Might be unpopular, but I think Orc architecture fit the Horde garrison better than human architecture for the Alliance one. It should have been Draenei, or at least heavily Draenei inspired.
With the Orc garrison being built in Frostwolf territory, it made sense for me that it would have an Orc style to it. It felt a bit off to have a human garrison in Shadowmoon though. I know we’ve built the garrison from ground up, but it still felt more out of place to me thant the Horde one. Or I am just weird.
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What could have been had they not abandoned garrison :<
WoD was abit hit and miss but I never get tired of Frostfire Ridge. The quests and storyline are really good and it just looks amazing.
You could argue that Shadowlands had a more in depth and involving storyline but thats not such a great thing when its old.
WoD is alot less complicated to level alts in and def flows better.
Not sure if trolling, but I’ll bite.
WoD was a good expansion starting out. It came on the heels of Mists of Pandaria, which ended with a content drought that lasted over a year. So people were eager to get some new content after all that time.
But for whatever reason, Blizzard messed up the patch content of WoD in a major way. I’m guessing they ran into problems and at some point decided to simply abandon it in favour of putting all their resources into Legion. But it sucked for players.
However, when it launched it had a lot of good things going for it. Garrisons were initially a lot of fun. Shadowmoon Valley and Frostfire Ridge were very cool and unique zones. The other zones were fun as well; Nagrand is an obvious fan favourite but Gorgrond was surprinsingly cool, and Spires of Arak as well. It’s just a shame we never got to see Fahralon, and Tanaan Jungle was a bit dark and dreary for my taste.
Opening scenario was action-packed and very cool with all the warlords being introduced using those floating name signs. But yeah, it lacked that endgame content. I will say Hellfire Citadel was cool as… hell… though!
Shadowlands was bad for an entirely different reason. It just didn’t feel like Warcraft, at all. Not only that, but almost everything in it was so depressing. Ardenweald and Bastion are obviously beautiful, and I very occasionally feel a bit nostalgic over Oribos, because of how solemn it felt. The story was poor as well, with players just being teased about future events and never getting any conclusions to anything.
That’s part of why I dislike Shadowlands a lot more. With WoD, I can at least see a beautiful concept from developers that understood the Warcraft setting. Orcs and Humans. Cool warlords and fortifications. Homages to the RTS games. Khadgar being brought back. Maraad dying a hero.
Shadowlands, on the other hand, feels like people who don’t understand Warcraft attempted something they shouldn’t have. They trampled all over established, beloved lore, and introduced a bunch of nonsense with the “Super Titans” (a.k.a. First Ones), death robots, and what not. Ew.
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The only problem of WoD was that most resources needed to be put on Legion development, surely they underestimated the scope of a expansion with also many new systems like Legion that they had to put more people working on Legion.
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I think they were both bad but i played wod more than sl.
However bfa was worse than both of them combined.
Cant really speak for df as i havent really played since the first patch.
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Ignoring end game I honestly found WoD having a great leveling and questing experience.
By comparison I thought SL was dull.
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I’m forced to disagree. WOD is literally the best leveling experience I ever had in this game.
And don’t be fooled. WOD was a disaster because of its lack of content, not bc the quality of the content itself that was really good actually.
The story gets worse later with Archimonde but even then it’s far better than anything that came after BFA.
We are safe with Metzen.
I would play WoD PvP any day of the year for 5 years bevor i have too q one season SL PvP
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keep dreaming
I believe it was overly negative player feedback because of Orc oversaturation and the daily gameplay being mostly logging in to get the mission table going. There was no major hub to feel like you’re playing a multiplayer game, people logged in alone, did their missions alone and logged off again (unless it was a raid night).
Blizzard decided to divert all resources towards Legion, and WoD was cut short with an infamously stupid ending and a massive content drought.
For me, the major issues began with BfA already. It felt like they were trying to recreate Song of Fire and Ice/Game of Thrones. But they lacked the commitment to focus on the war, they lacked the courage to just let one faction be absolute villains.
On the mechanics front they took the artefact weapon system and the legendaries and replaced them with a slot machine gearing system which only helped to show how much Legion’s pruning had hurt class gameplay. They proceeded to stumble through multiple different “core mechanic” designs, none of which really made the game/classes more fun.
Content wise, I thought islands were a disaster, warfronts were a massive snoozefests and, controversially, I hate almost all of the BfA dungeons. I don’t raid, so I can’t comment.
But overall it’s fair to say that BfA is my lowest rated expansion for WoW, sitting even below SL and WoD. SL at least had more fun gameplay loop, I liked some of the dungeons more, the side acitivites were more fun, and we got some memorable, cool characters like Denathrius or Theotar. Overall, SL was pretty bad, but it had at least some redeeming qualities. Cataclysm and BfA on the other hand were the only expansions that made me unsubscribe.
But yeah, this is not just looking at the story but overall expanson content. Story-wise, SL has arguably done more damage to the lore than BfA or even Cata and is the worst expansion of them all.
An expansion is not only it’s leveling experience. It’s no longer possible to judge past expansions unless you played them live. You are only playing a small snipet of it.
With that said, both stories are incomplete at the original release. I do enjoy the feel of Draenor and it’s zones better though.
The fact that the shadowlands zones are seperate is a pain as well. I always thought it was a bad idea since alpha.
But as an expansion as a whole you have to weight many things and the main difference for me was that WoD was great but there wasn’t enough of it.
Shadowlands had plenty, but i didn’t necessarily want more.
On the other point, the decisions were made by the higher ups. If you recall, they cancelled Titan, their other mmo and shifted much of the staff to WoW that now needed coaching to be able to work on the game. Means lots was cut from WoD is favor of Legion.
Metzen had no say. Also, i am sure Tom Chilton was director back then. Metzen was never director nor is he now. It’s ian Hazzicostas.
Metzen oversees the creative side of the warcraft IP. He does not decide what gets put in and what is cut. He just lays out creative concepts for setting and story which the team then brainstorms and shapes.
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WoDs problem was that it had almost no end-game content.
I loved WoD enhancement shaman, the way it played. Then they ruined it with the legion rework and I never really touched enhancement shaman again.
The only thing i dont like totally about wod is the ork setting. But as a levelling exp was really good. Good quests, good rep farming, interesting plot. And 2 of the best zones ever (nagrand and shadowmoon).
Shadowlands is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay worse
I think it boils down to personal taste
WoD actualy had a very solid story even if they had to prune it left and right it was coherent logical, followed up Pandaria and was a nice prelude for Legion
It had its place and gave us lore that not contradicted previous ones
The leveling experience was decent
Okay, the Draenor flying was pain in the fluffy rear end, but you felt you really earned it after complated the requirments
My only problem was the Alliance Garrison aesthetics - boring human colony when we had awesome Draenei desgins left and right and could have a real Draenei outpost
It was a missed opportunity to throw a bone to the space goat fans
Shadowlands?
Was a horrible chaotic mess, without any story or meaning - it only served to demolish decades worth of lore and characters
Thread ends here for me tbh. Literally the first sentence.
You can not judge an entire expansion on it’s leveling alone. A lot of others in this thread already told you why but seeing you didn’t even reply once to your own thread makes me positive you just made this to spark controversy at best or to troll at worst.
This is bad?
Sorry but no that is not what people said when it happened. Is someone holding a weapon to your head forcing you to say this? Or i the “stick it to shadowlands.” need this great that you are making stuff up? WOD will never be better then SL ever.
Where is this coming from?? Sure both WoD and SL are controversial expansions but the general consensus with the playerbase is that WoD had great content but that it severely lacked in end game additions. I agree with Umbriel that the opening of WoD was a great experience.
SL on the other hand? Not so much… The first trek through the maw mas meh at best, Oribos intro was pretty tame too. SL zones looked nice enough but the lore was all over the place, retconned a lot of stuff and moving to Oribos to get to a new zones felt disjointed. This is subjective ofcourse but again this seems the general opinion when you compare the two expansions.
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SL is garbage. PERIOD. Not just story wise. But from a game-play perspective.
My main complaint about WoD was messing around with time travel.
You NEVER mess with time travel and “alternate timelines”.
If Blizz was so adamant to returning to pre-Manoroth Draenor, a more interesting story-line would have been to time-travel to the past, and introduce us to that world. That is what the bronze dragon flight is for.
Make some massive conflict out there… Horde gets orcs. Alliance gets Draenei, with a cool civilization there. Not some random refugees.
Possible candidates for “bad guys” would have been the “earth” and “plant” people living there. Or the Legion. Not much is known from Pre-Manoroth Draenor anyways. So the slate is clean.
The cool thing about this concept is that in the end… you know what needs to be done. You cant change the past. So Orcs need to drink the green goo…
And the alliance must help in that. Knowing that their allies (the local Draenei) will be massacred as a result. And the horde… must also help. Knowing that it will doom their race.
THAT would have been awesome.
But no alternate timelines. Those always suck.
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