The official WoW forums........

[Keftenk]

They got lazy when they started making Hard modes.
"Oh hey look guys. Exact same raid that's just a bit harder, rewards a half tier higher of items, some unique items AND we won't have to slave away making valuable and legit content for you guys as much as you would want "

[Drain]

The WoW forums have always been a terrible place. But at least the game was good up until Cata. Wrath may have been the beginning of the end, but it wasn't until Cata that it was totally beyond repair, forever condemned as an easy mode amusement park of a MMO. And that's when I hung it up, after a full year in 2011. I was permanently forum banned 3 different times(on the same account, mind you) for speaking against the stupid things they did with the game. But at this point, the crying minority had become the happy majority, with older players like myself leaving in droves. They lost millions in Cata, and as one of those I told them I'd never be coming back without legacy servers.

[MadeByRockets]

Why is everyone saying that Cataclysm was "easy" mode? The heroics were actually heroic for the first 3 months of the game. Raids were pretty challenging. Though I won't even mention 10 man balancing.

Then of course, all the wrath babies cried and they nerfed heroics to faceroll mode again.

Cataclysm wasn't a bad expansion, in fact the premise and content was incredible. In my eyes, it was one of the biggest expansions ever released. However, it was the villain centered around it that made the game fail completely. Lich king was an amazing villain because he taunted you through the entire expansion pack. It was epic to kill him. Deathwing on the other hand would sometimes insta kill you randomly (happened ONCE for me) and then he would fuck off for half the expansion until Dragon Soul.

Blizzard had the money in the ball park and they completely fucked it up with awful lore decisions and a god awful ending to what could have been an amazing expansion.

[Keftenk]

Dragon Soul was such a poorly designed raid...

[Crono]

You know, there is a flipside to a company reading the forums. Just look at Failjin (Gaijin) with warthunder. They completely ignore the english forums. I hear they read the russian forums, as its a russian company, but even then they make decisions based on fictional sky beings or reading runes, who knows. Sometimes its for the best, sometimes for the worse. Either way, the game doesn't change much from patch to patch, and the crybabies keep crying.

If blizzard would have just had the forums be a sounding board for those who didn't want to learn to play or failed to change based how the game went, WoW would still have the epicness of vanilla, with all the improvements for players.

I have always wondered if developers reading the forums and giving in to the crying is good for a game? Maybe profit is the biggest motivator, and if that means giving in to the lowest common denominator, then its a sad day for the future of gaming.

[TheLockKing]

I think Arthas was much more well recieved because you actually got to see his descent into darkness in WC3 and chat with people who knew him, listening to their woes. On top, he just did everything to piss you off (Kinda like Pious in Eternal Darkness)

Deathwing, on the other hand, was pretty much always a dick (WC2 anyone?).. though I do wish he would have attacked random cities (LITERALLY ATTACK) and have to be repelled in a server event that happened every so often until Dragon Soul came out. Almost every quote he has is befitting of what could have been the best villain EVER (I MEAN COME ON!) but he did jack to show it, bringing in Ultima IX's Guardian levels of disappointment.

[Mrplow]

When Cata was announced I was actually really looking forward to it. Especially when I saw Deathwing's human form. I thought he would be a really deep, dark, twisted type bad guy. What we got was a stupid cartoon villain and they NEVER used the human form!!!! Well unless you count the punch in the face joke quest.

[TheLockKing]

When Cata was announced I was actually really looking forward to it. Especially when I saw Deathwing's human form. I thought he would be a really deep, dark, twisted type bad guy. What we got was a stupid cartoon villain and they NEVER used the human form!!!! Well unless you count the punch in the face joke quest.

Hey, stupid cartoon villains can be awesome. Just look at Richard (LFG) and 90s Dr. Doom.

[Wraith§Reaver]

The WoW forums have always been a terrible place. But at least the game was good up until Cata. Wrath may have been the beginning of the end, but it wasn't until Cata that it was totally beyond repair, forever condemned as an easy mode amusement park of a MMO.

I completely agree with you.
I obviously can't compare it with vanilla/tbc, (if it was or not so terrible as many launch players have already said), cause I knew wow from a friend who introduced me to wrath.
It was fun to play, and I loved so much the lore of that expansion, and now I'm glad to be able to fill my lack of physical/material knowledge about vanilla istances/raids/quests etc... so as they were originally meant to be.

[Whiskey]

I haven't played since Cata, I somewhat enjoyed that expansion..what with the difficult heroics early on. I played it for about half a year then quit.

I religiously played WotLK, I could hardly put it down.

MoP/WoD content I never really tried except for the low leveling experience, that was due to the free game time Blizzard offered only a week before launch. I got to about level 57 on a Tauren Shaman then called it quits before the game time expired. Having leveled up primarily through BG's and Arena and I found that Feral Druids were as OP as ever, holy shit the pain.