I was just curious- the majority of the threads seem to be gripes, queries about mechanics, and strategies, but I thought it would be interesting to see what some of the things you all think Blizzard has done a good job with. Clearly they have built a compelling game, but what specifically do you think they have done well.

Some of the things I would list:

1.) The itemization and availability of gear from questing post level 60 in Hellfire Peninsula was great. On my characters that were 60 when TBC was released, I didn't really notice, because I had raid epics on all of them. Recently, though I have levelled a horde mage from 0, and when I hit 60 and went to Hellfire, I was wearing a mishmash of dreamweave and other crap and thought Iwas going to go through hell gearing up. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was able to throw together a really servicable levelling kit in little to no time, just doing quests in Hellfire. I guess I had missed it before, but I really appreciated it this time around.

2.) I like the Holiday specials, be it the beer festival, the preserved holly, etc. I think it is a nice touch.

3.) Even though pvp sort of pigeonholes many classes regarding spec, I feel like they are doing a much better job letting your spec define your character. As an example, I feel frost, fire, and arcane are all servicable specs for raiding nowadays (some are clearly better than others), and I don't think that was always the case.

4.) I really like that they have increased the experience gain from 0-60. Re-rolling really isn't as awful as it used to be.

Feel free to list your own, and Merry Christmas.

I think Blizzard gets the little things right. And when I say little things, I'm thinking of little items or fixtures found throughout both Azeroth and Outlands. Be it a boiling kettle of stew in a troll cave situated behind Ironforge in such a way that 99% of WoW players don't know how to get to, a small monument in Netherstorm for Nova from Starcraft: Ghost, or even just the flavor text on items. Hell, how many people have ever stopped to read the plaques underneath the statues in Herod's room in Scarlet Monastery? Or have listened to Perry Gatner's comedy routine in Lower City?

Are those little things alone what keeps me playing? No. Is "little things" pretty vague? Yeah, but perhaps you get my drift.

One of the biggest things that has kept me interested in wow is their mod interface. Simply being able to extend or alter the way you interact with the game itself really helps to keep players interested. If I'd had to stare at the default UI for the past two years, I'd have probably given up. Granted, they occasionally break features, or alter the way programmers can interact with the game, but in all, they leave enough leeway for creativity and useful design to make those alterations bearable.

I'm going to have to second Eek, and for my own contribution say that the questing in BC has been absolutely outstanding. Never a dull moment (outside of the Nesingwary quests in Nagrand at least!) in terms of storyline, and overall fairly well done loot distribution and experience gain from them. It just seemed like they really worked hard to refine their questing processes and in turn gave us stuff like the Thrall line and the ethereum prison.

And one more thing, Cro Threadstrong, who is my personal hero. Fruit Vendor better watch his damn back.

I've been playing this game for over 3 years and I'm still having fun. That's hard to beat for a gaming company.

Let's not forget the artwork...in...Naxx. TK artwork hurts my eyes after raiding there for so long >,<

I like the "cartoonish" look of my characters, they don't look serious, they don't have the most balanced anatomy but it has a nice feeling to it.

Blizzard makes mistakes, or overlooks a better way- but once they realize, they implement it. Nevermind no one uses the Ingame Voice Client- look at how they've incorporated the new Searching For function on the mini-map.
After realizing the SSC/TK attunements were a nightmare, they removed them. It was a great idea (one that is supported elsewhere in these forums- how does one ensure a fellow gamer knows how to play?), requiring people to earn their keep via heroics, 10mans, then 25mans.
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What really hooks me, personally, is Blizzard's ability to come up with new content- be it raid zones, or the transitions from BG~>Arena, or something as small (but important) like artwork and design. For as long as servers come down, or the heroic instance reset issues- I believe Blizzard does an excellent job maintaining a very enjoyable quality of game, while handling huge volume and the associated issues.
I'm still anxious to log in when I get home, and chat with guildies while looking for something to do. Imo, there won't be a WoW-killer.

The dungeon artwork has always been exceptional and my favorite thing about WoW. Also for the people who loved Naxxramas as much as I did, here are two favorites from my screenshot album(nerd alert :P):

Sapphiron's Room

Kel'thuzad Ceiling

Eekpaladin got it right. Blizzards eye for the small details are amazing, and all the "flavor" they add, from the usual Blizzard humor, to the art makes the game a lot more enjoyable in the long run.

The amazing art gets very obvious whenever I play LOTRO, which by itself looks gorgeous, and it has the Tolkien Lore to build great landscapes etc upon.
But even then, compared to WoW, the artistical touch is somewhat lacking. You end up seeing "another damn ruin" in Lotro, which might look great, but gets uninteresting and lack any atmosphere.

Beside that, they just managed to create the most enjoyable leveling Ive experienced in any game ever. Sure, it might not reach the immersion and storytelling one might get from a great singleplayer RPG, but the streamlined gameplay surely beats the hell out of those (*drolling* over the thought of a singleplayer Warcraft RPG).

The UI might be worth mentioning too, even when looking at the big picture its a smaller thing. WoWs modable interface should really become standard in pretty much any games in the future. Not so much the possibilities of added features, which hardly would work in most games, but the possibility to make the interface look in any damn way you want to.
No matter which RPG or MMO I play today, they feel a bit old compared to WoWs interface and controlling freedom.

Most of game's voiceovers are pretty good too (may I say Interrogator Vishas - SM GY). Which brings me to my next good thing, the little references that make you laugh as you progress through the content. Some of the BC ones (Haris Pilton) were not-so-much, but the other ones like the mechanical ape Chasing A-ME were pretty enjoyable.

While listening to the ghostlands music that sure is one thing I adore in this game. The sheer amount of differences in zones, the creepy feeling while entering felwood for the first time, the well known and never boring sound of azshara while farming pre-TBC, the feeling of grandness after patching in the new music in karazhan and hearing c'thun whispering in my ears the first time entering AQ40 is pure awesomeness...

The greatest gift of all.

Hmmm I don't know about this point. On the one hand, I can PvP quite well with the full combat swords spec that I first designed for raiding and then really only moved one talent point for the sake of Arena. I had a rating around 1800 give or take 50 points by the end of last season. The spec also worked quite well for running premade BGs. So from this stand point I would say that you can also PVP pretty well with almost any stand point.

On the other hand if by PVP, you mean be very competitive and have a 1900+ or 2000+ rating, then I would argue that it is just as true that you cannot competatively raid as, say a mage in frost spec. Personally I feel that a 2000 arena rating is somewhere at least deep into the Eye/SSC if not working Keal or Vash already, and of the guilds that I know doing that, not many would be happy if you showed up on a progression day in a full PVP build.

The above being said, and given all of the problems that certainly still exist regarding the balance of different classes in the arena, ect... I think Blizz has done quite a good job in making a game that, I for one think, is quite interesting for both PVP and PVE. Again, there are certainly problems with BLizz trying to do both, but just think about the structure of the EJ forums. There are very active threads for both PVE and PVP questions and issues, and clearly serious players very devoted to one and not the other for both PVP and PVE. If nothing else that has to show that Blizz has done something right with both its PVE WOW and PVP WOW games.

Gnomes are Ewoks done right, take that George Lucas!

Combat in WoW feels better than a lot of single player games. No other MMO besides City of Heroes has really tried to make combat feel fun or responsive like WoW's is

I love the new xmas bots!

Like others mentioned, the insignificance you feel when fighting Saph and seeing his room is awesome, also Tonking under his feet was a fun twist =). Another thing about Saph, his formation sequence from all the bones is awesome, they didn't need to do it, he could've just been standing there all along, but they did and it made it 100% more awesome the first time you walked in there (Ouro was the same, sending a gnome in a red pirate hat walking into this giant room and seeing a huge worm pop out and eat him was so cool). KT chamber with all the portals was pretty sick as well.

The Rhok'Delar quest line is one thing I've always appreciated. A super difficult test of your abilities to play your class with an excellent reward. I hoped they would add something like that for every class for TBC, but alas, they did not.

I'm surprised noone has said raid encounter design yet. Most raid encounters are reasonably well-balanced and if you can hold constant all the "human factors" of raiding, then Blizzard has designed one of the most enjoyable raid games to date.

I think Blizzard's main ethos is that the game is "fun" and basically, it excels at that. All of the game's issues seem to impede idealism, but it's rarely at the expense of an enjoyable game. I think eek and others touched on this with the "little things", as well as the festivities, the art, and charismatic characters and NPCs.

Daily quests.

This is a feature that I don't remember anyone asking for, and yet it's so groundbreaking and solves so much of the monotony.

It takes the philosophy behind wow's quest system (reward players with xp by having them do varied activities instead of just killing the same thing over and over) and applies it to max level characters.

No longer do people only do one dungeon for badges of justice. Characters specced for healing can still earn a decent income which likely put some professional gold farmers out of business. Reputations stopped being something that you spend an entire day grinding and instead were spread out across a decent span of time (unless you REALLY wanted to grind) and were something that came naturally.


I've also gotta give respect for whatever they've done to gold farmers. No longer am I constantly enraged by that fucking gold farmer stealing my goddamn thorium node (f u zurajave). If there are still gold farmers I sure don't encounter them.

One thing I love about WoW above nearly all else, is the control, movement and ability system. I don't know if it's the result of 3 year's worth of heavy playing, or if it is actually that great, but whenever I play a 3rd-person RPG style game, I end up wishing that it used the WoW camera, moved the same way WoW does, and had a similar UI system to the WoW one (the actionbars with abilites arrangeable as I see fit and so forth).