many things were made awesome and fixed. BC was awesome.

Wrath - The badness is still lodged in our recent memories.

Cata - My favorite expansion so far.