Patch 5.4 patch notes
Virtual Realms feature revealed
The Proving Grounds are coming
The latest patch 5.4 newsBreakfast Topic: What won't you miss about Wrath?
by Alex Lowers 
Sep 25th 2010 at 8:00AM
It's a truth we all must face: Wrath of the Lich King is coming to a close. Whether you loved it, hated it or something in between, it is time to look forward to the new expansion. With the excitement of a whole new cataclysmic event on the horizon, one can't help but look back on the recent past. There were some glorious moments in Wrath: the Wrathgate quest line leading up to the Battle for the Undercity, epic battles in Wintergrasp, and equally epic encounters like Algalon in Ulduar and the Lich King in Icecrown Citadel all come to mind.
Yet with greatness come some faults. Wrath was no exception. About three months after the expansion's release with the start of the holiday Love is in the Air, a bug caused the message The Ice Stone has melted! to be spammed in everyone's chat logs. And let us not forget the fiasco that was Additional instances cannot be launched, please try again later that prevented thousands of players from entering dungeons until servers were upgraded with new hardware months after it started popping up.
There was a lot of fun to be had in Wrath of the Lich King. There was a lot to feel nostalgic about. However, Wrath was far from perfect. What won't you miss about this expansion?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Wrath of the Lich King, Guest Posts
Reader Comments (Page 11 of 11)
Hyp Sep 25th 2010 5:37PM
If Cata's difficulty level proves to be as seems to be developing according to the intent from the Beta, then i wont miss the random idiot DPS is 5 man's and Raids. Seriously with Wrath, Blizzard did everything they could to make the game 'casual friendly'. That may have been the intent but what they actually did was create an entire class of players who know how to push maybe 3 or 4 buttons to make sure their Recount is on top and haven't the first single clue about interrupts, C, mob mechanics, aggro or anything else.
There will be a virtual flood of tears from the DPS clowns that began their toons in Wrath and never had to sheep , sap or trap anything. To begin with, they'll do their usual no-brain DPS rotation and then cant figure out why they pulled aggro or ended up dead on the floor so many times. Eventually the veterans from BC and vanilla will show the way and those random idiots you see now in LFD will be on their way out of the game or actually learning how to play and to follow instructions.
People, specifically DPS will actually have to learn their class and all of their abilities, not just the fancy ones that give them all the Blasty which they seem to love. I can also reasonably say that LFG will be a ghost town for a long while and people will go back to doing 5 mans in their guilds because the instances themselves will be much harder and much less forgiving of stupid.
Also hopefully we'll see end of the plethora of tiny guilds across the servers. I hope no longer that you can hope to grab 10 people and make a guild and go clear end game content. People will once again have to work at their class to actually have some skill to get to endgame. You will have to apply to good guilds and unlike these days actually be prepared.
In essence. I think were about to see a lot of separation the chaff from the wheat.
Aladeran Sep 25th 2010 6:22PM
I will not miss how easy Professions became. I am not a raider, I just enjoy World content, a few 5 men instances, farming and working on my professions. It was disapointing to see that you could craft everything so easily in Wrath (but that trend really started in BC). The only "mild" challenge left was to get the receipes or formulas from dailies, discoveries or drops ... but that lasted until everyone had them all, then what?
I remember Vanilla WoW ... crafting blues was rarely easy, and Epic items were really, really hard to craft. The reagent to make the good stuff required some time to get, at all levels. Did I sweat to get a few Essence of Air or Fire outside an Elemental Invasion ... they just did not drop, but a smile came to my face once the job of getting them was done! Now, farmed stuff is easily available on AH at low price, even the required orbs or primordials are not an issue for a good farmer or AH Guru.
I am longing for items that would give crafters of all sorts a lot of work and pride. I would like to see a balance in professions that levels the field, not based on where you get your Epic formula (like the level 264 BoP formulas in IceCrown Citadel) ... but also on what it takes to make the item, so guys like me can get their kick, without having to Raid or at least get the motivation to start raiding :)
I promess, I will pass on all Boss drops if I can get my precious reagent :P
Well, I do not know much about what Cataclysm will bring about professions, I just hope for the best :D
NecDW4 Sep 25th 2010 7:33PM
I certainly won't be missing loot pinata dungeons.
bdew Sep 25th 2010 7:45PM
Having to kill the same boss 4 times a week on the same character.
Foxfire Sep 25th 2010 10:13PM
The same look of the gear - unfortunately I believe they are keeping the idea that offset gear which match your tier gear?
I really hate that everyone looks exactly the same. It'd be nice to have a bit of variety back again. We had a DPS warrior back in the day of BWL that looked liked a harlequin. Bright pink boots and all sorts of random oddities were great.
It made getting most of your set awesome simply because your stuff matched. That is and will be the thing I miss most. Even if they made the different classes different colours so that people stand out more from each other.
Para Sep 25th 2010 11:09PM
"People griefing about DK players (and DK tanks in particular). DK tanking is what kept me interested throughout the entire expansion."
Dk tanks dont grief them since ive always liked tanks/other healers, what p's me off to unbelievable lengths is that 99.99% of players that have a spec to heal/tank go dps and then whine when q's are too long, then theres the fact that DK players are the new huntards sorry but your just gonna have to live with that newbs (not noobs) roll them since they see their normal class as weak compared to a fresh dk if they play them as soon as they can and strangely enough stick to them >.> and dont learn a thing.
"Waiting 15 minutes in queue as a dps after being spoiled by the insta-queue as a tank."
Not sure what you mean here, if you mean your queuing as dps and getting a long queue annoyed you, read above. If you mean queues will be fast again as dps, yeah they will be but dont expect them to be for long.
"Getting up to go grab a drink with five minutes to go on the LFD timer, only to come back in two minutes to see I was removed from the queue!"
Will still be here in cata.
"Zoning into heroic HOR only to see the tank insta-quit because he's too scared to tank the one challenging heroic left."
Noobs will have a shock in store for cata heroics by the sounds of it, hopefully the trend of instaquitting on "challenging" (i say challenging but hor isnt hard) content.
Malak Sep 26th 2010 1:01AM
yeah. I Loved the heroics in BC, but did not like the attunement. far too steep (like the key's mentioned earlier). Of course, we didn't have tabards back then, this could aid in that regards. But either way, much of the harshness of BC heroics was the attuenement, and then some of the odd mechanics. But some of the attunement wasn't bad IMO. Kara, as an example. you had to do a few dungeon runs, and a fwe quest lines, and you had your key. towards the end they did open it up to all, and teh birth of the 'random raid pug" was born. I big mistake IMO.
Kara with an organized guild (didn't have to be hardcore mind you, just organized, left shoe on left foot kinda deal), was a blast, and it's still my favorite raid because of that (and all the cool fight mechanics, and feel). PuG'ed kara was a nightmare in the making, unless you had a core of overgeared players (from SCC/BT/Sunwell), and then it was a cakewalk. most the runs i've done in wrath ahve felt this way too, and i think it's large in part to the McDonald's appraoch to random PuG's. It's one of those things you do all the time, but hate doing.
my mind twinkled when someone mentioned the PvP boss in MgT...WOW that was a great experience! a pain in the butt at first let me tell ya, but awesome. But on to what I will Not miss...
Random pug's. random Pug heroics just suck. But i need to do them constantly to get the gear i need so i can tank...random pug heroics. sort of backwards if you ask me.
raid guilds built by teenagers who lacked proper leadership experience and spent entire raids calling everyone in vent retards for not knowing fights, when they never explained them in the first place. Or when they whisper in vent "don't tell that new tank that were only 6 of 12, im afraid he's going to leave".
EZ epics. the first 2 were exciting...until you realized that in order to tank heroics most folks expected you to have a stash full of them, and be at least 4.5k gear score. In BC greens were designed out of existence, in Wrath blues were. Blues used to be the standard for non raid players. now even lower epics are a joke. I have NO clue why we even call them Epics, they need to be called "Standards" now. hell, with the random queue all my toons that have hit 80 lately have had enough badges for a free epic the moment they hit 80. I remember when the monacle "welfare epic" came out when badges were first introduced. give me back that system any day of the week now.
Man, I hate gear score. hate it hate it hate it. it's the warcry of the inexperienced so they can sound superior. It was always funny to see folks spam in LFG for a 5.5k GS whatever, then mouse over them and find out that their under 5k....but on the flip side with randoms being the way they are, GS is a quick indicator of survival capability (since skill pretty much goes out the window...you dont' need skill, jsut 5k GS and the ability to spam 3 AoE skills), so it's often a necessary evil. in randoms. which goes back to why I don't like randoms. But when no one in your guild is on, randoms are there...It's like that old girlfriend you really don't' want to be with, but ya know, on lonely nights shes still available...
Oh ya, last but not least, gear skins. they certainly did a good job of homogenizing the gear. If you like the gear look, your golden. If you didn't, your stuck. I hate the look of the gear on my shaman right now, but shes gonna be stuck in the same gear for 10 more levels (just hit 70), because it ALL LOOKS THE SAME. Whats so tough about the concept of costume sets? I never got this one. Other games have them. we already trigger abilities or items that give us a whole new look ( the pre-cat troll event token that turns you into a troll warrior is seriously awesome! I wish alliance had the same, but we got a gnome in a spacesuit O.o ), so why not costume gear sets? most the wrath gear looks like you took an old leather suit and rolled in the mud. just not my cup of tea, YMMV.
Bossy Sep 26th 2010 5:52AM
The good:
- World design stood miles above Vanilla Wow.
- Open world PvP quests - PVE themes were a succes in the first 6 months (Grizzly Hills).
- Wintergrasp was a magnificent designed massive PvP area, despite lag.
- Dual specs added tremendous value to the game - combo with gear changer: a hit !
- Achievements were much needed extra to support challenges.
- Cross server LFG dungeons were a miracle patch for old content.
- Some phasing events were cool.
- Deleting twinks from normal BG's were a blessing to play for lowbies.
- THE BEST: possibility to close/open/close experience gains at free will: WOW !
The bad:
- Too many badges.
- Too fast launch of patches: No one finished Ulduar decently.
- Too fast inflation of gear (see above): loot with badges killed all Raids except the last one.
- Lack of guild achievements and guild play/awards to counter the PUG's.
- Lack of any decent end game content between april and ... december (???) made people quit.
The ugly:
- Terrible PvP at launch (no healer could even start healing so much was the blasting power).
- Terrible PvP at the end (PVE people with 287 gear one shot everything, including those with 30K+ health and 1200 resilience).
- You had to do the full hi end raid PVE to be competitive in PvP, which should NOT be.
- A lot of players started to play WOW as an instance game with parked avatars in Dalaran.
- The world was lost in the end: we hope Cata will bring it back.
Side note: I liked Wintergrasp far more (epic) than Tol Barad (while I could play it on the PTR).
I think Cata lacks epicness, certainly compared to Wintergrasp.
The new MMO from Blizzard NEEDS to be launched within 2.5 years or Blizzard risks to loose much.
Eisengel Sep 26th 2010 6:42AM
I won't miss the ice stone melting...
The Hammer Sep 26th 2010 7:24AM
"that's a kind of player we don't need"
Says who? You? Or the developers who have crafted, maintained, and publicised the game?
Hmm...
After 80 levels and god knows how many hours, people are going to know their class. Don't be so hyperbolic.
Szass Sep 26th 2010 10:27AM
I read most of these comments and have a fair amount of agreement with what has been said.
I like that they fixed the gear curve problem from BC.If you took a break from Wrath you could catch back up.The badge system itself was not so good, but they have learned and altered that.
The ONE THING I don't see mentioned here, and I'm sure there will be more in CATA.
But, I won't miss the Sons of Hodir dailies at all.
Aruhgulah Sep 26th 2010 4:39PM
I will not miss:
A) Gearscore. Gearscore. Gearscore. I'm talking as a high-gearscore person, here. Give me a raid and group with good PLAYERS any day over gearscore l33tists.
B) Defense rating. Gods above, the crap I went through to cap...
C) the Darkshore/Auberdine/whatever the lowbie Night Elf starting area is. Good lord, I tried leveling a Night Elf once. Once. By the time I hit 15th, I was ready to roll a Horde DK and slaughter everything in the area. "Elune be praised", my arse.
el ranchero Sep 27th 2010 10:47AM
I thought Wrath was an interesting experiment into giving players what they want. Almost invariably, they hated those things the most. In BC and Vanilla, players whined endlessly about a) heroics being too hard, b) too much time in instances wasted on "trash," c) there being too steep a learning and gear curve to get into raiding, and d) BC's clownish, technicolor gear.
Judging from this thread, what are the three worst things about Wrath?
1. heroics are too easy
2. ToC, the first trashless raid
3. raiding is too easy and tier gear was too easy for noobs to get
4. gear all looks the same
As a corollary, there's the whole issue of players saying they want stuff harder, but really wanting things easier. They cry incessantly about how easy heroics are and how people can get stuff without "knowing how to play."
You'd think, then, that players would love the harder instances and hate the easy ones, right? When was the last time you heard someone say "Thank God, Halls of Reflection! At least I won't be falling asleep while tanking!"
In fact, in my experiences players consistently complained about all the harder instances and came up with all manners of ways to whine about them without admitting that they really just think they're too hard. Halls of Stone, which had the Tribunal of Ages event? It "came up too often on the LFG." The Oculus, with several slightly tougher than normal fights? "Gah! Vehicles!" "Everyone gets lost in it!"
Notice too that players complain about heroics being too easy, and yet always want to use exploits to gimp the more difficult encounters. Take, for example, the exploits in PoS and the fixed one in HoR.
And let's all be honest: why does everyone REALLY hate vehicles? Because they're harder than other stuff. Notice how Flame Leviathan and the Horde quest in Borean Tundra specifically get a pass upthread, two vehicle quests that *just happen* to be easy. Jousting? Pretty hard for a daily, and everyone hates it. Malygos? Clearly the most hated of the weeklies.