From my perspective this first expansion did change the wow quite a lot and not in very good way, here I would like to address the points where I think tbc was not good change:
Faction balance overkill where they made horde pretty much the only way to go by making the horde racials better than on other side and also creating the horde paladin only OP seal, I don’t remember they added something similar for ally shaman which would make all shamans switch to ally, when all paladins would be on horde already. Also that faction imbalance featuring OP horde was in the game for almost decades after TBC launched, where almost all top guilds were mostly horde based because of racials and all that min max stuff. Basically while making TBC they wanted to balance factions so there will be no overwhelming alliance population but it turned out to become a big failure, where they just made another faction OP.
Lore retcons to add Draenei to alliance (I personally don’t care much about it, but objectively it was one of the mistakes made by Blizz back in the day);
Rushed release with some changes and additions totally being scrapped (like adding ogres as playable race), they could just let the developers cook and then after everything ready release. I doubt the players back then were so hungry for the new content coming, few months wait would be not that big of a deal.
My personal nitpick: Addition of blood elves was kinda questionable, it looked like they wanted them into horde so hard, because Horde was needed pretty race to attract players to that faction, and probably to be in line with Garithos lore which is fine. But in my opinion they could execute their relations between elves and all the factions more open minded and not force the alliance spies in Silvermoon to make sure blood elves will be horde only, maybe that would be fine to get first neutral race so early. They could also add some sort of redemption arc for the alliance as a questline which would explain aftermath of Garithos and that alliance was not ignorant about it. But once again it is my own nitpick on the matter.
Old world became quickly irrelevant, and the expansion concept probably planted that mindset of rushing to the endgame as fast you can. TBC was the first ever expansion to release, which introduced new level cap and new content outside of the old world. But other games were also using expansion concept so it is not necessarily bad thing.
content wise it was fun and one of the greatest expansions. And I don’t say it was bad as I would say SL was, but it had quite a lot of things messup in my opinion. like the faction balance failure or some lore retcons
Well that happen when people **Dev like Ghostcrawler admited that they were playing Horde and even Raiding in High top Guilds as Horde players.
Since Wotlk Many Alliance Guilds/players Posted about the problem with Pve Racials that at that point Horde Troll-Orc were 2%-8% ahead of any Alliance race…
What did they do ?? 2 more expansions nothing changed were top Guild like Vodka-Method and many more…(53 Guilds transferred from Ravencrest Eu to Horde side… over the years an Insane Number )
Ravencrest Eu over the last 7 years lost 47 % of population and we are talking about the biggest Alliance Server…
That’s what happen when a multi billion company have idiots on charge.
(Tbc wasn’t a mistake …people in charge was the mistake )
Well you can Go …Draenor …Tarren Mill…Kazzak…Twisting Nether and 4 more Servers
where the population is 2x for Horde …
The ratio there are 95% Horde 5% Alliance:)
How was it a mistake when a game that’s close to 20 years old is still subscription based, and not in maintenance, and there’s another 3 expansions coming.
Did none of the time travelling with Chromie teach you how delicate manipulating the past is. I think we’re in a pretty good alternate timeline right now.
Oh and ofc the fact that they started the negative loop of constantly raising the level cap, invalidating past content and effort as well as kneecapping their own balance.
World pvp was doomed from it’s inception. I remember already back in vanilla that pvp servers were congregating into being horde or alliance servers. Recall quite clearly being ridiculed for making an alliance on a horde pvp server.
Only like 1 and few other examples of alliance based server, you have a whole lot horde servers to choose from, and once again top guilds are all horde, at least it was the case until they introduced crossfaction guilds
I might be decades late, but the thing is the faction balance was ruined back in TBC and the consequences are felt to this day, at least till recently all top guilds were horde and overall horde is more popular even by now
