Guybrush

So, with only 12 days remaining for the release of Wrath of the Lich King, it seems like a proper time to actually talk about the previous expansion. Where did Blizzard go wrong? What did they did right? Was it a fun ride? This is the place to talk about it.

So share your opinion about quests, zones, leveling, instances, raids, pvp etc. What did Blizzard do right? What did Blizzard do wrong? Was TBC an overall success or was it just a big let down?

This is the thread to talk about it.

 

MTW

So many spelling and grammatical errors in your post that i'm not even going to go spelling nazi on you.

Zones and Quests
I never really did daily quests, but questing in general to level up was quite enjoyable - and rather speedy provided you know which quests were in the same area. Favorite zone would probably have to be Nagrand as there is just so much to do there, plus it looks great.

5-men content
The badge system is good, but does take away from the game as everything is so easily obtainable now. Makes raiding virtually redundant if all you want to do is PvP (Which is a good thing I suppose but it does split the game into two). I didn't really do much 5 man raiding the normal way - I just farmed badges via stealth running CR, so much more fun and efficient. So I can't really comment on it as I basically skipped the whole 5 man experience of TBC.

Raids
I preferred 40 man raids to be honest. MC, BWL and AQ40 were more fun than any of the TBC raids imo.

PvP
Arena was great for the first season, and for some of the second season - then it turned into a heap of turd. Pointless counter-comping and flavor of the month arena matches made it dull and boring. They never seem to get class balancing right, and I don't think they ever will.

Professions
I stuck to Enchanting for my ring enchants - can't really comment on any others apart from maybe Tailoring. Primal mooncloth bags ftw.

Misc
Flying mounts are so good and so bad at the same time. Yes, they make getting around so much quicker (Epic flying mounts do atleast), but they completely killed world PvP which really did destroy one of the most fun parts of the game. That coupled with cross-server BGs pre-tbc really removed the whole sense of belonging to a server as you don't really know or ever run into the opposite faction.

Best and Worst
Best: Arena, although that ended up badly anyway - but it was good for those first 4-5 months.
Worst: Everything was too easily obtainable. Once you had your full arena set (I don't really pve) there was nothing to do in the game. Even badge farming was redundant as I already had everything I needed from it after a week or 2.

 

DeusEx

Hellfire, Zangarmarsch and Nagrand were exceptional. Shadowmoon Valley was also very good. That leaves Blades Edge Mountains, which was too sparsely filled with quests, and Terrokar where I didn't like the whole Arakkoa theme and the unexplained Aunchindoun catastrophe, as well as Netherstorm where all the Manaforge stuff got repetitive quickly. Daily Quests were a good addition to the game, of course they got boring fast but that is to be expected with "daily" content. Rep grinds being much easier than in classic was ok for me.

Overall "Zones and Quests" have been one of the strong points of TBC and a real improvement over Classic.

Mostly awful. To short, to linear, yadda, yadda. The only Dungeons I enjoyed a bit were: The Botanica, The Underbog and Shattered Halls. The latter only because even when it was environmentally boring it was a gameplay wise a very fun dungeon. Great Pulls and encounters. The Botanica was the only dungeon that felt like one, and I liked the Underbog just for it's environmental design.

EDIT: Because I forgot; yeah the CoT dungeons were great. Escape from Durnholde was amazing, and I liked the challenge of Black Morass, even both of them weren't truly dungeons and more a kind of event.

Heroics are a great idea, that adds a lot to the game really. I'm a bit mixed on the badge system, but that stems from me favoring direct RNG dependent drop systems over slowly grinding my way into loot.


I skipped most of the raiding cycle in TBC, so I don't feel really qualified to answer this.


Not a arena fan, because I don't think that this kind of game play fits into an MMORPG very well. Leave the e-sports to the FPS and RTS genres. It wouldn't bother me, if it wouldn't create this whole class balance mess, that we have since the introduction of the arenas. Too much balance makes for somewhat bland classes. Don't like EoTS very much, but this has much to do with the environmental design and probably less with game play issues.


Yes. Professions have gone a long way since classic, where Alchemy and Enchanting seemed to be the only worthwile ones. Blizzard has done great work on the profession front in TBC. Jewelcrafting was a very nice addition.

Shattrath makes for a underwhelming city, as well as the Exodar. Silvermoon was ok, I guess. But I really which for better cities in the future. Also I would have preferred the introduction of better blues (> ilvl 115) instead of the epic inflation that took place.

Best: Zones & Quest as well as Professions,
Worst: 5man content.

I'm not an addict ... maybe that's a lie.

 

Smurrf

Isn't it a bit late in the game for this? A better time would have been, oh say, about 9 months or so ago, while there was still a chance to impact actual design.

 

Duilliath

Zones/Quest

I dislike one thing in particular with regards to questing: They've had a few brilliant ideas for quests (e.g. the Costume one), and then ruin it by recycling it half a dozen times over. I understand it's easier on them, but it does take the shine away.
I'm a bit miffed about missing out on a similar questline that Horde have in the Nagrand Thrall questline. It explains quite a bit (even about Nagrand itself) that gives a massive dose of background information (even up to M'uru) and it grates a bit to be left out.

5-men content

Clearly, tastes differ. I've seen Shattered Halls list very high on a popularity list, but to me such tube-like tunnels do nothing. I much prefer BRD/Strat-style instances, where there's multiple routes to take, with it depending on what you want to do and how much time you want to spend there which way you go. Even the *illusion* of optional routes would go a long way. As an illustration - Hellfire Citadel could easily have served as TBC's Dire Maul with the various zones linked.
On the flip-side, the CoT instances are fairly nicely done.

Raiding

I missed the pre-nerf Gruul/SSC/TK. I don't mind much. I do feel there was pretty much no increasing difficulty. If anything, Vashj and Kael'thas were harder than the entire BT and all of MH (possibly excluding Archimonde). I seriously hope they manage to get that sorted out properly this time round. In part, it's what made Sunwell so harsh. Sunwell was (from what I can see anyway), pretty much 'okay' in its difficulty (excluding class issues for now), it's simply that tier6 was too easy.

I'm not a fan of how tier-tokens were handled. Getting 17 Paladin tokens in 6 kills really get old rather fast. I don't mind the RNG, but 3 of the same token should simply not be possible.

PvP

What I loathe is being forced to regrind old content for new gear. I don't have to run AQ20 to be viable in BT. That's what the Honour gear system currently amounts to and it's one of the worst grinds in the game. That ancient relic of yore should be cut out, burned on the stake and buried somewhere it can't ever be resurrected. I have not seen any mark costs for the new honour gear. That, at least, would be something of a start.

On the one hand, I love Arenas. Small scale PvP without 9/14/39 random numbnuts is a godsend. On the other hand, getting steamrolled @ 1500 rating by people geared in 2200+ gear simply is bovine manure. I'm equally displeased about the PvE game getting adjusted by PvP-based nerfs. I hope Blizzard manage to separate the two entities more. That includes PvE gear being optimal for PvP (and vice versa).

Professions

Clearly, Blizzard has made mistakes. One need only look at the Tailoring BoPs or Drums. Personally, I quite liked the tiered Blacksmithing items. It would've solved quite a few problems had they given the Tailoring gear to the same treatment. It does bug me that one profession would provide so many 'benefits' whilst others barely give anything. Goggles or easily replaced Leatherworking items don't really hold a candle to what some of the other professions got.

Worst

Class balance was a mess. No two ways about it. Both in PvE and PvP. Sunwell demonstrated it like nothing before and had tier6 been at an appropriate difficulty, things could've been addressed well in time instead of escalating like they did.

An thenn tehy wuz al ded. Srsly. (Exodus 1)

 

Guybrush

Grammar is not my strong suite seeing as English is in fact my second language. However I did use a spell checker so if you wanna blame someone for that blame dictionary.com

Not all threads on this forum need to be about changing things or impact future design, sometimes its just about sharing opinions and pointing stuff out. And what better time to do a summery about TBC than now, when TBC is actually about to be over and we're at the credits phase.

That's a bit too generalizing, I thought more along the line of: Best: Flying mounts. Worst: Paladins/Shaman to Horde/Alliance etc.

 

Turmeric

Zones and Quests

Well thought out, clear progression and a moderate mix of new types of quests. BEM was a little too sparse for my tastes, and the reliance early on in TBC for rep made some quests a chore. Nagrand and Netherstorm both looked really good and added to the 'Outland' feel for me, and the manaforge Quests were good fun to progress a story line, similar (although not up to the standard of) the Onyxia chain.

5-man Content

Caverns of time was an excellent addition all round. Old Hillsbrad's escort quest as an instance and BM's event as an instance really departed from the norm and made these places fresh. I liked the concept of Zangar instances but they quickly got boring inside unfortunately.
The main change of course was heroic instancing and that was a truly genius piece of work. As a dedicated PvE'r it allowed me to play at a competitive and challenging level without needing to find 9/24 other people.

Raids

25 man was a bit more fun than 40 in my opinion. Some key issues were the learning curve (KT & Vashj much harder than most of BT and MH), moving from 10man to 25 man, itemisation between tiers and attunement hassles for alts

Professions

I think they really messed these up this time. On one hand, discoveries and procs within alchemy were cool, and crafting BoP weapons with SSC level mats was a nice idea and way to gear differently. Some major issues were T5 level crafted BoP gear available for gold, which greatly affected casters and their role in raids. Class X shouldn't have to roll profession Y in order to be viable for a year and a half.
Gems were fun and a good way to fine tune gear.

Best and Worst

Best: New spells, and viable Hybrids
Worst: Arena and its lingering impact on PvE

 

• adamb10

Zones and Quests
I thought Nagrand was the best zone in outland and possibly the game. Very well designed and lot of quests to do. Wasn't a big fan of Blade's edge just because of how hard it is to get to different areas of the zone. Netherstorm was also a fun area to quest in with more quests than I could handle.

5-men content
Definitely a disappointment. While Old Hillsbrad was fun and something different, I wasnt keen on BM which is just really repetitive with the portals thing. I did enjoy instances like Blood Furnace and Sethekk Halls though. The heroic system was a really good idea but gave out too good of gear towards the end of BC's life(think patch 2.4)

Raids
Raiding was fun in BC, I didnt play Pre-BC so I cant really base anything off that. Karazhan was extremely well designed and made for an excellent starter raid. At 80 I do think people will still run it for nostalgic reasons. I think it was the best designed instance in BC. It's a shame there was no intro 25 man raid instead leaving SSC with the first real one. The tier 6 content was undertuned and too easy for the loot it dropped. Sunwell on the other hand before they nerfed it was how BT and Hyjal should have been.

PvP
I cant really comment on arenas since I didn't do them much. Eye of the storm was okay.

Professions
I took jewelcrafting as one of my professions and it's a great one. Brings in a lot of money and being able to cut my own gems saves time. Hopefully inscription will be just as great as jewelcrafting is. Beyond that engineering was decent with the overpowered at 62 goggles you could craft. They are better than tier 6 in some instances. Cant comment on the other professions.

Misc
Liked the flying mounts idea, the way outland was designed I couldnt see not having them. Didn't really like relying on world drops for jewelcrafting recipes since you cant farm them. Wish blizzard would stop creating cities that are a giant circle(glad dalaran wont be one!).

Best and Worst
Best: The raid dungeons
Worst: Probobly the 5 mans

 

Blacksen

Zones and Quests
I do think that the zones and quests were really well done. I was excited when I got the expansion and stepped through the dark portal, and out of the zones, they were all very fun and interesting. The one exception is Blade's Edge Mountains, which was terrible. I had a 12-minute corpse run in that tunnel in the north-west (they fixed it) and it kinda ruined it for me. But really, you needed a flying mount in that zone.

Daily quests were a unique idea that I think worked out well. They really boosted money into the economy and kept it alive and moving. Items became very obtainable for everyone through daily quests.


5-men content
I think most of the 5-man dungeons were well done, though I wish that some were shorter. My favorites were the Caverns of Time instances. Instances like Botanica, Shadow Labyrnth, they were just too long. I support getting the typical 5-man dungeon being designed to be cleared in under an hour by a typical group. The badge system was BRILLIANT.

The thing that I really didn't like about 5-man dungeons was the loot at the end. Heroic loot should be just as good if not better than Karazhan. In WotLK, I hope that the heroic loot is just as good if not better than some of the 10-man Naxx loot.



Raids
I think that the change from 40-man to 25-man was an extremely good one. It made raids interesting and fun. It really expanded what they could do with the content instead of making it all about some tank-and-spank fight with an AoE thing. I mean face it, very few of the fights in vanilla WoW had anything special. Most of them were "deal with adds, avoid the AoE, use LoS, etc." They started catching on in AQ40 and really nailed it in Naxx, but at that point, the problem was that it was too hard to get 40 competent raiders. Making it so we only needed 25 competent raiders was easy.

The change from 20-man to 10-man is a different story. They screwed up with the "progression line" in Burning Crusade. Blizzard has already admitted it several times. But going from a fight like Maulgar to a fight like Gruul, going from Prince and Nightbane to Magtheridon, it was just a huge step when we first got there. I think SSC and TK were well done, starting with Lurker and Void Reaver, then Solarian/Hydross, then the harder 3, and then the last ones. But I still think that overall, the scaling was poorly done.

Black Temple and Mount Hyjal were well done. There was too much trash though.

Class Balance was pretty fair. I think that all the healers were actually pretty evenly matched. CoH and Chain Heal obviously dominated raid healing in fights were there was a lot of raid damage, but they did throw in other fights that made druids and paladins really shine. So having an even distribution of healers was nice. Tanking wise, I think they balanced out druids and warriors pretty well, while Paladins got shafted. Several fights strongly favored warriors or druids. No fights favored Paladins. DPS wise, I think it was decent. Warlocks and Rogues got ahead at the end, but I think skill can usually make up for class imbalances.



PvP
Well, I'm an arena junkie, and I think it was a very good replacement to the old honor system. Having a thing that's completely based on skill was extremely fun and exciting. Everyone who takes arena's seriously and goes into one will get an adrenaline rush and fun. It's fun that, for me, doesn't go away. Battlegrounds were awful later into the game. It's so obvious that it's just a grind for new level 70s to get their intro-to-arena gear. EotS is boring because it doesn't have enough action. I'm pretty sure it's easily the majority least-favorite. World PvP was also a huge failure.


Professions
Yes, professions improved significantly. Jewelcrafting was very good. I think there was some balance among the "good" professions, but professions like Blacksmithing and Engineering never really got ahead. Alchemy was also behind but they made up for it with the Alchemist stones.

 

Aggression

Zones and Quests

I must say that Blades Edge Mountains was an abysmal experience. In all the zones prior to this they seemed extremely roomy and mobs had plenty of space to move around. BEM seemed extremely cramped and thusly had mobs block just about every road, making traveling on a ground mount a pain. BEM also seemed far too linear. Nagrand, for example, was just a wide open expanse allowing you to move around with ease, where as BEM had those formidable walls that forced you to take this winding egress to the top (which was packed with ogres).

But the questing system was executed quite nicely. The only complaint I have is the Nesingwary quests out in Nagrand. That type of quest is just too much like the old world. Kill an abnormal amount of mobs (and at the time the experience required to level was still very high) so the grinding didn't really make much of a dent.

Hellfire Peninsula was by far my favorite zone because it was accompanied with my most memorable moment. Running through the dark portal to see a fierce battle waging right in front of you. Beautiful.

(Oh and the bombing run quest was excellent as well)

Oh mah goodness.

 

Addled

Zones and Quests

Zones and quests were good, although I wish Blizzard would add another flight point to Nagrand, it is utterly miserable getting around there. Linking the Azuremyst and Ghostlands flight points to their respective faction flight system would be terrific too.

5-men content

Very boring and bland. I liked the interconnectedness of Dire Maul, BRD, Maraudon, etc. The BC 5mans were very boring. Especially the fact that I had to grind them over and over again for rep to get the heroic key, even when I had gotten all possible drops that I needed from them.


Raids

Personally, I believe that the pre BC raids were way better. There was just far more of an epic feeling when we first downed Rag, Nef, Huhu, etc. But BC raids were pretty cool too. Kara was nice and varied, SSC/TK/BT/Hyjal were all great. Hyjal was weird in that there was no reference to the Infinite Dragonflight, but I suppose Blizzard rushed Hyjal too much.

PvP

Complete and utter disaster. Arena S1 and S2 were decent, because you saw lots of varied "fun" comps, but in S3 and S4 everything devolved into cookie cutter compositions and specific classes dominating. Battlegrounds are fun, but EotS was uninspired.

I ended up doing a lot of PvP on my 39 twink.

Professions

Professions were good, lots of nice craftables, although it seems Blizzard is going the other way on that. Engineering got screwed initially, but the helms + mote extractor takes the sting out of not being able to use engineering items in Arena.

Misc

Shattrah was a terrible city. Everyone seems to get lag there, and Blizzard didn't do enough to encourage people to return to the old cities of Azeroth. If I was designing Shattrah, I would remove all the banks and require people to return to the old cities for all banking/AHing/etc duties.

Exodar is a nice city, but Silvermoon is absolutely the best city ever. Beautiful, well laid out, multiple banks, inns, and AHs, everything.


Best

Zone design, quests, Kara.

Worst

Arenas, Shattrah, class balance

 

Duilliath

To add to the couple of mentions Shattrath got:

I don't know what bright light decided to park a couple squads of dueling NPCs right at the flight master, but it did very little to alleviate the lag that normally already accompanies a city area.

An thenn tehy wuz al ded. Srsly. (Exodus 1)

 

SeanDamnit

Zones and Quests
I think the questing and zones in TBC were really well done. There were always plenty of good quests with good rewards in a zone, and a lot of them were really fun. Sure most things ended up being "Kill 10 boars" types of quests, but I never felt bored when leveling up in Outlands.

As many have already said, BEM was the exception to the zones. On my second 70 I skipped it entirely and just went back to re-do the quests for cash once I had a flying mount.

5-men content
I see some complaints in here about the 5 man content, but I'm not sure why. I thought 5 man content was great compared to Classic. Most of the instances were shorter - do you guys remember how long Scholo or BRD would take in a PUG group? I like how there was a good amount of rep to be gotten in all the instances, so you know that your time wasn't completely wasted if you didn't get a drop, since the rep rewards were pretty good when gearing up for raiding. I love that the rep grinds didn't take nearly as long as Classic.

Heroics were horrible at first IMO. I felt that they were way too difficult for poor rewards, with the exception of the last boss. But now I love them, and think that the badge system was a great addition to TBC to keep the options open for gearing. Do you guys remember Classic where your only possible upgrade dropped off a 40 man raid boss where you had all kinds of competition? Because of that, I love badge loot, arena gear, profession gear, etc.

Raids
I was never on the bleeding edge of raiding, but I thought raiding was a lot more interesting and a lot more accessible in TBC. The attunement change was a good one as it was a real pain in the ass for everyone.

I'm not sure why there are so many complaints about class balance when you compare to Classic. Hybrids were great, all classes and specs were capable of contributing to the raid on an appreciable level, and the DPS classes really weren't THAT far off. I know that there is still a lot that can be done for class balance, but if you compare where we are today to where we were in Classic you'll see we are lightyears ahead.

The one complaint I had was that there was a point in T4-T5 raiding when there was too much to do. A lot of your guild probably still needed Kara loot, a lot of your guild probably still needed Gruul/Mag loot, and then you had to decide what entry bosses in SSC/TK you wanted to try and take down. For a more casual guild like my own, it was difficult to stay focused.

PvP
I never was a big fan of PVP. That said, however, I really LIKED that it was a grind instead of the Grand Marshall/High Warlord system that was there in Classic. The battlegrounds may have been annoying, but end of the day they were a fast and easy way to gear you up for the real PVP, Arenas.

Arenas were great since they did what everyone was asking for in Classic - make matchups based on skill. The Elo system used was a really good idea. I didn't mind the fact that people were getting T6 gear in PVP - like I mentioned earlier, it was a just another route to get gear instead of waiting on the RNG to grant you that once chance at the one drop you need once a week. And it was a lot more difficult than people make it out to be to get that T6 level gear.

Professions
Some professions were just over powered at the beginning, where others were pretty lack luster. Tailoring was obviously an overpowered profession in the beginning.

But overall, I like that all professions added more to the PVE game than they did in Classic.

Misc
I don't like how the economy turned out in the latter parts of TBC - basically after the daily quests were implemented. Once daily quests came in to play, most people basically thought to themselves, "I can make more money per hour doing dailies than I can farming xxx, so I'm just going to do dailies." So not only did dailies introduce a ton of money into the economy without a ton of money sinks, it also made it so there was less of a supply of items on the AH. Both of those issues contributed to way over priced AH for anyone without a 70 that can do regular daily quests.

Best and Worst
In general, the best part of TBC is that it made the whole game a lot more accessible for more casual gamers. And I know a lot of hardcore gamers don't like that, but it really is a good thing overall for the majority of people that play WoW. I also really like how it seems like they took all the annoying things from Classic and made them much, much, less annoying/tedious/etc.

I don't even have a Worst list. I really really liked TBC. I know a lot of you thought many things weren't done well, but the best thing to do is to think back to how that same problem was in Classic and compare it to now, and you'll see that Blizzard has done an excellent job in learning and improving the game.

Card carrying member of the Inapropriately in Love with Hilary Duff Society.

"Yeah, well, if we could all get what we want I would be eating dinner out of Hilary Duff's skull right now" - Salabesh

 

katholas

Zones and Quests
Leveling the first time from 60-70 was great. All the quests were set up in nice hubs and zones so I didn't have to run back and forth across zones/continents like in preBC. I really love Nagrand. It has great quests, some cool lore, and a very cool look. On my second time through it really set in that I absolutely hated Terrokar and Blades Edge Mountains fortunately I was able to skip them both.

Daily quests, I think, was one of the best ideas that Blizz had during BC. They gave people like me who HATE farming/grinding for drops a way to make some money. The only problem may have been exactly how much money they brought into the economy. The implementation of dailies made it so pretty much every gold sink in the game was trivial and huge amounts of money were brought into the economy with no way of removing it.

5-men content
I am probably not the person to really comment on these due to the fact that I can't stand 5 man dungeons. One of the big problems was that I HAD to run these over and over again if I wanted to be a viable raider. The only 5 mans that i actually enjoyed were the CoT ones. They were new and interesting and actually fun, not to mention that pre nerf and before T6 gear was available these instances were actually hard on heroic.

I also think that badges were a great idea that got implemented in a very bad way. Fortunately they seem to have fixed that going into WotlK so you can no longer grind 5 mans over and over and then go collect gear that is equal to or even better than T6 gear.

Raids
I thought KZ was pretty well designed and a nice intro to BC raiding, the gear from pre gear buff was terrible but they fixed that fairly quickly. Mag was a really good encounter pre nerf but was probably at the wrong place in progression for how complicated he was. HKM and gruul were just about right for a gear check and coordination check for moving into 25 man content. SSC/TK had WAY too much trash and were unbearably boring to clear once vashj and kael were down leading to most guilds killing them 2-3 times for attunements and then never again, which was really sad because those 2 encounters were amazingly well done. BT/HJ were really undertuned. HJ felt like it was 50ish waves of trash followed by 1 difficult boss, that one boss was well designed though and really showed who your good raiders were. BT was pretty much a joke.

Then there was Sunwell. Sadly this came only after BT had been out for 6 months and people were bored and used to really easy content. Sunwell was brilliant as far as I am concerned. It finally brought to BC the feeling that raiding could actually be harder than vashj/kael. The fights made the whole raid bring their game up to a new level. Sadly it also showcased some major balance problems. If you didn't have enough shamans it made progressing much much harder and mages, paladins, and druids were all somewhat lacking in what they brought to the raid. That was NOT sunwells fault though, the instance was beautifully designed, the classes were not.

PvP
I think blizz had their heart in the right place when they made the honor system the way it is today, but they weren't thinking about it correctly. Making people who wanted to enter into arenas, or any PvP really, grind old stale BGs is just not any fun. Even the people who actually like BGs may not like all of them, but you had to have the proper marks to get the gear you needed. Then there was the fact that each and every arena season you had to go back and grind another 80k+ honor to keep up with the off set pieces. Arenas as far as I am concerned have no place in a game like WoW. They shine a spotlight on class balance that was never designed to hold up under small scale competitive PvP. I have no problem with the idea of competitive PvP that rewards players with PvP gear but WoW was not made for 2v2 or 3v3, why not have a competitive Arathi Basin ladder? Trying to balance the game around such spotlight small scale PvP feels like it is doing more harm than good to the game overall.

Professions
They made a huge misstep right off the bat with tailoring and FSW. There is no problem having good gear come from crafting, there is however a problem with Ilvl 110 pre raiding crafted gear lasting until Sunwell. I think Blacksmithing had the best system for BoP gear with its upgraded weapons, and it would have been a good idea IMO to have continued that with HoD upgrades and sunmote upgrades. Jewelcrafting turned out REALLY well as a new profession.

Misc
RNG played too much of a role in places where it shouldn't have. In PvE you had things like guilds sitting on 3 sets of glaives after raiding BT for 8 weeks while Nihilum world firsted Illidan and then got their first glaive about a year later. There was also the problem with Sunwell trash drops. We were in sunwell from the day it opened and still have never seen a sunfire robe pattern drop.

On the PvP side of things RNG could really make or break arena matches on things that are utterly outside of the players hands. I watched the Blizzcon finals the other day when they put the streaming video up and the very last game looked like it was very much decided by a resist. I can't remember now exactly what got resisted, I think it was a cyclone, but it left the losing team in a position that was unrecoverable where if the cast had landed they very well may have won the game.

Best and Worst
Best: Sunwell
Worst: Arena balance

 

Dioneirra

Zones and Quests
The various zones in Burning Crusade did leave a mixed feeling for me. I liked the introductive design of Hellfire Peninsula, the way you were guided (or lets say pushed) through the whole zone, visiting nearly all areas and pointing out nearly all quest hubs. The scattered outposts did fit in with the 'the portal has reopened, and we are trying to establish ourselves here', also the questlines were nice. Zangarmarsh was quite a disappointment. Confused layout, large unused areas, a somewhat unfinished feeling in positioning and design of the major questlines. Terrokar Forest suffers largly from the splitting in two subzones (Bone Waste/Forest Area), and lacks a main theme. Nagrand is too large for its content, and the questhubs are not interconnected besides short 'go there' quests. But i really liked the look of this zone. Small flying islands, wide open ranges, cliffs and chasm. The most annoying experience in Blade's Edge Mountains was: roads are not safe for travel. I didn't like the small scale density of mobs and their tendency to stray of onto civilized territory. Questwise it was a very dissapointing area, and the later added flightpoint in the goblin outpost should have been there from the beginning. Netherstorm had a very nice lore background, and was fun to play in, even though some travelroutes are slightly to long. Shadowmoon Valley looks largely unfinished to me, a lot of things thrown together quickly without much quality control, the major questline (Gul'Dan) being an exception.

Daily Quests were introduced somewhat late, but it was a welcome addition. The reputation grind in the beginning was annyoing, the changes made to reputation from instances smoothen that a little bit. Still there are factions that offer far to few alternatives in the ways to get favor. The quest experience itself was better than in vanilla. Often the small questlines had some background with the zones, or earlier experienced content, it felt more in line with each other. The number of quests that had to be done in groups seems to high in the last few zones, especially because the rewards were sometimes more than just mediocre, doing an instance two level below your own often resulted in a better reward ratio. But besides this, quest rewards were much better than in vanilla. Something they overlooked, on the other hand, was to maintain a balance in offered rewards. For example restoration shamans could count the possible rewards from questing in the whole expansion on one hand.

5-men content
They were mostly short, followed a set theme, offered seldom more than a single quest, and were really unimpressive, compared to some vanilla 5-mens. Besides to grind reputation, or hope for some of the better drops (Mana Tombs as a famous example) i often avoided them after doing them once for the quests. They were just boring in the end. Some more than others, Setthek Halls was just a no go, that long of an instance for two lonely bosses? I do understand they tried to fit more content in less space, so it is possible to do a quick run for fun, but there was no opposite dungeon available. A 5-men i can spend 2 or more hours in just did not exist. I did enjoy some of them in the beginning, yes. Shadow Lab had a nice feel, and was considered difficult in the beginning, Botanica had a nice lore, Underbog was really fitting to the zone. Others seemed strange. Slave Pens had no meaning, most of the Achenai Dungeons were just random stuff thrown at the players, the CoT-Dungeons were, while a nice touch in itself, so far away from everything, that in the beginning noone ever run them, or even knew they existed. Heroics were necessary, as were badge loot. The original heroic loot was just horrible. And shutting of three dungeons from player who did decided not to buy a flying mount? This was just a bad design decision.

Raids
The starting raids were very random, Karazhan had very easy and very difficult fights at the beginning, Gruul was random, Magtheridon enforced class stacking for starter raids. SSC and TK were both ok, with Tempest Keep being more interesting in design and encounters, in Serpentshrine Cavern were to many classical tank and spank style fights present (with variations, of course). Black Temple was somewhat large, but doable, Hyjal felt nice if one has played Warcraft before, otherwise it was described as 'it is again CoT: Dark Portal, but much more huge' to me. Sunwell had a stupid mechanism with the portals, and the place felt like not very thought through, pushed out to satisfy the raiders. The changes from 40 to 25 killed nearly all our old raids, and it lead to a somewhat elitist behaviour, without justifying decisions through knowledge or skill. It did not filter out afk-people, or low performance player. It did restrict class variety and made losses in the available player base harder to replace than before. Loot was horrible bad placed from my point of view, 3 (three) pieces of non-set equipment in two whole raid instances? The later addition of superior badge loot was more than necessary. Outdoor Bosses were farmed, and later on ignored, the change to BoE equipment did not change this. Balance were, what people made of it. In my example, hybrid classes destroyed everything raidwise.

PvP
I tried arenas several time, and got bored very quickly. The introduction of resilence made it a boring stat build game, which does not fit my view of an RPG. I do think there are better PvP-MMORPGs outside, so i don't participate in the actual version of it. The dumbing down of the only real battleground (Alterac Valley) was the end of my PvP experience in WoW. Contrary, i did like the few world PvP objectives, even though i think they could have been better implemented. Eye of Storm was not interesting enough for me to visit it more than half a dozend times. It is not a battleground, it is a large arena, like all "battleground" right now.


Professions
Some professions did improve, but through the wrong mechanics. Tailoring was the main bad example with their easy to acquire and overpowered BoP-sets. Smithing was much better done, although it was not tuned enough (upgrades cost too high compared to time invested vs result). Still, i view this as the correct way to go. Leatherworking was average. They got the drums, which were an seperate, not otherwise obtainable groupbuff, so of course it was abused, but almost everything else was questionable. The elemental leatherworking BoP-set without gem slots? The enourmous times they needed to fix all socket boni in the other leatherworking sets? The much higher raw material cost compared to tailoring, without even offering a comparable result? Raid recipes were nice, but could have dropped more often. Jewelcrafting was to strong in the beginning (monopoly on certain cuts), and still is one of the few craft professions that can generate money.

Misc
It was somewhat annoying that so much was poorly thought out or not tested enough and had to be fixed in content patches. Progression did reset several times with removal of attunment and tuning down content. The game right now, with patch 3.0, seems to develop in a somewhat dumbed down direction i do not really like.

Best and Worst
The best was, in my very personate oppinion, that my spec, the raiding moonkin, is no longer something people laugh at, if being told that, yes, i am topping damage in naxxramas in certain wings, and no, our raid don't force me to spec healing like all and every other druid on our server. But of course, that was back when even our feral was viewed upon with distrust. The worst is, in my very personate oppinion, is that my spec, the raiding moonkin, no longer is something special. You see, with people being accepted in such a role, there is no longer the need to be extraordinary skilled to warant your spot. And it hurts to see brothers and sisters of elune choosing this path i walk, and, well, fail. But no one longer cares about it. Because they do not know otherwise anymore.

 

Kullulu

Delete.

 

Shaewyn

Zones and Quests
I thoroughly enjoyed leveling through Outland. I've done it a couple times, from both the Horde and Alliance side now, and each time I've been really impresses with how well designed the quest hubs and levelling has been compared to leveling through Azeroth. Things are more centralized, it's easier to pick up a handful of quests, then go out and do a big circuit of them, then come back and turn them in, instead of how it seems in the Vanilla levelling areas.

Daily quests are a very nice addition, as well. It's nice to have an option for making money that doesn't involve farming, and some dailies that can be done in an hour or less per day for decent gold income is a godsend for those who can't put in 5, 6 or 7 hours a day.


5-men content
5 man content was pretty decent. I didn't run any dungeons while leveling on any of my characters, and leveling to 70 put me up to honored with enough of the factions that I didn't have to grind rep for the heroic keys. As a result, I did little "level appropriate" dungeons, but lots of heroics. I'm very glad the heroics dropped badges, because it gives a means for someone who isn't in a high-end raiding guild to get gear increases beyond the t4 stuff.

Raids
Raiding was for me, pretty good. Karazhan, Gruul's and Mag's were all fun, when I was running them with a competent group. Trying to run a Karazhan with a pick-up group gets really painful really quick (what, you mean we shouldn't put a Mage in Netherspite's red beam?) At the lower level raids (i.e. T4 content), class distribution really didn't matter that much, I found, because player skill was so inconsistent in what I was able to be involved in that it balanced out the class differences. This isn't to say the classes were balanced, but that I encountered a lot of really crappy players...

PvP
PvP in WoW is abysmal. Class balance and poor match-ups torpedoes arena, Battlegrounds are too full of idiots and devolves into random mobs hunting stragglers, World PvP (objectives) have no real motivation and seem to just be a patina of PvP to placate people. PvP servers, while I liked it in Azeroth, end up being ridiculous in Outland because of Flying mounts. If you can be completely invulnerable from any reprisal by flying 42 feet off the ground, that's a bad design. If you want to have open PvP, everyone needs to be vulnerable (outside of sanctuary areas).

Professions
I thought professions were pretty decent. BOP Epic sets were (more than a bit) overpowered, such as the frozen shadowweave or wrath of spellfire sets, which ended up being better than T5 gear.

Misc
I hate Shattrath. It's a horribly ugly city with a bad layout. The portals to all the capital cities doesn't really make sense, either. It's nice from a convenience standpoint, but when every level 3 newbie sets their hearthstone to shattrath as soon as they can for the ability to travel quickly...

Best and Worst
Best: Raiding (except for stupid people), 5-mans, leveling
Worst: PVP, Shattrath.

 

Nicarras

Hellfire at launch was a complete lagfest failure. Hopefully the dual starting zone idea will work, but it might not if everyone just goes to the same one. Blade's Edge was too spread out to enjoy before you got a flying mount. Terrokar/SMV/Nagrand were all really well done, Nagrand being my favorite. I never leveled in Netherstorm and really one quested there for gold on one toon and farmed herbs. I think that some respawn rates could have been tweaked more, but overall I think it was fine.

I think that the idea was good, to create a bunch instances that were similar to SM, because everyone loved SM. Except that lots of the instances were just PULL PULL PULL BOSS PULL PULL BOSS. After a few times though, they became really boring and plain. Pre-nerf heroics were actually a challenge and I liked them. All the nerfs to heroics just turned them into a no-skill jokefest. The badge system was a great idea but was broken. They seemed to address this by making tiered badge loot, which is something that many of us clamored for when the badge system was introduced.

I enjoy 25 man raids much more than 40. It requires everyone to be on top of their game and to execute their role properly. You cant really carry half a raid of slackers like back in the day. While I like the Kael/Vash fight, I think their complexity and difficulty were terrible placed in the progression of content in BC. The encounters were too difficult for the time you got to them. Especially considering you could mow down half of BT and struggle on Vashj/Kael. BT was too easy with too many brainless fights. Then Sunwell went the other direction and require perfect raid composition to complete. Blizzard was all over the map trying to figure out how to tune things and never got it right out of the gate at all.

Loot distribution is still terrible. RNG being involved in loot makes loot distribution terrible. The PVP system rewards you with exactly what you want given you spend the right amount of time to obtain it. The PVE system, even with the tokens they implemented still relies too heavily on the RNG, and when you are pushing content you hit times where the RNG is making it harder to progress because you arent getting particular items at all. (ie. tanking weapons).

I like the idea of Arena. It fails on some levels because of the inability of Blizzard to adequately test and balance the various builds and comps. Leaving Druids broken healers for 4 arena seasons just shows how much Blizzard was unable to address many of the balancing issues around Arena.

Still waiting to be able to sell enchants on the AH. But then now Inscriptors can discover them and sell them on the AH, so I'm not really sure what they are doing anymore. JC seems fine and implemented well, but making money with some of the other professions is very hard.

 

Dollar

Zones and Quests
Leveling was obviously done a lot better then vanilla, Blizzard seems to have gotten it in their heads that running across continents for a questline wasn't fun. My favorite zone was definitely Nagrand, it had very epic feeling questlines and landscape.
5-men content
Heroics were a great success, having a reason to go back and do 5 mans, which are incidentally a lot more fun and challenging was a great design element. I think a one or two huge epic instances akin to BRD thrown in with the short linear dungeons would have been nice.

Raids
25 mans were a lot more enjoyable for me then 40 mans. Mainly because, sometimes your shoulders get tired and you get sick of carrying 10 other people. It's also undeniable I think that the majority of TBC had much more complicated and involved encounters then the majority of vanilla. Even Naxx had many fights that were horribly designed (Hi Loatheb) and some fights that were simple and unimpressive. Sunwell on the other hand was a lot more challenging and fun overall. It had hard, intense fights from start to finish and there was no being carried in there, for the most part. The move from insane consumable stacking was a great one and the implementation of daily quests completely solved the conundrum of how to make raid preperation un annoying.

PvP
Arenas are the greatest thing that has ever happened for PvP in this game. Late in the game it got a little more cookie cutter but at least for the first 3 seasons it was pretty dynamic and very fun. I think something like ranked BG's where you could Queue seperately for some kind of ladder would be awesome and make a whole new group PvP meta game. I burned out on Arena after s3 (this was more due to problems with teammates and possibly reaching a skill plataeu) but up until then I had a lot of fun with it. WoW is the highest paid esport in the world outside of Korea so it must be doing something right.
Professions
BS weapons and BoP Tailoring crafted items went a long way to making your profession actually useful. Would love to see things like this for every profession.

Misc
TBC was in general a lot more complex and fun then vanilla IMO. The raids were more difficult gameplay wise (I think everything died a lot faster simply because of the general increase in skill of the average player and the logistics of raiding were a lot more manageable).

Best and Worst
Best: Arenas, Sunwell
Worst: Some worthless professions, the game pre 2.1, huge gaps in content releases, undertuned and nerfed bosses.

"Oh he's a sad little man? He's thrown a kettle over a pub, what have you done?"

 

Lyer

Zones and Quests
All the zones were a step above vanilla wow, the atmosphere was incredible. There were some very good questlines that basically told the "story of the zone", i.e. naga draining lakes in zangramarsh, gronn in BEM, blood elves in netherstorm etc. Some of these storylines never got resolved properly, but it was fun getting there. Having only 1 zone as the starter zone sucked. Dailies were one of the best things to ever happen in wow. I remember farming SM graveyard for 900g so I could get my epic ground mount. Never again.

5-men content
The 5-mans were definitely much more challenging and interesting than vanilla dungeons. Some bosses you actually had to stand out of the fire, as opposed to straight zergs. The issue with 5-mans(heroics included) was that they weren't "created equally". Heroic mech was far easier than heroic arcatraz. If you wanted badges, you ran heroic mech or slave pens. You only ran heroic arcatraz if you needed to finish a quest. The other issue was, aside from the last boss, itemization for heroics was the exact same as the regular version.

Raids
Raiding was definitely much more interesting and challenging. I'm quite torn on this topic. On one hand, it was great to see new encounters, on the other the days of drunken MC clears were no longer here. Having karazhan/gruul/mag was the intro raids was a big mistake. While easy, it made the change from 40 -> 25 mans much more difficult. We all know the story on untuned instances. ZA was a welcome addition, if anything that TBC lacked, it was more 10 man instances. The timing of releasing instances was also an issue; sunwell came far too late, and BT/Hyjal came far too early.

PvP
I don't arena much, so I won't have a lot to say. I can say that arena was more frustrating than fun for some classes/specs. Grining AV/WSG/AB/EoTS for marks was a huge pain in the ass, total time sink. Eots still feels weird to this day for me, it just doesn't "flow" as well as the other BG's.

Professions
JC was a very good addition to wow, it gave something for everyone and became a profitable and important profession. Some professions were too good, i.e. tailoring and leatherworking. Gear that either lasted too long, or consumables that were absolutely necessary. Both became mandatory at certain parts in the raid game.

Misc
Getting rep was much easier than vanilla, although still painful for some factions. Shattrath...still doesn't feel like a city, very unimpressive. Doing quest chains that required a group to unlock dailies was a bad idea (ogri'la, netherwing and skyguard) Music was somewhat bland, I had mine turned off for most of my time playing TBC. The new tabards are incredibly ugly.

Best and Worst
Best:
More ways to have an "end game". It wasn't go raiding or go home like it was in vanilla. You could do arenas or do heroics for badge gear to progress. Easy ways to make gold now, no farming/grinding necessary. Badges: awesome idea. Gives people another route at gearing up missing slot pieces or gearing up alts without too much trouble.

Worst:
Raid stacking. From CC in 5-mans to shamans in Sunwell, calling raids because X player that had Y ability was gone, sucked. Unbalanced classes, from the mage damage tax to SB spam warlocks, why were such imbalances not fixed immediately? AoE tanking? Bring a pally or you don't AOE tank. Lore: TBC lore was horrible from the get go. Elves going to the horde? Flying space goats? Illidan is a huge threat, even though he's just bonkers and cooped up in his castle? A lot of interesting storylines were never completed (why the hell were the naga draining water?) and some had a horrible ending (archmage staff guy).


Good news is that wrath fixes a lot of the issues I had with TBC and having been in both betas, I was much more impressed with wrath beta than TBC beta.

 

Arlie

Zones and Quests
I've always enjoyed questing, I highly enjoyed the quests to level. I was a fan of daily quests at first, but then of course they got old and became a burden to have the same ones over and over. I also feel they made money a little *too* easy to obtain.

5-men content
I loved the amount of dungeons to choose from. I don't like the badge concept, as many have said, it made upgrades too easy to get, while encouraging mindless grinding of instances over and over.

Raids
I love 40-man raids a lot more than 25 man. Some of my best memories, and best screenshots, in WoW have been in 40-man raids, and I will miss them! With that being said, I enjoyed raiding in TBC, I loved the challenge of Sunwell, and the finely-tuned encounters.

PvP
I've never been much into PvP, I think Arenas encouraged me to roll my face on the keyboard and press as many buttons as I could, as fast as I could. I love the look of Eye of the Storm, and I enjoy the BG itself. I can't really comment on class balance of PvP, a I never did it enough to really know all the ins and outs. I'm a squishy glass cannon, and I'm ok with that!

Professions
I enjoyed "discovering" recipes as an alchemist, it felt like a mini Christmas every time I got one. I also LOVE making potions just to see the procs. Being a frugal person, I'm all about the free stuff! I like what Jewelcrafting added to the game, although I think the BoP JC gems are a little anti-climactic. I don't think the balance was great, when nearly every person in a 25 man raid "had" to be a Leatherworker.

Misc
Hellfire Peninsula has got to be one of the ugliest zones I've ever seen, and I despise even so much as flying over it.

Best and Worst
Best: Flying Mounts! And Health/Mana Injectors!
Worst: Cutting 15 people off our raid roster. Ohh, the drama.

 

◊ Kaubel

This listing shit is dumb and it needs to stop.

While I'm going to allow the thread to stay open, this needs to turn into some sort of discussion rather than post after post of laundry lists that very few are going to actually read, digest, and comment on. The original post contains ideas for discussion, but what it's not is a post template. All replies that look like the original post will get an infraction. Pretty soon though, a tipping point will be reached and this thread will get locked for rampant stupidity. You've been warned.

 

david0925

Aspect of 25 man and semi-parallel gear progression through badges are probably the best thing that happened for the expansion. The problem for 40 man wasn't as much about carrying people as it is to actually find 40 people with proper class balance to begin with. While 25 man still encouraged some sort of raid stacking, as we have witnessed in Sunwell, 25 man raids are a lot easier to organize and allowed more people to enjoy raiding. Badge gear allowed casual people to get gear at their own pace as well as allow returning players to quickly gear up for raiding without the needs of being carried in raids to pick up scraps. It also bypassed the craphole that all of us hate that is known as RNG (unless they make bosses drop 1-100 badges in the future =P)

Now, the worst: the difficulty for raiding instances give people the feeling that the contents are NOT done and/or well-tested. Pre-nerf Gruul and Magtheridon were both brutal, and 30 minute respawn timer and Al'ar/Hydross being the "first" bosses of real raiding instances, as well as the bad quality of early epic raiding gear (ilvl 100 in karazhan, 110 in SSC/TK) discouraged raiding heavily. The heavy consumable usage sealed the deal for many guilds, although it was nice to see really huge numbers from stacking a flask and 20 elixirs.

Second: the spacing and relatively difficulty of raiding instance was very bad. The entire Mount Hyjal was too short in actual content, and too easy (yes, this includes Archimonde). The length of the instance was artificially bloated using repeating trash mobs, which got very boring and tedious very quickly. First part (4-5 bosses) of Black Temple were also too easy, although having 4 out of 9 bosses in BT being reward bosses for beating Kael and Vashj wasn't really too big of a deal. Vashj and Kael were too hard for T5 content. If you can kill Vashj and Kael for attunements, you can easily clear BT/Hyjal within a reasonable amount of time.

Now, for spacing. Out of the two years in this expansion, Sunwell would have been around for 8 months after Wotlk is released. This means that all the other instances together took about 14 months. This is very bad spacing, and in order to keep the hardcore player, who has been bored for over 6 months farming the same content over and over again, they tune Sunwell to be "the most challenging instance to date". and look what it did to a lot of raiding guilds. While Blizzard learned that an instance with Sunwell difficulty is probably not welcomed, I am still very afraid of their spacing for content release. For WoTLK, it seems like 3 major raids are planned: Naxx, Ulduar Keep, and Icecrown Citadel. Naxx is going to be wrecked by top guilds in one week unless they tune it like Gruul 1.0 again, and who knows how long hard mode Satharion and Malygos (if there is the option for him) can keep guilds occupied for.

I think TBC is a big jump from classic, however the raiding progression pace is just as bad, if not worse, than classic, and should be addressed.

Maniq is my hero

 

Prinsesa

I agree with david0925 regarding Badge rewards: Anyone who was stuck in the Captain Karazhan phase could get ilevel 141 upgrades, but it doesn't really matter because they don't need those upgrades for the content they're doing.

In fact, the overall effect seemed to have been positive, insofar as letting people who took a leave or rerolled alts get caught up in the gear game that much faster.

Furthermore, by making items without tier set bonuses, otherwise 'bad' stat allocations and key slot upgrades (tanking shoulders?), Blizzard still made the Hyjal/BT items worth their weight in gold in the midst of the Badge rewards.

If anything, the problem with the TBC Badge was that you never actually wanted anything except the Badges. This lead to the Mechanar Problem where nobody ran anything else. This appears to have been mostly addressed in WOTLK, both by giving heroic items their own tier of itemization between normal 5-mans and the first raids, but also by implementing dungeon dailies from day 1, encouraging variety in run selection.

----------

On the topic of raiding: I have nothing but praise for the 10-man model. As someone who plays in Asia but unwisely rolled in a non-Oceanic server, I can't fit my schedule around 25-man raid times, but the small scale of 10-mans coupled with the gradual dumbing-down of the difficulty via Badge/PvP gear allowed me to raid Kara by jumping with 9 other random people and giving it a go, Battleground-style.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Dryssa

There were a lot of improvements BC made from pre-2006, but what I don't like is how professions were dealt with. First the general problems. Most of the crafted gear was either useless or overpowered. Spellfire/FSW is the obvious whipping boy for items much stronger than their intented tier, while much of the other crafted items like the leatherworking sets were quickly replaced. Most professions had difficulty making money. Blacksmiths had nothing, leatherworkers had leg patterns and drums, engineers had a tanking gun. Lastly, few professions had much viability in raids. Blizzard threw miners a bone in Hyjal and Sunwell, but for the most part you were LW/enchanting if you wanted to minmax.

Alchemy:
The battle/guardian elixir change in patch 2.1 crippled Alchemy's profitability. Potion sickness in 3.0.2 didn't help either. Essential flasks only available from a very low discovery proc was frustrating. No reason to be an alchemist in a raid unless you were a healer after 2.4. Useless in Arenas as well (though changing in Wrath with the Endless Healing and Mana potions).

Blacksmithing:
Armorsmithing was poor, crafted weapons were very good though. Creates a few useful stat items like runes of warding and shield spikes, but nothing that really brings in cash. Once crafted gear was replaced, no good reason to stay a BS.

Enchanting:
The profession to be if you wanted to raid. Ring enchants better than almost every other profession buff. Suffered from a lack of uniqueness, since most recipes were easily farmable. Easiest way to profit was from selling dust/essences/shards, which rather devalued the effort of selling actual enchants.

Engineering:
Poster child for pointless profession. Made some fun toys like the flying machines and rocket boots, but almost nothing that actually made money. Repair bots were almost mandatory for raiding though. Some items caused balance problems in PvP.

Jewelcrafting:
Best profitting profession IF you had the desirable recipes. Unfortunately, most of those recipes were rare world drops that went for hundreds of gold on the AH. Uncommon gems sold for pennies until Brilliant Glass was introduced. Little actual crafted items of use, as trinkets and necks were generally worse than what was available.

Leatherworking:
Leg enchants and drums. Nothing else was worth making, since nothing else would sell at profit. BOP gear was poor.

Tailoring:
Required for cloth casters until T6. Pointless once T6 was acquired. Decent profit from bags and leg enchants, though 20-slot bags were hard to come by for a while due to the effective 16 day cooldown.

Herbalism:
Low drop rate on Fel Lotus was annoying when farming for raids. Did have some fun effects such as Dreaming Glory's HP5 buff and Netherbloom's +/- 50 to a random stat. Good profit from raiders who needed flasks. Not much use besides Fel Blossoms and Flame Caps.

Mining:
Only 3 kinds of nodes, low variability. High profit, since 3 professions require mined materials. No point in raids or PvP besides getting gems from Hyjal and learning a pattern in Sunwell.

Skinning:
Low profitability until the rise of drums. Only used in one profession, which means fewer buyers than the other gathering options.