The Worst Expansion Ever

When the next expansion was released the guild was still stronger than ever. After several months without any new content, everyone was eager to beat the new raids as quickly as possible. We had a great setup and quickly cleared all available content. As I mentioned before, this was when Play Out reached its peak during my time in the guild. Our kills started to show up on the EU guild rankings, although in the 200’s and 300’s (and once in the 100’s). But for me, and many others, this was the end of hardcore World of Warcraft. Basically, it comes down to three things:

Most importantly, the “casualization” of the game. Many of the changes made in The Burning Crusade were motivated, since some aspects of Vanilla were pretty insane. Even so, I thought they took it a bit too far already in The Burning Crusade. Wrath of the Lich King was a whole different story, though. So many things made the game cater more for casuals than hardcore raiders. To begin with, the contrast between Sunwell Plateau and Naxxramas was just too big. On most of the bosses in Sunwell Plateau pre-patch, one player making one mistake could wipe the entire raid. And classes actually made a difference. You couldn’t just go with any tanks, any healers and any DPS. But the main thing was the introduction of Normal Mode and Heroic Mode raids. This, and the fact that even Heroic Mode raids weren’t difficult at all, so you had to resort to achievements to distinguish yourself as a successful guild. In The Burning Crusade, everyone knew we were the only guild to kill Illidan for a very long time. Who the hell knew we had the Glory of the Raider and The Immortal achievements in Wrath of the Lich King? This may seem strange to some people, but a strong driving force in games like this is not only to progress in the game, but to be better than others. When the lines between our guild and the less successful guilds got blurred, it wasn’t as fun to raid five to six times every week anymore.

The cookie cutter solution for boring farm raids.

Second, Wrath of the Lich King took the streamlining of the classes too far. Already in The Burning Crusade, we were joking that every class could do everything and soon Warriors would get heals and Paladins would get Stealth. The glaring weaknesses most classes had were part of the game and overcoming them made the game interesting. For me personally, the uniqueness of the Shadow Priest was removed completely when the spec went from a unique utility class to a regular DPS class, and I started to raid more and more as Holy.

Third, flying mounts, easy summons, looking for group tools, etc. all made game play more comfortable. But the feeling of being in a living world was removed. The entire world felt completely unnecessary when all you did was fly around and queue up for things.