World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

I am a little annoyed that this expansion is the highest rated of the first 3 editions of WoW here. This has inspired me to fulfill my prepubescent nerd dream of writing a somewhat intelligible, yet totally long-ass essay comparing Wrath of the Lich King to editions prior. Wrath has a lot going for it: it's a generally more balanced and polished product compared to its predecessors, and the overall gameplay for most classes is probably more satisfying.

The quests are still good, the art and design is certainly better, and the story arc is understandable and alluring, without being as gratuitous and convoluted as it soon would become. Raids are more challenging overall, and non-raiders have plenty of interesting challenges too. I will say it: this is fun and good! PvP is overall more balanced than ever (if ignoring the shit state of the arena system, and that you might as well unplug your keyboard when facing a formidable death knight). Unfortunately though, this expansion is when the magic of the original began to slowly fade. With the introduction of Wrath, the series began to devalue the immersion of being a frail mortal in the treacherous world of Azeroth and Outlands.

A Thrilling Yet Hollow World
I suppose the vanilla game rating is blasted by people who just use it to rate WoW's general gameplay, but the fun I've had slugging around vanilla and TBC is more or less still an unmatched online gaming experience. WoW has always required a fair bit of investment to enjoy, and a willingness to put up with it's more archaic features. When you do commit, though, you are rewarded with the chance to explore a world that is brutal yet forgiving, unknowable yet absolutely transparent (especially now), complexly detailed yet fundamentally simple. Leveling in vanilla and TBC is more exciting, because the environment is more formidable and comparitively rewarding. Every item is valuable, every enemy a worthwhile hurdle. Because of this, there is no sense of guilt in inviting someone to your party for a quest: they might not want your help, but they won't think youre a weirdo noob for trying to group up. No one starts off a hero.

The flatness of design in the first two editions carries over into itemization as well. In vanilla there are plenty of cases where an item from a dungeon at level 48, or a trinket earned questing at level 35, will serve you for the rest of the game. Items in level 60 dungeons will last you to level 70 in TBC. You are rewarded for using items that aren't on the BIS list, and making choices that don't match up with the simulated best build. Before Wrath, there is a serious chance you'll encounter a member of the opposite faction, and you might not have an easy way out: sometimes you'll have to stand your ground and fight. You forced to use your primordial class mechanics, and whatever items you have, to meet the desired result. In Wrath, gear and items seldom remain for multiple tiers, and there is almost always a way to counter-strike, or slip out of combat, for every class. You are always pushed in the direction of least resistance.

PvE: What's in a guild, anyways?
Each of the first three editions of WoW suffer from the same grind-y nature of the endgame, which asks players to repeat the same group content for weeks on end in order to *qualify* to engage with the most current content. In vanilla this was remedied somewhat by an easy-going experience with palpabale camradery. Everyone knew the fights, and if you didn't it hardly mattered. If you missed this week's raid it's fine because you're either not needed or replaceable, and after a few guild runs, gear is so readily available that you're probably already equipped for the upcoming raid. This is the "vanilla magic" that people love to tell stories about. The occasion is casual and fun, and any upgrades that come your way make enough of a difference to keep you going. People are bored sometimes, but it's only the crazy people that get mad at this point.

The obvious pitfall of making your content easy and approachable, is that your best players will run out of motivation and challenge. The tug of war between approachable design and plenty of challenges is what Blizzard has struggled with most in their MMO, and it's tough to blame them. Their solution coming into TBC: "YOU ARE NOT PREPARED!" TBC is when the step up in difficulty of endgame PvE content became apparent to everyone.

The Tug of War That Snapped A Franchise
With the release of TBC, raid groups were shrunk from 40 to 25. In vanilla, there was little competition for a raid spot, because there are 40 raid spots, with 5-15 players being just totally optional. You didn't have to run the same heroic dailies every day for weeks just to have a chance at a raid spot.

To put it simply: I would rather spam frostbolt through raid tiers in vanilla, than play an admittedly more engaging spec in later expansions against denser mechanics, just because it seems that the social aspect of the game erodes away completely once slightly challenging group mechanics are introduced. A person is smart, people are dumb. For example, have you ever had to teach people how to click on a huge floating cube during Magtheridon? The somewhat justifiable sass that "good players" have coddling others is just as annoying as the complete noob who came wholly unprepared, and soon enough everyone is annoyed: the raid leader is annoyed, the raid assistant is annoyed, the noobs are annoyed, and so is everyone in between. The comms get tense. Jokes get hushed. The vibe is in shambles.

Such an endgame experience feels more like a shitty group marathon every week, than some tactfully orchestrated dice rolls with your pals. Tired of raiding Naxx/ToC for weeks on end? Well fuck you, Ulduar/ICC (the content people actually love) is releasing in 5 weeks and you still don't have 5k gear score, so get benched nerd, and wait for a raid spot, or drop 20k gold for a modest but sufficient upgrade that will be replaced as soon as you get your raid spot. Even though vanilla wow fanboys are undoubtedly more annoying than any other WoW fanboy, I still would rather play with them (fuck, that's me isn't it? It is. It is, isn't it? Shit.) than a TBC/WotLK elitist who gets exasperated explaining relatively simple game mechanics. Unfortunately, that describes most people who love endgame Wrath, and all expansions beyond. Unsophisticated collaboration should be rewarded, and heralded as the most important part of any online game. It is easier to keep up a community garden in your shitty neighborhood than it is to keep up a good guild, and that's pretty stupid.

I will admit that a big part of my criticisms is just because I was not in a guild with clearly-defined expectations and a curated roster. But damn, they tried! And, they were one of the better ones!! Furthermore, my testimonial is not alone. I have seen several threads online (sources uncited, just Google it or something) talking about how the release of Wrath destroyed guilds that formed at the start of classic WoW.

The balance of difficultly is a game that no one wins. In it's greatest moments, ironically I think Wrath showed us the real potential of WoW raids and bosses. Ulduar and ICC are heralded as having some of the best bosses of any expansion. Encounters are just challenging enough that guilds slightly sweatier than mine undoubtedly had a blast progressing through raid tiers. My main gripe though, is that the cost of such great raids is the reason most people were fascinated with the game in the first place.

What Do You Want On Your Cheeseburger?
As much as I love the gameplay and feel of the mage in World of Warcraft, I'm not playing WoW to experience my mage's combat: I'm playing for the MMO, and the RPG. The mechanics are just a tool to traverse this landscape. When we are honest with ourselves, we can admit that the gameplay of our favorite classes only approaches that of any "classic" PC RPG. WoW can be smoothed out ad infinitum, but it will always be clunkier than basically every revered single player RPG of the last 20 years. Yeah sometimes it feels nice to click on a target, press your Ctrl+R keybind, and then your E, and get a proc to press your 2, and then spam your 1 at close range. That will never suffice as an incentive though. Even if you love your rotation, love PvE, etc, even this is likely a product of the social design. You love PvE because you're the guild's best Affliction warlock, or because you're an efficient resto shaman, or a tank that's recognized for good tactics and coordination. You love PvP because pwning noobs is fun. We forget about these aspects until they are lost and we are left unsatisfied.

Vanilla was designed with a lack of optimization in mind, and therefore demands less of its players. Vanilla WoW is a world less focused on pure optimization, and therefore has a more accessible baseline. The world is more leveled and satisfying, since it rewards experience and knowledge of the game over pure itemization, over the pure pursuit of power. When there are fewer rewarding things to do, players feel more satisfied in their choices, and free to look around. When given a laundry list of tasks that must be completed, the content begins to feel like a barrier. Ironically the added difficulty and content of later games is really still a failure overall, since it's basically impossible to meet the needs of turbo nerds, and casual players still don't have a totally easy entry point to the current content (save for the catch-up dungeons in later patches that give players gear close to the current content level, while basically nullifying the value of prior raid content).

My gripes of Wrath is mostly what's been echoed for years: the introduction of QoL features and myriads of late-game class spells creates a game that is fun, clicky, and satisfying, but a hollow experience overall. It's the start of the seizure-inducing spin of modern WoW content. They traded the soul of the game for a dazzling steamroll of F.U.N., meant to appeal to a younger audience, but that's totally failed. I'm 26, and I don't think I've met anyone younger than me that plays WoW, and if they did, they probably play classic.


Conclusion
There is still a lot of personality in different classes and specializations, but the exciting gameplay is sapped by a real lack in motive to do anything except quest, dungeons, raids, and dailies. At level cap, players have little reason to explore Northrend, and fewer reasons to explore the maps of past expansions. The serendipitous charm of the series was pecked away by optimization and filler. There is little reason to interact with anyone for anything outside of dungeons, raids, and instanced PvP. If you're prepared for those occasions though, Wrath can be a pretty fun sugar rush, but never anything beyond that.

My purely objective rating for this expansion is 7/10, but I hate what this expansion led to, and for that reason I am leaving a 6/10 rating.

...now let me dial that back.

Every World of Warcraft expansion has come in terms of a delicate balance between arbitrary difficulty - long walks across Silverpine Forest, getting mauled by roaming Fel Reavers, the impossibly high cost of a level 40 mount in Vanilla (I got mine at level 56) - and the removal of game content for ease of use.

I will hold that Wrath was the expansion when World of Warcraft had its most rewarding challenges, its most convincing competitive experiences, its most vivid differentiation between classes (coming from someone with a Ret Paladin and an Arms Warrior), all experienced by a community of 10 million that had no idea where the game might head next. Anyone could reach level 80. I made it to ICC10 when I was 13 years old.

And I'd argue that the experiential end of Wrath was also stronger than ever before or ever again in WoW. Arms Warriors played like 3 different specs jammed into one body with cooldowns to respond to anyone; Frost Mages were untouchable by melee classes but couldn't put out a fraction of the damage an unchecked Destruction Warlock would; Retribution Paladins and Enhancement Shaman and Frost Death Knights and Assassination Rogues all had an amazing tactile feeling to every spell and a unique, peculiar gameplay (okay, maybe not the first two) that left 3v3 arena a bewildering dance between players that would struggle to understand the combat language of every opponent. You'd actually feel threatened by the animation of Ret Paladin's wings going up. Arms Warriors could respond to an unskilled Rogue by switching into Defensive Stance and using Shield Block to convert every single hit into another thousand-damage Revenge and I'd actually start laughing when the Rogue wasn't smart enough to stop fighting.

That shit was awesome.

Cataclysm began the trend of Diablo-ifying WoW specs into 3-button rotations and empty action bars. Swifty's youtube videos turned into a mess of Razor keyboard ads and brofists. But hey, you never know what you had until it's gone.