Introduction

This thread is directed to the intelligent part of the WoW gaming community and is therefore posted on the three best WoW forums I know of. Elitist Jerks for game mechanics and PVE and also the thread World of Warcraft - Lore & Storyline discussion, hydramist.net for PVP and E-Sports and the German Forscherliga Forum for RolePlay and immersion. On Elitist Jerks I wrote a similar thread at the end of the Burning Crusade in 2008. This thread is a retrospect of the addon "Wrath of the Lich King" and should encourage an intelligent discussion about WoW game design.


WotlK - the beginning

The Scourge Invasion started Wrath of the Lich King and let's be honest - it was fun. Using the idea of the Corrupted Blood incident and combining it with the Scourge was brilliant and really got our minds set on Northrend. Entering Northrend with the zeppelin or the boat and having the time to look around and enjoy the landscape was pretty perfect and then, well then the madness began.


The levelling

Most players focussed on getting 80 as fast as possible and never had the time to actually enjoy the landscape, the stories, due to a long beta addons already provided the fastest route, which made 70-80 as exciting as stabbing 10000 rats with some exceptions. [Someone has achieved Veteran of the Wrathgate] light up in the guild chats and those that didn't know the video from youtube actually enjoyed everything. A lot of the best quests were skipped and after 700 quests no story in the world would have excited anyone. It was simply too much, way too much. Those that actually took their time enjoyed the quests and even the ones that don't really care enjoyed the Argents Crusades storm on Icecrown or the more badass Ebon Blade quests. The open PVP in the Grizzly hills did not really happen because most players skipped those quests or tried to do them as fast as possible and didn't have time to actually gank each other.


Tier 1: Naxxramas, Malygos, Sartharion and arena season five

It did not take a week to down Malygos and Sartharion+3 fell less than two weeks after the launch of WotlK to Ensidia by abusing the hunters sacrifice. Method's Sartharion3D 10men hardmode is still considered one of the most impressive PVE videos. Due to the levelling rush and playing the same raid twice every week most of the PVE crowd got bored pretty soon, while the PVP scene had to deal with the new hero class. In my opinion the death knight was not too strong because Blizzard failed at balancing but rather to make sure that the new class would be a success. Mutilate rogues, retribution paladins and arcane mages came close to the dks god mode and the term "got wotlked" was born. The first tournament however did not go to the favorites with Serennias DK/hunter/paladin team (mostly because the hunter could not play his class at all) but to the up until then completely unknown Korean mage Orangemarmalade. and his team HON (later known as Button Bashers and now fighting under the label loaded.black).

Why the rush?
Let us look back and imagine that levelling for tier one only went till 72 or 73. Naxxramas would be the only raid (except Archavons chamber) available and only accessible after six weeks, like the first arena season. 200 instead of 700 quests, no need to rush the levelling, time for perhabs six well-tuned 5man instances and one month or maybe two to farm Naxxramas, reputation, 5mans, professions, honor. A minor patch could have introduced Coldarra, two new 5s and the Malygos and Sartharion raid. Players would actually remember quests before doing them the second time. Our economy would probably also be more stable and I guess that at least 500 players would not have lost their jobs or quit their college/university. For this patch levelling till 73 could have been added and also the Wrath Gate cut scene as a finale for the first tier.


Tier 2: Ulduar and arena season six
Well only Ulduar, but Ulduar is still considered the best raid ever done in WoW. Nostalgic memories for sure, but the hardmode/normal mode thing was rather interesting and the special boss Algalon got everyone excited. Still the fight in Ulduar was the Mimiron Hardmode and if I remember the nostalgia in the Benefactors Bar correctly this fight is considered to be "the best". Ensidia took the race again up until Yogg-Saron+0 which was taken by the Chinese guild Stars and the new PVE champions from Paragon came second. Algalon and Yogg+4 were the last world first end bosses that Ensidia scored after they had dominated as Nihilum and SK Gaming from C'Thun and Kel'Thuzad in the old Naxxramas. Algalon and Yogg+0 kept the PVE players going and even though they raided the dungeon twice per week the fun was there. For PVP nothing really new came out except some needed nerfs at the end of the season. RMP is comp was finally considered to be the skilled comp and SK US victory over TSG. Wintergrasp lost its charme right about that time and miles of whine threads about lags in Dalaran emerged.


Nice one
The best raid, the needed DK nerfs made this the best patch in WotlK. Still, imagine Storm Peaks, Halls of Stone and Halls of Lightning with a hard-tuned Loken would only be released with this patch, with Ulduar following some weeks later. Also imagine the really well made balance would have been there right from the start.


Tier 3: Colloseum and arena season 7
Hardmode/normal mode, 10men, 25men, four raid lockouts for one dungeon with only five bosses. Recycled content deluxe. It did not help that the bosses where introduced one by one, it took only some weeks and everyone hated the colloseum. The quests were a bad joke, the new 5men annoyed everyone because of its drawn-out start, that wiped the average random group several times. While the arena, valkyr and the anub fight were pretty decent everyone started to hate the game. On the positive side I could finally get a banner of Gnomeregan. For PVPers the season started with a bang. Hydra7 was released while loaded.black destroyed the new bane of the arena: The beast cleave.


Well...
This patch was bad. Everyone was excited about Blizzard's "secret raid" and although the fights were not as bad as many said doing four times per week the same dungeon is soul-crushing. Even Blizzard realized this. If at that time Icecrown would have opened and the story of the "Gathering of the heroes" would have been told in a decent way this patch could have worked better. The arena concept was ok, but everyone knew that they just did not put in enough time or spent it on developing the vehicle combats.


Tier 4: Icecrown citadel and season eight
The five men dungeons were a really good start and even the raid has much love in the design. It was undertuned but this dungeon needed to be accesible. Remember your first attempts at the professor, it wasn't a push-over for most guilds. The hardmodes however were not that hard, except for three of them and even especially except the LK. But as hard as the Lich King Hardmode was, one fight was not enough. Boredom for the raiders, even though Elitist Jerks only downed the HLK on June 23rd. Still ICC is a better raid than most players will admit and we should give Blizzard credit for this. If more hardmodes were tuned correctly this could have been fun. In the arenas the spell cleaves took the beast cleaves crown and the ICC gear turned the buffed resilience into nothingsness, although most rogues use 1100+ resilience now, well they are melees. The only thing that could stand next to the spell cleaves were Shadowmourne TSGs and the god almighty RMPs Loaded and Dignitas. I will spare you the 20 minute matches from ArenaPwnage vs. Team Chris Uckington or other spell cleaves. One match however will be remembered: The RMPs clashed for the first time on a tournament. The link
also leads to some fun spell cleave matches, if you enjoy them.


Conclusion
The levelling was rushed in the beginning which led to a lot of stress and many hours of grinding, hundreds of quests no one noticed while doing them and a lot boredom later on. The approach to level several times per expansion and to open raids a bit delayed would improve the overall game experience. The 10men/25men lockouts are shared with Cataclysm luckily. The hardmode/normal mode idea broke WotlK in many ways. From the endless repetitions of raiding, to the insane ilvl of ICC gear. PVP balance was and is still only fixed if really necessary and never really came to peace with PVE. Both worlds suffer from this. What really worked well was bringing most specs back to being used. Still WotlK will only be seen as success by the sales people. Design suffered.


The end
Once again we are in the beta and some mistakes seem to be repeated. This thread should however not become a "let's say Blizzard how their game needs to be designed"-thread, but rather an intelligent discussion about design decisions and their aftermath. This thread is in no way perfect and a subjective opinion of mine.

You can single out Algalon/Ulduar as a prime example of how innovative hardmode implementation can elevate the quality of an entire instance. Simply having hardmodes in an instance, will not necessarily accomplish the same thing - as TOC and ICC have shown. Questions to ponder: Was ICC made a better instance because every fight - including BQL, Rotface and Gunship - had heroic modes? Did the fact that TOC had heroic versions of all 5 bosses, elevate the quality of that instance? Was Ulduar made a better instance, because Freya, Mimiron and Thorim had their hardmodes - and culminated in a visit to Algalon?

Algalon/Ulduar was identified as a success by the community, and perhaps can be considered one of the design highlights of WOTLK itself. And it's no surprise that "Algalon style bosses" are a mechanic Blizzard already announced will be used in Cataclysm. Not referring to the actual Algalon fight itself or fight mechanics, but the way it was implemented: Only available Via completion of pre-requisite hardmodes, needed to finish the quest chain rewarding the key to his room.

What Algalon did was give people compelling reasons (aside from loot) to care more about hardmodes in an instance. Guilds and players had something exciting and tangible to aim for, whilst slaving away with the rest of the hardmodes. The notion of working towards an 'exclusive boss' was a very powerful incentive. More so than gaining the ability to kill Heroic Boss X, after having killed Normal Boss X many times before (Like Icecrown and TotGC). Killing Yogg+0 might have realistically been out of reach for all but the best of the best, but working towards Algalon really was the realistic goal for most.

Compelling implementation also takes into account actual fight mechanics: Nobody was impressed by the differences between Heroic + Normal Gunship / BQL / Rotface. However, hardmode Freya, Mimiron and Thorim felt like new fights. People recognised that, and appreciated it.

And, of course, Blizzard nailed a few other things with Algalon. The fight itself was aesthetically stunning, had mechanics that engaged the whole raid (via Big Bang and Black Holes), rewarded a title, and offered an organic conclusion to the story of the quests/lore surrounding the instance itself. It was the full package, culminating after fun 'best fight of the expansion' hardmodes like Firefighter and Freya+3. This demonstrated that simply 'having hardmodes' for every encounter will not necessarily make an instance better - like TOC and ICC have shown - but implementating hardmodes in a compelling way like Ulduar, certainly will. And tying it all together with boss-exclusivity incentives like an "Algalon style boss"? Absolutely.

What's the lesson? If Hardmodes in Cataclysm meant nothing more than a UI switch you flicked, a goo you dodged, and +13 ilvl loot - it's a missed opportunity for a mechanic which Ulduar demonstrated could really do so much more for an instance.

Although you do make some good points, your whole post looks to me (especially from the conclusion) as if you are whining quite a bit about the leveling rush just because you'd rather not do it or don't particulary enjoy it. However, as a realm first 80 DK, I can't say I agree with you when you say you couldn't enjoy the quests and the zones. I had plenty of fun doing many of the quests which where pretty awesome and unlike anything seen before. No one is forcing you to do the rush if you don't want to, but introducing yet a new gating system in the leveling process would be both a terrible idea and a nightmare to implement and balance. For starters you wouldn't have your final ability set or talent builds ready for the first tier of content. Not only that but when the next patch hit and the level cap where to go up suddenly old content, balanced around being lower level would be ridiculously easy. Also I'm really not sure how you think it would help the economy unless you also gated tradeskills.

The biggest problem WotLK had at release was the absurdly easy raid content and how long we where forced to endure it. Enduring months of farm content aside, I'm hopeful the first tier of raids will have some challenging hardmodes that will take some time to be completed by most guilds.

While I realize this forum is all about raiding and min-maxing, the tone of your introduction to this post implies that it is an overall view of the game. However, that's not the case. The points you bring up are purely taken from a very narrow perspective: that of the hardcore raider. Saying that "most players" focused on rushing to 80 and that "A lot of the best quests were skipped and after 700 quests no story in the world would have excited anyone," implies that you speak for everybody, rather than your own opinion and, possibly, those of your friends/guildmates.

To talk about the game design of WotLK and its patches and not even make mention of the dungeon finder and huge rise of successful raid PUGs shows a severe lack of awareness of WoW's general population. As presented, this is a thread about the entire game design, not merely hardcore raiding. Realize that Blizzard has far more on their plate than pleasing the less than 5% of WoW's populace that cleared heroic LK. Most people haven't killed normal LK. A large number haven't even seen Icecrown. I have friends that have played WoW since release and didn't step foot in ICC. They play for the levelling, for random dungeons (not even necessarily heroics), and for battlegrounds. To state that WotLK was only a success to the sales department implies that because you are not happy with the raid design, everybody must be unhappy. This is simply not so.

Staggering raid content across levels would be a terrible idea because it would mean every instance except the very latest was always obsolete. Once people had access to level 75 and the accompanying raid instance, there would be no point in going to the 72/73 instance.

And yeah pretty much your entire post is extremely subjective and not at all the opinion of a significant number of wow players.

Drak'Tharon and Gundrak are low to mid 70 instances. That does not make the *heroic* versions of these obsolete however (compared to the "end game" instances).

Gating the leveling process is a bad idea because of other reasons. The main one: homogenizing content for a heterogeneous crowd. We have enough of this already.

EDIT: obiousyl I can't read. Disregard the first comment about the low level instances.

Quest design shifted in WotLK. The quests themselves are still fairly static, but they changedhow you get the quests. In BC, quest hubs were quest hubs. You gathered up everything, did a circuit returned and picked up the next batch. Nagrand is the showcase for this, though you can see it everywhere. WotLK is more of a rail shooter. More quests are chained. Most hubs start with one, two or possibly three quests. This does offer the possibility for better storylines for more interesting reasons for collecting 10 bear asses. But at the same time, for me it seemed to reduce the options available. You had to do all of the quests because the other quests only become available once you complete the previous. This can lead to problems. For example, in the Borean Tundra, say I feel a bit off torturing some digital whosit with a cattle prod and decide to pass on that quest, that means the flight point to the Coldarra and the Nexus never open up. Sholazar is similar to Borean Tundra. If you don't follow all of the Nesingwary quests, you won't see the Oracle and Frenzyheart.

You mentioned Grizzly Hills. For the Alliance, opening the quests for the whole zone means you have to interrupt the very interesting Winterguard Keep chain. If you decide to pass on that one and forget to come pick that quest up, you can't quest at all in Grizzly Hills. The quests are simply not available.

You get to decide, do you want to do a zone or skip it. Once you are in a zone, you are in the zone and on the ride, few deviations possible. But that's the only real choice for most of it. And you have to do one of the two starter zones for the most part.

For me, this seems to really cut down on replayability.

To amplify on Sonrisa, 3AM, and Sair - you note on a personal, emotional stance that leveling was rushed. This is not a dispassionate listing, but a personal opinion. To use myself as an example, I was able to level within 3 days, fully reading all quest text and enjoying the process. Quests were arguably better than the past and quest hubs more naturally designed. Quest chaining and breadcrumbs excelled, which is also a flaw as pointed out by Liantha. Not completing a quest could deny significant opportunities granted by later quests in the chain or quest mobs/reps/phasing not available to you. The summoning stone outside ICC is a nightmare to this day because it often takes 4 or more people to have 2 who can actually see each other in the same phase and channel a summons.

You complain about gating on bosses in ToC, yet think gating of leveling would be advantageous. Either the mechanic of gating functions and increases gameplay or fun, or it does not. Based on the evidence of ToC, it does not appear to increase general player fun. Logistic arguments, such as Sair listed, also argue against level gating.

Icecrown has been raided for 10 months and looks to surpass a year by the time Cataclysm can be released. Ruby Sanctum is a single true boss was frequently cleared in few hours on initial release - it did not do much to extend the life cycle of the final raiding tier. While ICC was very well designed and a lot of fun, the sheer length of availability has slowly brought it closer to the mind-numbingness of ToC. Rather than being ground down rapidly by monotony, it is the long decay of familiarity.

You did not even touch on the topic of badge gear. Revamping the design from BC, where entry level badges could buy one-tier-less than endgame items, Wrath had tiered badges which allowed purchase of tier equivalent items. This has been both a good and a bad thing. It has contributed to the "World of Casualcraft" viewpoint, where the more casual player can obtain reasonably high end gear. On the other hand, it also has significantly reduced the entry barrier to raiding.

In BC if you were a newer player or had taken a break and wanted to join a guild raiding BT or Sunwell, depending on the time you had to be walked through SSC and TK to gain vials to enter Hyjal so you could attune to BT. To reasonably raid Sunwell you needed MH and BT gear. Guilds recruiting new people had to either recruit equivalent geared people (i.e. possibly poach another guild or other distasteful actions), or remedially gear someone so they could attend future weeks.

In Wrath the badge process allowed people to immediately push through and pick up gear from the previous tier via mass quantities of heroics. Desire could be directly seen in willingness to make this effort. The daily heroic also allowed a slow ability to step up to the current tier. This significantly eased issues with guild recruitment. New raiders wouldn't be complete dead weight in ilevel 200s, but would merely be behind the curve.

The BC method ran raids like Kharazan into the ground as badge earning grinds at end content. Wrath moved this off on to 5man Heroics. Arguably there is still a problem because the constant repetition, whether of available past raids or available 5mans, often generates apathy, annoyance, or ennui. This is likely insuperable, as producing significantly greater content would require extreme budget and staff, and would contain its own problems, such as repetition of theme or similar bosses/mechanics as more would be churned out.

A lot more happened, both good and bad, than in the initial post. I'm interested in hearing more design successes and flaws in Wrath.

I'm surprised that people haven't brought up the ICC stacking buff yet. I believe that was a success. It allowed more and more guilds to slowly beat ICC encounters without resorting to the huge nerfs that Blizzard has done in the past. Partly because TOC was rushed out the door, Ulduar was the raid that my guild never got close to completing before it became trivial content. We have managed to complete or almost complete all other raid tiers in the past. The stacking buff was useful in us getting to 11/12 heroic in ICC back in May.

Also, I never felt like Blizzard was ever fully able to precisely target where they wanted normal and heroic mode encounters to be. The difficulty of encounters in Wrath felt all over the place. The variability was to a degree that wasn't there in vanilla and TBC. Just my opinion, but I felt that there was a much larger percentage of encounters that went to extremes, either easy or difficult, than there ever was.

I think the overall leveling feel was a great success. There were far more interesting questlines than I had experienced personally. The Wrathgate was an obvious win, but some of the vehicle moments, the murloc questline in Borean Tundra, the Hodir questline with the epic 'jump from dragon to dragon', the phasing mechanics in Icecrown, the Betrayer line; far more questlines came closer to the epic feel of the Hero of Nagrand line than ever before.

The ICC stacking buff was a perfect way to allow all types of people the chance to see content while giving a sense of real accomplishment to those who made it in on earlier buff times. It also had the side effect of making the farm content easier and faster, which led to smoother clears and repeat kills. I think this was a real win, though I wish there was some kind of actual reward and some way to dial down the buff manually, instead of all or nothing.

Ulduar was by far the most polished instance they did, and where their design reached an apex. While heroic modes proved popular, I don't believe arbitrary heroic modes without background are as reasonable.

The grindyness of WoW seemed to reach a peak here. There were so many daily quests along with so many rep grinds, combined with so many special currencies...it just seemed too much. Between Sholazar, the 4 main factions, Hodir, badge grinds, honor grinds, stone shards & commendations, ToC badges, achievement grinds for special mounts, holiday goals, daily profession currencies, transmutations...there was a lot more of repetition than I would really like. I hope that they either allow for less grinding or allow for the grinding you choose to do to apply to more things.

If you guys don't knock off the back and forth bullshit I'll lock this thread. Keep your post to your thoughts and your opinions without attacking each other.