Which expansion hurt WoW the most in the long term?

Community General Discussion
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Which expansion introduced or removed things that still hurt the game now in Shadowlands?

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Cataclysm.

It was the expansion where we started massively losing the playerbase.

Also raid finder…

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WoD or Legion. WoD slightly more though.

WoD introduced Mythic, killed off 10 and 25 man PVE guilds, started the descent of class pruning, killed professions, and lowered player expectations.

Legion added M+, AP grinds, world quests and the weekly chest.

Combined, these 2 expansions are responsible for most of what I consider is wrong with WoW outside of class balance.

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Not legion… legion was a massive success.

Wod…

Horrible game… only 3 raids! Rng secondary stats lol… chance to hit twice ect haha… what a mess.

Legion revived the game and then bfa killed it again… bfa was dying from start to finish.

Sl revived the game again for about 2 months and then the curtains opened to a very dead game… professions again not even thought of… may aswell remove them from the game at this point!

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Although I agree that Legion was much needed for the game with almost all of its features, I must confess that on the long run I think m+ was not a good addition. It magnified so many issues that plagued the game that it is downright scary.

Like yeah, toxicity and general a-holeness was always present, but it became so mainstream that it is not really funny anymore.

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Mists of Pandaria removing talent trees. Perhaps the great prune of WoD, the start of ‘scaling’ areas in Legion might be another one. A curse and a blessing, scaling stuff has been a mess from the start.

I wouldn’t say Cataclysm because of the fact that it mostly hurt raids, and raids are doing great currently.

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WoD pruning…hands down.

It went downhill from there…stat squish level squish just doesnt compliment an rpg game. Imho.

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I wonder, if WoW stayed in the classic mindset (Just “mindset” but still the same WoD, Legion, BFA expansion for every thing else) logic still aka 7+ days to max level, No random finders and only 1 difficulty.

Would it have survived the test of time?

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Legion obviously, although it was a good expansion.

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Can’t pick only one expansion. Sometimes it’s a combination of things from different expansions that results in a problem.

Example:
Sharding was introduced in WoD, was pretty much needed. But then they scraped away the PvP realms and introduced War Mode - split the community ĂĄnd sharded them. But at least we had an incentive to PvP in the world. Now we lost that incentive and are stuck with the three named systems leading to a deserted world.

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In retrospect (and at the time) Cataclysm. People didn’t want the world they’d been playing in for years to be changed so drastically. Probably many of them are now playing Classic.

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Nope, it would still be going like Everquest with maybe 40-50k players.

Times change and you have to change with them.

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I agree with you 9999%.

Especially on this

In the long run those features screwed up multiple aspects within the fundation of the game. Especially the whole “mythic+ vs PvP and Raiding” gearing argument.

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I agree with WoD.
They removed factions out in the world with Daily hubs. Many might have rejoiced but Dailies for Factions felt more immersive.
WoD was the beginning of the higher mob density, convoluted terrain mazes (nowhere near as bad as in Legion or SL).
They tried to remove Flying (which still haunts the game today).
Massive content drought. Legion tried to redress this but not sure the lesson was learnt.

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I don’t know about massively losing players, But one thing for sure Cataclysm changed the world massively and past a point of no return, unless they make a expansion that we travel back in time, Cataclysm changed the game forever

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TBC, introduced flying, basicly killing the RPG feel of the game.

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I don’t know why people keep bringing up this “world changing” thing.
How the hell does this affect any other expansion? In MoP we played in pandaria, a different continent, in Wod we played in Draenor, a different planet, in Legion we played on Broken Isles, etc
The changed continents of Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms have no impact on subsequent expansions.

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Cataclysm.

It was when Blizzard changed the whole Old World, and not for the better. The Alliance story was ruined and filled with pop-culture references, and the Horde story - with atrocities. Story aside, a lot of zones that invoke modern nostalgia were lost.

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Personally: Cata, made me quit the game.
Overall: probably WoD.

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So if I were cynic, I’d say wrath, because it introduced many hated systems like :
-Gear catch up
-Automated queues

But if I were serious, I would say why I don’t think most of expansion didn’t hurted the game :
-Cataclysm didn’t hurted the game, as LFR was just building upon wrath’s LFD.
-MoP’s new talents tree didn’t hurted the game as talents were TRUE talents and classes were really solid on their own.
-WoD’s pruning was not that bad, not at all.

So that leads us to Legion and BFA. And even if I enjoyed Legion, after all things considered, I do think Legion hurted the most the game. Here is why :

-Classes got butchered in Legion. Sure, they were fast paced, so it felt great, but that came at a cost, which was specs being pruned to death. When I dare to say wod’s pruning was nothing, it’s because legion’s pruning dwarves wod’s.

-More on classes : Some specs still have poor design like UH. By that, I mean combo points tied to a given target was a bad idea, therefore, was changed for rogues. Why should DK have such poor design ? And I’m not going to mention SV becoming a melee only spec and Demonology’s failed rework.

-More on class, 2 : And because we lost so much, Blizzard relies on borrowed powers to give a bit of that stuff back, which means classes are being designed around borrowed powers, rather than the contrary, which translates in some specs not being functionnal with their baseline kit, which should be the case.

-Those borrowed powers also implied some boring chores. Fortunately, they’re no longer on a daily basis, yet, there are still a lot of chores to do in the game to improve borrowed powers (soul ash) and there should be other ways to get those.

Overall, Legion did damage the game more in the long term.

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