I suppose this expansion was the one which at-least for the widespread WOW community was the crest of the classic MMORPG's heyday, the one which engaged its most popular audience and gaming commercial appeal.
That being said, I feel this popularity was at the great sacrifice of losing some of the more intimate, strategic and rewarding elements of the original games inner workings and painstaking allure.
At the behest of subscribers all around the world to keep up with this franchise, I think Blizzard got slightly ostentatious with its updated interface, adaptations to talents and spell/attack animations which made this feel that one foot was in a arcade setting, something which enabled much easier combat and distinctive faster levelling..

Yes of course I've enjoyed playing as the hero class 'Death Knight', dabbled with the inscription profession, made glyphs and trekked countless hours in the frozen wastes of Northrend. Its still good don't get me wrong! Even the compelling storyline of the Lich King explored fantastical theatrical elements compared to its previous instalments.
However I felt like this was the beginning of something on the horizon coming for this niche gem, that wasn't finished with glossing it to the point of stripping down its foundations to something devilishly mainstream in the future, and unfortunately I was correct..

The last good WoW expansion. I still absolutely adore the environments and world to the point that I sometimes boot up a completely empty private server that no-one uses just so I can have it all to myself for a few hours.
The base game was always giving you enough carrot-on-a-stick quests and items to keep you going for long periods of time. It's not "nice" game design that respects your time but who plays this for any reason other than to have a virtual project to sink your life into and forget about your real-life commitments that just don't reward you as frequently as this?
I enjoyed by time with this game a lot but in terms of getting back into that cooldown combat, killing 10 bears for a 33% chance of a quest item drop, joining dungeons and raids so people can moan at you for not playing in the one specific way they want you to (sorry to any guildmasters I made twitch with that one, lol), repeating all of that hundereds of times so you're able to progress to another area, I just have no interest in going back to it for that reason.
I got what I wanted out of this game when I needed it, and that time is long gone, but it's nice to know it happened.

There are no words to describe how impactful this game is for so many people, including myself. There is not and will never be a better MMORPG and I'm not even exaggerating, this is how good and how high Blizzard got, this is what ever single MMO tried to be before and after WotLK came out, the cream of the crop, but you know, "the higher they get the harder they fall", and they fell hard. HARD. And they never stopped falling, because they were that high. They turned from one of the best gaming companies in the world to... part of Microsoft Teams. Sad stuff.

The thing is, you can't critique this game in a vacuum in 2022. To truly experience this game you would have to teleport back to 2008 and play it live, it was a cultural phenomenon at the time. You will have fun and enjoy it if you find some private server with 100+ people playing but it wouldn't be even close to the real experience. If you were there you would understand how amazing this game was, if you weren't you just won't. And yes I'm gatekeeping, and no I don't care. That's the thing with most MMOs, you need play it live or make a very deep analysis of it to truly understand it.

TBC diehard here, i don't think this expansion was as good as people hype it up to be

BUT wrath was still damn good as far as wow xpaks go in spite of its flaws. questing and dungeons were great, ulduar and icecrown were fantastic raids, and dalaran was the best xpak hub to the point where they brought it back for Legion.

damn though death knights were broken as hell to the point where everyone mained one because of it

me included

um

Wrath of the Lich King is peak World of Warcraft for me and feels like the ultimate version of the original vision for the game.

While later expansions would add bigger and better spectacle, in my opinion they completely lost sight of the world in World of Warcraft, and instead replaced it with a theme park ride of event after event that does nothing except make the world feel very small and insular.

Wrath of the Lich King however manages an impressive amount of exciting set pieces, while still letting you feel like a small cog in a big open world, which to me is integral in making an MMO feel alive, and not just a single player RPG with other people running around.

I played WoW Classic and The Burning Crusade, but I lived Wrath of the Lich King.

Wow (WOTLK) é o melhor MMO que joguei e o mais completo, mesmo em private server, 4 anos viciado nessa praga...
Sempre fui do PvE, joguei com todas as classes e focava sempre o DPS bruto (Warrior e Mage main), mas todas as classes/roles são divertidas, exceto a classe Priest.
O PvP é difícil pra caramba.
Você faz bastante amizade e depende de trabalho em equipe.
Fiquei jogando até enjoar e, assim como comecei a jogar por causa de um amigo, recomendei para vários outros. Cuidado para não se viciar.

Mixed feelings for me. On one hand, represents the peak of WoW's popularity, a significant step up in visuals, a story and setting surrounding Warcraft's most popular antagonist(s).

But on the other, i can't help but feel this is where the rot set in. Here the game got noticeably more linear, and the introduction of the dungeon finder basically removed the main incentive to join guilds and form communities, and also took away the need to travel physically around the world to visit dungeons, making the world feel much more empty. There's a reason they didn't bring it back for WotlK classic.

Frisson rendered concrete.

The impending release of Wrath of the Lich King Classic has sent a prevailing wind of ennui through my being. A little over a year ago I deleted my Battle.net account. Activision Blizzard's handling of the Blitzchung situation, the news breaking of their abuses towards employees, the disaster that was Warcraft III Reforged, the patronising announcement of Diablo Immortal, Heroes of the Storm entering maintenance mode, the unmitigated mess that was Battle for Azeroth, the notion of an Overwatch 2, the ballooning of the WoW cash shop, the insistence on annual subscriptions, the time gating of content, the borrowed power systems, the lore trash fire of Shadowlands, and the ostentatious claim of Eternity's End being the 'Final Chapter' of a supposed Warcraft 3 saga, in an attempt to combat Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker's Hydaelyn and Zodiark saga all broke the proverbial camel's back. This was not a spontaneous act. This was a deliberate decision on my part to fundamentally erase the record of my participation in a game I spent over half my life with. I've permanently denied myself the possibility of returning to something I loved with my entire being. Wrath of the Lich King Classic theoretically extends a hand from the beyond to welcome me home, but despite what Blizzard might propose, I can never go back. No one can ever go back.

It is this memory of Arthas that I choose to keep in my heart.

Others learned of the unlivability of a reborn nostalgia with World of Warcraft Classic and Burning Crusade Classic, but that original game and its expansion were before my time. They were antiquated in comparison to Wrath of the Lich King. Wrath of the Lich King was a direct continuation of Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, rather than just a tale within that realm. This wasn't some hodgepodge of rote item collection to counter minor threats, or the battling of foes so literally alien as to be largely irrelevant to me and my character. This was a considered effort to contend with the horrors of the past, an opportunity to feel like an active participant in an era-defining event.

Wait... I remember you... in the mountains.

The issue of reviving these past experiences is that their original forms were borne into a more naive time. Old School Runescape demonstrated before World of Warcraft Classic the ills of older MMO design in a hyper-online world. Whereas our playing of Runescape in 2007 was informed by rumours and assumptions of what was and could be possible, 2007scape exists in a world where every iota of information is readily documented. 2013 and 2022 are not the time of Zezima, of Unregistered HyperCam 2, of proto-Machinimas, of frag videos, of fishing for lobbies in Catherby for hours, of playing the game for the fun of itself rather than to 'succeed'. What Old School Runescape taught us a decade ago was that, as Sid Meier put it, "Many players cannot help approaching a game as an optimization puzzle. Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game." I am not so oblivious as to claim people had not already done this in Runescape, but without the omnipresence of YouTube open-mouth thumbnails and Reddit megathreads, your average player probably wasn't min-maxing then as they would now. Old School Runescape is perhaps the most perfect representation of efficiency being the game itself, like Factorio if it were a fantasy MMORPG. It has become an antisocial MMO experience, because socialising is itself inefficient. And yet, World of Warcraft Classic came out only to suffer the exact same problems.

A hero, that's what you once were.

The core issue with recuscitating the original World of Warcraft experience is, I think, one of iteration rather than of inversion. Players clamored for a return to 2007 Runescape because the game had fundamentally changed in no small part because of Summoning and the Evolution of Combat update. It was no longer the point and click, set and forget MMO of yesteryear, but an involved, cooldown based, hotbar experience. World of Warcraft on the other hand has always been basically the same game, improving (mostly) with each patch and expansion, iterating on that foundation. To be sure, the WoW of 2019 was radically different from its 15 years gone forebear, but it wasn't a completely different package sold as something else. Reduced to its base elements, both versions of the game are the same. A different flavour of chocolate, but chocolate all the same. What made the 'Classic' experience so great when remembered was that WoW was novel for so many. The notion of a massive world you could explore with others, all interconnected with no loading screens (outside of instances/teleporting), with forty player raids, with an air of discoverability was specific to the time period. Thottbot existed, but not everyone needed (or felt they needed) to use it, and its data was primarily anecdotal rather than informed by hard statistics. With fifteen years of info at our fingertips, the Classic experience quite literally can't be reproduced, just as the Runescape of 2007 remains firmly in historic memory.

This is the hour of their ascension. This is the hour of your dark rebirth...

With the fun optimised out of World of Warcraft, and without substantive novel content outside of forty player raiding and untouched questing, the playerbase rather quickly turned apathetic towards Classic. It did not, and could not, live up to that memory, and it left Blizzard in a tricky position. Without updates, Classic had little to keep players invested. With Old School Runescape style updates, it would not be the World of Warcraft of yore. The solution, it seems, was to have a divergent path. World of Warcraft Classic would persist, with players having the option to continue to Burning Crusade Classic. This is well and good on the surface, but it was soured by the Digital Deluxe edition's inclusion of a character boost, in-game cosmetic items, and a new mount. Even ignoring the addition of items which didn't exist in the original release, the character boost alone betrayed the supposed ethos of the Classic experience. As a means of preventing players from missing out on that initial rush of the expansion's release, a boost isn't intrinsically a bad thing, but it being locked behind a paywall made the playing field uneven. This was no longer about reliving bygone days, this was about a fear of missing out, this was a chance to rush to the destination, rather than revel in the journey itself.

I will treasure it always - a moment of time that will be lost forever.

The same thing is going to occur with Wrath of the Lich King Classic. I was only 11 when I started playing WoW. Ulduar had just been added to the game. I couldn't have cared less about optimisation. I made numerous characters and ambled around aimlessly. I played comically poorly. I drew my characters on looseleaf. I was so excited and enthralled by this world which stretched before me. Eventually settling on a Tauren Hunter, every moment of the game was precious. As a child, it was a formative experience. I can still remember struggling with the quest Mazzranache, entering the Barrens for the first time, seeing gold sellers float auspiciously in Orgrimmar, killing dinosaurs in Un'Goro Crater, wondering where all the quests were in Silithus. Outlands never grabbed me quite the same way perhaps because of its contrast with Azeroth itself, with its inhabitants whose problems were literally a world away. When I reached the prerequisite level, I created a Death Knight. The random name generator bestowed upon me a moniker I still use to this day, Chuulimta. The starting zone genuinely shook me, at once appealing to my prepubescent desire to commit virtual atrocities while making it crystal clear that these horrors exacerbated the problems of the realm. I was hindering the world I wished to save. And when I eventually stepped on the zeppelin bound for the Howling Fjord, and gazed upon those verdant cliffs, I was agog at the quiet beauty of it all.

For you, I would give my life a thousand times.

I was actively helping an effort to rid the world of an unspeakable terror. And yet, I was also able to find moments of levity and calm. It's almost laughable in retrospect, to think I was having an appreciable effect on anything in this virtual landscape at the peak of WoW's popularity, but it felt and feels real after all this time. Even imagining the nyckelharpa of the Grizzly Hills theme, or those claustrophobic peaks in The Storm Peaks, or the amber grasses of Borean Tundra, or the bustle of Dalaran, those recollections rend my heart in twain. This frigid land clinging to life in the face of decay was home. At a time of change for me and my family, Northrend was my constant.

Do with it as you please, but do not forget those that assisted you in this monumental feat.

At a time of friendlessness, Wrath of the Lich King afforded me social opportunities, however fragmentary, that kept me moving forward. Names flitter away from my grasp, their recall an impossibility by now. The familiar faces when I would fish, those smile-inducing comrades who would greet me when I logged in, those scant few who would run content with me for no gain outside of the pleasure of the act itself. They will never return to me, nor I to them. And that atmosphere will not for anyone. The compartmentalising of social gaming into Discord servers and group chats forbids that earnest connection with the unfamiliar other outright. Just as in Old School Runescape, the game might be massively multiplayer, but it has become more solitary than ever.

Leave me. I have much to ponder.

I didn't kill the Lich King until much later, around Mists of Pandaria. I had seen so much of Icecrown Citadel, completing every fight up to the Lich King, but its mechanics were beyond me until I vastly outleveled, and outgeared it. Even with a statistical advantage, I wasn't able to do it alone. I brought along a friend who had just been getting into WoW. For him it was the first time starting ICC, for me it was the first time bringing the tale of Arthas to a close. When Arthas was felled and that iconic cutscene played, I was moved to tears. I had closed the loop on such an important part of my life. From then on, I would and could only have the memory, for there was naught left for me to find.

Alas... you give me a greater gift than you know.

Each expansion of World of Warcraft sees the outgoing content largely deprecated and abandoned. This only compounds, making it all the less likely you will encounter someone in an old expansion as time shambles on. Like revisiting your childhood home, this makes going back to see what once was gut wrenching. It was such a simple time, one of joy. It was an experience that can never be relived, by me or by anyone.

At last, I am able to lay my eyes upon you again.

Shortly before I logged out of World of Warcraft for what would, unbeknownst to me, be the last time, I flew across Northrend, descending into Wintergrasp to take in one of my favourite pieces of music. Crested on a snowy mound, an unfamiliar face landed beside me silently, and offered to me one word.

"Hey."

That was, and always will be, enough.

Northrend slaps, full stop. It may not have the environmental diversity or incredible skyboxes of Outland, but the consistency of tone across the entire continent is pretty impressive when you consider how much content is available in that space. The overarching story ain't half bad either for an MMO expansion, feeling properly climactic for the end of a narrative started all the way back in Warcraft 3. The quality of the content and storytelling in Northrend is a bit more mixed, but there's still plenty of experiences I had in this expansion that hold a good amount of nostalgia for me. This was WoW's golden era, and it's hard not to see why.

The best days of WoW.

They'll never come again.


Blizzard, why you fail us now?