Most popular WOTLK phase was P1 with naax where u need half of raid with screens turned off to get wipe. Other stable phase was p3 with TOC that is short and easy raid. P2 and P4 got huge decline every week since release, so i gues blizz got feeling that players dont rly want hard raids, for hard raids they got retail.
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In each case we got last patch versions, so there is that.
Retuned versions wouldnât hurt as the current populace most certainly understands this content quite well and we know that less skillful players can still outgear them in 4.1 or so. Leveling takes time anyway.
Comment for the long run future - It could make sense to normalize difficulty across expansions, even though intermediate ones may get deserted. Wrath did it quite well, you have content for fresh 80s and those beyond.
Itâs like the M+ concept except without the chat spamming, selective exclusion and the speed run aspect.
Indeed. This is about the money, and not making a good game. I think you can safely state that, objectively, pre-nerf Cata is a better game than post-nerf Cata.
I come to think of Arin Hansonâs (Egoraptor) criticism of Castlevania 4. This game, compared to the first and second, had an empowered version of the protagonistâs main weapon; the whip. In the first and second game you could only attack forward, whereas in Castlevania 4 you could attack in any direction. This made the whip the best weapon. The game featured other weapons in the form of consumable items, but these werenât necessary in Castlevania 4 since the whip could do anything. In comparison, these items were crucial in the first game.
My point being? The consumable items in Castlevania 4 were badly designed. They werenât necessary. Whatâs the point of having a consumable item if you wonât ever use it. Thatâs kind of what it felt like with most non-damaging abilities in Wrath of the Lich King. You have crowd control and defensive cooldowns but thereâs no need to use them. Accidentally aggroed a second pack? No problem, group up and click the AoE button. Aggroing a second pack should be deadly, and crowd control abilities should be used, and the game should also make sure that everyone has to be on their toes and ready with defensive CDs. Else, whatâs the point of these abilities.
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You canât really outgear pre-nerf Cata heroic dungeons, because they have a lot of one shot mechanics that you just need to learn to avoid. Like Ozrukâs slam will one shot you even in full dragon soul bis gear.
Needs pre-nerf dungeons and raids. Let the âdadsâ stay on SoD where everything is braindead easy.
Me and half my guild have gone to Cata hoping for semi-challenging raids like Ulduar pre nerf/ ICC pre 30% buff.
The pre-nerf dungeons werent even that hard you just had to go back to using stuff like polymorph instead of aoeing 2-3 packs at a time.
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Wrath was garbage and did so much damage to how the playerbase approached the game. If only Cataclysm had followed TBC instead, then no one would have had any problems with the dungeons. But alas, people got used to steamroll dungeons with free epics.
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post nerf cata, what a joke
even in original my tryhard guild carrying gmâs GF and 4 others cleared it pre nerf
dont even think we was top 20 on server, and the servers was alot smaller back then
this rly killed the hype for me 
what angers me the most is that they said âwe thought about it (etc)â like they actually give a âŠ
I CAN ⊠PROMISSE YOU they didnt even CONSIDER the possibility to change it back to pre nerf since it would involve they doing a good days labour
they just dropped the 4.4 patch on us and said ⊠it, went home for the day
JUST LOOK HOW BAD THE PREPATCH WAS!!! i didnt see a SINGLE bug that was fixxed from when i tested the beta.
sadge
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Everything is âpost-nerfâ AKA the way the devs intended for it to be played by the MAJORITY of the player base.
Glad they didnât do any âpre-nerfâ nonsense, We saw how that worked out in TBC/Wrath.
PST: if you want hard content go play retail and do mythic raiding the first few months a raid is out, Thatâs a real challenge none of this old content.
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the way the devs intended it to be played is obv the way it was played untill firelands was released?
its not some unkillable state as XT was in.
TBC/Wrath prenerf was perfect content.
when you kill cata bosses now there is no achivement.
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We have been through this in Wrath, when Cataclysm was announced.
People wanted a challenge. People wanted challenging dungeons.
Blizzard announced they were gonna make dungeons quite a lot harder.
People rejoiced.
But that didnât last long. After about 1 or 2 weeks of having challenging dungeons people cried and cried and cried and then cried some more about âhaving to spend two hours just to get dailies doneâ.
Then Blizzard nerfed it.
I wouldnât be too surprised that for this reason Blizzard starts with the nerfed versions right away.
And yet, people didnât cry in TBC.
I mean, itâs the same damn thing that happened with Cataclysm last time around. The problem is exacerbated thanks to the RDF, because in WLK dungeons became unfun spam content that people only did to get their rewards. If they spoke it was to tell others to hurry up.
These people expect dungeons to be void of any challenge and for communication to be unnecessary/unwanted. Then, in Cata, they encountered dungeons that were challenging and required communication and they cried. Blizzard went out of their way, sticking to their guns, telling people that Heroic Dungeons are supposed to be hard. And yet they nerfed them all the same.
The post-nerf dungeons arenât better (design-wise) than the pre-nerf ones. They are just more compatible with the mindset that WLK bred. The same mindset that causes people to go absolutely mental over Archaeology solves.
Thank god donât think this way.
You were definitely not here if you think this, This forum was ONLY threads complaining about SSC and TK for the 2 months they were âpre-nerfâ.
And donât get me started on all the complaining about Heroic dungeons, If you werenât a mage or a warlock and a prot pala you were not getting a spot.
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Noobs gonna cry about everything, its best not to cater to them. Its how Blizzard originally lost most of their playerbaseâŠ
noobs = majority of the player base which is who the devs care about 
And actually no Blizzard started losing players because content started getting too hard and people stopped being equal.
Hm, now that you mention it, that does ring a bell. I played a rogue and never had any trouble finding a group, so I always thought the complaints were hyperbolic. Still, if we look at the numbers on Ironforge, the player retention was rather steady throughout TBC. It didnât have the same dips that we saw in Wrath.
This is not true. I was around, a hardcore player, and on the forums everyday. Ill tell you this: the forums werenât used just to complain about things the whole time.
If ppl complained about anything it was about warlocks being absolutely impossible to kill in pvp. In general people would discuss things like how to tackle PVE encounters, tips on dps, discuss gear, best items, and in the broader sense class balance.
I would go as far as claim that people enjoyed the game, rather than âhaving to this and that and then get this kind of gear, get things done, untill they can finally stop playing the gameâ.
Either way, I tink in TBC heroic dungeons got introduced so late and the loot they dropped being subpar to even Karazhan loot, that people in general didnt bother to go there. I for sure didnt go there for the gear, tho I did go and check it out at some point I guess.
People didnt complain about raids in general, they were expected and accepted to be difficult
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???
Checked it for you, it is not the mode itself but the daily reward that got introduced so late, in the ZA patch, patch 3.2.0 by then, all the epic loot dropping there had become irrelevant, if it was not so from the very start if you could also do Kara.
EDIT: I am talking about the original TBC, 15 years ago.
Yes, this time people cried about everything the whole time crying about anything remotely challenging, so actually I do agree with you.