Warlords of Draenor was much worse than Shadowlands

Community General Discussion
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So recently I thought of leveling a new character through Warlords of Draenor expansion. When I was questing through the zones and doing the dungeons it made me realize how horrible and unfinished the expansion was. The zones had barely any story especially gorgrond and the dungeons are just there for the sake of it. Atleast in Shadowlands we had mediocre story and content to keep us busy but in WoD there is literally nothing, even the leveling zones are unfinished and rushed. It made me really depressed to return to WoD and I will never level a character again in those WoD zones. That expansion is the reason why the game started going in a downhill path.

Now the real reason why I made this thread is because Warlords of Draenor expansion was directed by Chris Metzen back in 2014. Yes the same Chris Metzen that has returned to blizzard and people are now praising how WoW is saved because the messiah has returned. Tell me guys how can this man save WoW when he made the most bad, unfinished and hated expansion in the history of this game?

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I completely disagree with you. I love the WoD levelling experience. I recently did SL again and couldn’t wait for it to be over.

As for people praising Chris Metzen returning they are in for a nasty shock - Metzen has changed, he is older and has a family now. He accepts modern day values and is working WITH the current team. They are not going to return to how vanilla was and people are likely going to scream about it. Not that I care, I am amongst those happy with the new direction.

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Some of the worst games out there are a result of understaffing and overworking trying to meet an unreasonable schedule. Who the director was probably had little to do with it.

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I liked WoD because it was the one expansion that I felt I could properly finish and complete before the next expansion came out. I could comfortably raid-log, do a bunch of Mythics with friends (M0 started in WoD), tackle challenge modes. It was the only time I felt I could play this game and also “have a life” (including playing other games without feeling like I should spend the time on WoW instead).

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WoD was fun
im one of the few people that enjoyed Ashran and the garrisons

it was the closest ive felt to having a player housing option whilst also having customisations

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Storywise WoD was okish save for the ending. What they needed to do was not scrap what they had mid dev due to “too many orcs” feedback… As well as throwing in a plot point that made it so that something like WoD couldn’t happen again in quite some time.

The garrisons were a neat concept albeit a bit too isolated. The aesthetics of WoD were wonderful. The Music was also great.

Had it been given the same amount of dev-time as Legion and DF it would probably have been one of the most popular expansions to date.

Also do actually wish that they hadn’t abandoned garrisons. Would have been a great feature to introduce buildings for the various races outside of just humans and orcs.

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Well, I liked wod quest zones, garnizon was a balast for me, but it’s obvious that at some point they just completely abandoned the project on the half way and plug the hole with content such as twitter integration or new photo mode XD

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What WoD had was great and they got plenty of story in the zones. The story was more linear and easy to follow.
In Shadowmoon you have to deal with the Shadowmoon Clan and Ner’zhul.

Gorgrond had the Blackrock Clan and their operations, the attempt to enslave the Breakers, while you had to deal with the Primals and their spores trying to take over and infect everyone.

Spires of Arak had the story of the Arakkoa in both present and past. Plus a little Goblin side story that ends with you recieving building plans.

Frostfire Ridge was dealing with the Ogres and the Thunderlord clan with a nice plot twist at the end.

Nagrand had the story of the Warsong clan and the Burning Blade Clan with the end of Garrosh Hellscream.

The only reason WoD is considered the worst is because the open world stopped proving content and the content planned was scrapped, which resulted in a big part of the story missing. A real shame and i kinda hope the will add a WoD classic with the planned content to finally give us the full experience.

In my opinion the levelling was great, the dungeons were fun, Raids wll designed. I loved the cutscenes at the end of the zones and each zone had a strong identity that seperates it from each other. Overal WoD could have been a great expansion.

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Yep! I loved Garrisons and I still build one for every character I play. I like having a proper home for my characters, a place that is just mine – even if it’s instanced and everyone has nearly an identical place, didn’t have much customization, and made the capitals a little emptier. I still loved them.

A new iteration of Garrisons would really get me hyped, much more than anything else they’ve talked about for TWW-plus.

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i would love Guild Garrisons to be a thing

i feel that could be the perfect balance, maybe put the portal on a 4 hour window to stop people sitting at the garrison

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Didn’t have a chance to play during WoD, since I am still a Retail baby (started in SL - I know maybe the worst time to start), but I got through the story, campaign, raids and most of things from it.

For me, some zones and factions are really great (read Arakkoa) and would like to see more of it in the future. Garrison concept is also great, I love it. But overall, the expansion somehow feels “unfinished”, they could do/implement much more things to increase the quality of it.

Even now I think it is not late to get some updates for Garrisons… and Class Halls, too.

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I would just like to say…:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

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I personally enjoyed WoD, levelling was fun, it was a shame the garrison wasn’t useable to start with, they did fix it a lot later. We all just pointed each other to the next zones and where to head.

The raiding was great. The only problem for most was that WoD had such huge last season.

I wasn’t a superfan of the legendary where one activates it for all, it’s always one of those things that’s used when it benefits the highest dps, but isn’t that always the way :dracthyr_hehe_animated:

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As a returning player, I just leveled through WoD fully and it wasn’t bad. The dungeons did have a story to them, so not sure where you missed that. I’ve also leveled quit a bit in SL and absolutely hate it, mainly due to the amount of work needed to unlock flying and the fragmented story. Also, for alts, WoD is the fastest leveling zone using chromie time.

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I massively agree with this opinion, and I still think that WOD was the worst period of retail wow’s history. Shadowlands had several mistakes, but atleast it had tons of content and things to do, rather than sitting in garrisons and farming cata raids for gold.

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I will give you Gorgrond, but Spires, Shadowmoon, Frostfire and Talador were ok, hell there were some cool bits in Nagrand as well. Granted none of these zones were we (or at least I was) expecting, more focused on the actual warlords and not the people/species living there but still it at least felt like something set in the warcraft universe (regardless the timetravel alternate universe BS).
Now lets go over to SL…
Bastion the place where we are told that the spirit healers come from, filled with blue amnesiacs that do not look like any spirit healer I have seen (spirit healers look more like angels, while these guys were clearly inspired by ancient greeks, also blue) . The whole idea behind the Kyrians is duty fisrt emotions never, ferry the dead souls to the SL, the spirit healers literally bring you back to life.

Maldraxxus… very generic “undead” zone that really tried to do GoT houses but failed miserably. We are told that Maldraxxus is the army of the Shadowlands, only for devout warriors, spies (I guess), wizzards etc… sooo can someone please explain to me how the hell was Lady Vasch fits in there?

Ardenweald- Emerald Dream sponsored by Disney. Also speaking about unfinished, what the hell even happened with the drust there? Anyway, what the hell was even their covenant story ? Go and save Tyrande from being the night warrior (lets not even bring up what that payoff was), randomly Bobsalami asks you for help and you find Vol’jin who then absorbs the Dino of Light and I guess now becomes the new Dino of Light?.. Go on a hunting trip with Elite Tauren Chieftain, recruit other night warriors that are in other covenants other than Ardenweald (even though that doesn’t really make sence either), save unicorn bro from stuff, sudden drust attack but we win. I mean…

Ravendread- Evil Draenei looking guy is evil and is stealing anime from the other weebs. Insert retcon that the Dreadlords aren’t actually demons but were actually enhanced and at the same time prototype versions of gargoyles created by Eveil Draenei looking guy who is obviously evil.

The maw had a story I swear. Also I would like to bring up the fact that the Maw is considered to be the “Hell” in Warcraft, ok so let me ask you then what is Ravendread? You go to the maw, where you get tortured for your sins and drained of your anime, so what do you do in Ravendread, oh you get tortured for your sins and get drained of your anime buuuut if you get tortured long enough and you repent you might become a vampire… so what exactly is the difference here?

I am not defending WoDs story but what SL did to the story and characters was utter annihalation.

That was Cata, and SL was the all time low to date soo.

WoD had some good dungeons like Shadowmoon, Skyreach, Docks, Depo. I absolutely despise every SL dungeon, sure there were some interesting gimmicks like the MoT labirint but they didn’t really fit in with the purpose of what the dungeons were actually meant to serve, spamed into oblivion in M+. Not to mention the whole Covenant bonuses that each dungeon provided meaning that you had to form your group with at least one person that belonged to the correct covenant.

Metzen is going to be in charge of story, under him we had Vanilla that had no overarching story but great zone stories, TBC which was yikes, WotLK which most here consider GOAT, Cata which was yikes again, MoP which was ok, WoD which was yikes yet again, and Legion which again is considered GOAT by people. Under Afrosalami and Denuser we had BfA which was yikes, Under Denuser Solo we had Sl which destroyed any story and lore in WoW and we are starting to see retcons of it and DF which at least isn’t offensive but still very boring story wise. Yeah I will place my bets on the guy who actually delivered some Ws.

You do know thats SL right? Like WoD it clearly had content cut out of it, the drust story and the inactive portal in Oribos are claear proof of that, and idk how you can call the maw “finished”. The systems in SL alone were enough to make many quit icluding myself. The illusion of “content” that were all the daily/wekly chores just to trick you into loging in. The abhorrent class design, the very “balanced” covenant choices that totally didn’t pigeon hole you into an aesthetic you didn’t like. Oh let’s not forget the absolute banger the disconected zones were and the fact you literally had to use a flight pat (that absolutely insisted on visiting Oribos every single time) in order to go from zone to zone. Yup very boloved expansion. Also literally proven to be the all time low.

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The question is - was it Metzen who cut the Expansion short ?
It is obvious they had great story plans for Draenor .

I’m 90% certain that Tanaan was supposed to be the first zone . You can practically feel the story telling tone get changed , when you enter the portal .
We were supposed to see the Ogre continent and Gronn . Maybe uncover titan stuff as hinted in Gorgrond.
We were supposed to see the raise of Gul’Dan and his origins .
Participate in the fall of Shattrath and the Black Temple .
Garrosh and the time dragon definitely shouldn’t have died in the backwater Nagrand in some bushes .
Hell , Maybe we would even see the planet get blown up .

Instead we got what we got .
It feels like someone said . Nop , that is too much work from gameplay and build perspective and scraped all story in favor of return Illidan for the “Cool Factor” and as a marketing pitch .

Metzen as far as I know was responsible for the creative story , not whether or not it would be implemented in the game .
After WoD he quit . Probably exactly because the story was cut and torn apart due to some “internal stuff” . No writer likes when someone tells them what they should write and than someone decides to just tear out parts of his writing and throw them in the bin .

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Ruining Orc lore and the lack of any content was the main issue of WoD. And I agree it was infact the next worst expansion on par with Bfa. The hate against shadowlands is not justified.

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Where Blizz went wrong (IMO) was to make the entire garrison zone a personal instance. Other games make the exterior housing zone a public instance and then turn the house/apartment itself into a private instance. This means that you can still randomly socialise with people on the outside, but have your own little customisable zone on the inside.
My main issue with the garrison was how lonely it felt inside. Guild garrisons would’ve been great, but a “public outside, private inside” approach with special lots for guild houses inside a larger city-like structure would’ve also worked.

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Yeah, Garrison would probably have been better received if it was more like Ashran. By having it so that you got to customize your buildings, guards and companions, but otherwise it was mostly deemed a shared space (excluding invasions).

Also it didn’t help that horde was stuck with orc architecture, spikes and snow the entire expanion.