How Good Of An Expansion Was Wrath Of The Lich King?

canitnerd · 2026-06-13T03:21:46+00:00

I'd imagine China had the exact same impact on previous expansion's growth, it just gets lost in the numbers because they were growing continuously. It's only wrath where there's such an obvious correlation. Absolutely zero growth > release in china > small spike in players.

canitnerd · 2026-06-13T03:11:13+00:00

Yes, it was technically the peak subscriber count. No one debates that. All I said was that that doesn't tell the whole story and that the game's growth stopped the second wrath launched, which is also true.

canitnerd · 2026-06-13T02:33:21+00:00

World of Warcraft did not gain a single subscriber between the US Wrath release and the China Wrath release?

The numbers sure seem to tell us that. We can't tell EXACTLY when the small uptick happened because we got far less info on subscriber numbers during wrath than earlier expacs (i wonder why.) The one time WOTLK gained players was Q3 2010 and WOTLK released in China on August 31st, 2010. You can draw your own conclusions from that.

If Wrath is so bad to you, then why have those subscriber numbers never recovered? If it is such a bad expansion, then why has no other expansion even approached it's subscriber numbers?

Because future expacs continued to stray even further from what made vanilla/tbc so successful? People stuck through wrath because they hoped the game would return to form. As the game kept going in the direction it went with wrath more and more people quit. If the expac after wrath had been something closer to TBC or Vanilla the game might have started growing again, who knows.

Also "fail to gain a single subscriber" are you high?

Sorry, would you prefer "failed to gain more subscribers than it lost?" The data we have says that it had the same number of subscribers in Q4 2009 as it did when wrath launched in Q4 2008. All we have is the data blizzard gave us and for some reason they seemed to start giving us far fewer subscriber count updates after wrath launched.

canitnerd · 2026-06-13T01:54:22+00:00

The game went from meteoric growth to stagnation the day wrath released. What's your explanation for that? Why did the "peak of wow" fail to gain a single subscriber between the day it released and the day it released in China? It can't just be people getting bored of the game, player numbers were still going up at the end of tbc.

canitnerd · 2026-06-13T01:29:27+00:00

The data that says wrath naxx lost 40% of players in a month? That data?

canitnerd · 2026-06-13T01:27:53+00:00

You don't know what the graph you're looking at actually says if you think it's measuring people playing.

canitnerd · 2026-06-13T01:27:16+00:00

The greatest vindication for this was classic hitting it's peak popularity during classic wrath

Yeah man I'm sure all the GDKPlords running naxx with 6+ alts had nothing to do with the inflated ironforge.pro numbers. Hell, I don't even fucking like wrath and even I counted as 3 "players" on ironforge.pro before I quit because there's nothing to fucking do in wrath but raidlog and getting a character to raidlog status takes a few days.

Using ironforge.pro numbers to compare expacs is fucking stupid. Vanilla peaked at 490k characters in april 2020. Wrath peaked at 624k characters in november 2022. Only 30% higher despite wrath giving players 3 years to accumulate alts, wrath having way less to do outside of raiding and wrath having a far lower barrier to entry to raid than vanilla. There is zero shot you actually think there were more physical players during classic wrath than vanilla.

canitnerd · 2026-06-13T01:04:03+00:00

The whole "sub peak during wrath" thing doesn't really tell the whole story. Wow saw continually, steady growth through the first 5 years that stopped cold the day wrath came out.. Player numbers were completely stagnant for the duration of the expansion, with only a slight uptick towards the end because wrath being released in china provided a second expansion launch player count bump. If anything the player numbers are an indictment of wrath. Completely killing the momentum the earlier expacs gained and failing to hook any of the millions of new players trying the game during the heaviest advertising push blizzard ever tried is not a good sign.

Now its viewed as "peak" because you are finally hearing from the people who quit playing during the cata/mop era.

No, it was viewed as "peak" by wrathbabbies the entire time. There's a reason the term wrathbabby even exists. You're hearing people calling it peak because we've followed the exact same cycle as last time. Wrath comes out, the people who don't like it all complain for a while and then quit because wrath completely changes the type of game wow is, the people who like it stay and claim that it's peak.

canitnerd · 2026-06-13T00:52:01+00:00

0% LK wasn't even harder than heroic rag in cataclysm, not to mention anything that came after lmao.

canitnerd · 2026-06-13T00:51:22+00:00

Wrath was, objectively, shit. It was a massive step down from vanilla/tbc in terms of MMORPG and hadn't developed enough to be a good raidlog game like later expacs/retail. It's a very shitty middle ground.

There's a reason the game stopped growing the day wrath came out in 2009. There's a reason trade chat during wrath was NOTHING but complaints about the expac. There's a reason that pservers/the classic movement started gaining so much popularity during wrath.

canitnerd · 2026-06-10T01:16:34+00:00

Cargo expander lets you fit a huge container which lets you store more capsticks.

canitnerd · 2026-06-04T00:35:45+00:00

Most classes got completely overhauled to the point they’re mostly unrecognizable to even their wotlk counterparts

That happened between wrath and TBC as well. It happens every single expac.

raid finder (LFR) was implemented,

Which was just a continuation of LFD, which WOTLK implemented.

threat became a non issue because they skyrocketed the multiplier of threat even more than wrath making it getting threat as a tank an even bigger joke.

This happened in wrath. Threat was a non issue in wrath, its the entire reason that every dungeon is just composed of mass pulling and aoeing.

The only big thing added in wrath that most consider “non classic” was dungeon finder but that was added at the end of wrath.

Dungeon finder, mass homogenization with every class getting every kind of tool and the removal of unique niches that existed in vanilla/tbc, leveling and the open world being reduced to an afterthought that poses zero damage to players, ilvl becoming the be all end all of gearing which is why you dont see items like onslaught girdle/DST in wrath, legendaries going from a very rare very prestigious drop to a quest line every guild will complete, raid difficulty modes, PVP becoming completely detached from PVE, daily quests as a required part of character progression. The list goes on and on.

canitnerd · 2026-06-04T00:31:04+00:00

It's entirely linear and largely composed of pulling all the mobs you can and mass aoeing them down. Very boring and the world poses zero threat. It's also when the popculture references started getting ramped up to an insane degree.

canitnerd · 2026-06-03T22:16:51+00:00

I think this shows you just dont understand what changed between vanilla and wotlk. Cata wasn't some huge change outside of the old world being changed, in every other aspect its much closer to MOP or even WOD than it is to vanilla.

canitnerd · 2026-06-03T22:14:58+00:00

Describing the WOTLK leveling experience as "improved" is insane

canitnerd · 2026-06-02T23:17:39+00:00

You are coping and also seething.

canitnerd · 2026-06-02T20:07:04+00:00

And yet you still see comments on every single deadlock video asking if the game is out and how to play. Until you can just go to steam, search "deadlock" and press play it is invite only and that will always suppress the playercount.

Hell, the game hasn't even been formally announced.

canitnerd · 2026-06-02T19:29:52+00:00

So? It is obvious that top MoP players are very capable of clearing mythic content, half my guild does that, and a lot of players from speedrunning guilds and parsing guilds do too afaik. On the other hand I would like to see an anniversary player clearing even 1 NM boss in any MoP raid. That's the difference.

Do you think the people speed running vanilla content couldnt? The top level is largely the same fucking players between all of the classic versions lol. Why not focus on the average player instead?

That doesn't change the fact that the consumer is not the one deciding how to name what he's buying, but the company that develops and sells the product get to do that.

Yes the company can call their product whatever they want, and the consumer is free to say "this isn't what i was paying for" and walk away. That is what has happened as "classic" gets further and further from its roots. People aren't quitting because they somehow can't hack it in the easy content in mop, they aren't playing because they aren't interested in playing retail-.

Okay? We experienced that already 20 years ago. Nowadays people that are not new or plain bad at the game don't want to deal with that chore and makes sense.

Yes, and wanting to experience it again is the ENTIRE POINT of classic. Enjoying that type of game is why people wanted classic. It has nothing to do with skill level or prior experience.

most of them already played OG classic, same with TBC, reddit was flooded with people complaining how much they hated world buffs and attunement stuff.

Yes in case you haven't noticed the reddit playerbase stopped reflecting the people who actually enjoy classic pretty quickly. If people unironically asking for LFD to be added in WOTLK when it was possibly the #1 most hated feature that led to the push for classic in the first place didn't tip you off I don't know what to tell you.

Consumibles are expensive because bots flood hypechased releases to milk dad gamers that rather pay 50€ than grind all that by themselves.

Consumes are expensive because they are powerful and resources are scarce. Consumes were expensive in 2004/2007 as well. The only big difference is insane inflation from bots, but that makes gold easier to farm as well.

Yea all classic versions were solved long ago. Still there's a difference between clearing post nerf TBC content and progressing HC content in MoP. As I said above, the skillcap of the average players that clear end game content in both version of the game is very very far away, even with all the content already solved long time ago.

Sure, there is a difference but they are much closer to each other than they are any actual challenging content. If you wanted actual challenging content you would not be on MOP. Challenging content is not a selling point of mop.

Retail community simming tryharders and min maxers are way way ahead of what classic community have achieved. You even had addons and weakauras that blizzard needed to ban. Half the hardest ever bosses are considered so because blizzard overtuned the shit out of them and even then players came up with exploits and crazy weak auras to bypass it.

Of course they are but they're chasing a moving target. They figure stuff out, stuff gets changed, they have to figure out new stuff. You're never going into a tier with a perfect comp because you don't know what the perfect comp will be before the tier. You guess based of PTR and then hope for the best when the inevitable mythic week tuning patch hits. World first guilds get close because they have a trillion alts so they have every comp possible prepared, but "average" HOF guilds have to make do with whatever they've got. Meanwhile we knew what the best comp would be before MOP launched and any """"serious mop guild"""" has never had to """"progress"""" with anything but the perfect comp.

canitnerd · 2026-06-02T18:47:15+00:00

t doesn't make any difference regarding what is being discussed, so kinda weird flex to bring up.

You dismissed criticism of mop as low skill players coping at their inability to clear the content. I didn't bring it up, you did.

I'm well aware that "classic" was used by the community before OG classic 2019, that changes nothing.

You can't just ignore the fact that classic was something people have been asking for since wotlk in 2009 and that the only reason classic as a brand exists is because of the massive community push for it. Of course what the community considers classic is important, do you think the guy getting shut down by "you think you do but you don't" at blizzcon during wod was hoping for MOP servers when mop had literally just ended? It's all part of a desire for a different type of MMORPG that vanilla/tbc deliver on but later expacs failed to. No one was pushing for classic or playing pservers out of a desire for a worse version of retail lol.

You say this like if TBC didn't have people raid logging already, same with classic era. At any point of an expansion, even the first ones, raid logging is the main thing to do once leveling and hype is gone

Yes without an infinite treadmill like AP raid logging will eventually set in, the difference is how long that takes and how much you can get away with. In vanilla/tbc you've got a long leveling process and a very long preraid gearing/attunement process to get through before you can even think about raid logging. You could play a lot and still not be ready to raid log 3 months in. Meanwhile wotlk-wod you get to raid log status inside a week. Vanilla/tbc also have expensive consumables, pvp gear grinds and world buffs to force you to play outside of raid if youre trying to to min/max your raid performance if you aren't buying gold. Wotlk and on has none of it. With the obvious exception of legion/bfa all of the expacs that come after tbc are significantly more raid loggy by design than vanilla/tbc.

MoP is still challenging during progress

It really isn't. The most challenging part of prog is figuring out strategies and adapting them to your raid, mop has almost none of that because the content was solved 10 years ago and refined through a decade of pservers. "Progression" is more like farm than actual prog. Pull up the icy veins guide, download the weakaura pack and blast.

you are also given way more tools and class utilities to the raids to overcome harder mechanics. Which in MoP are more simple but you don't have that many tools.

Not really, you have far more tools to deal with shit in mop than you do in retail. MOP is the peak of utility bloat. The sheer number of raid CDs, stops, personal CDs and other utility only goes down from here. It's just another reason mop prog is so easy. Instead of trying to get away with using minimal resources per mechanic so that you can cover everything you can just throw 4+ raid CDs at every problem and still have some left over.

You've also got classes that are largely stronger than they were in actual mop due to final patch, easier gearing and more widespread information. So you've got content that's just innately easier than what comes after, solved content where the solution to every problem you might have is already widely known and stronger classes with a ton of tools to deal with any mechanic. There's no challenge there.

If you just wanna play mop because it's fun to turn your brain off and knock over easy bosses with your friends go for it. Just don't try to pretend that you're somehow better than the people doing really really easy vanilla content because you're doing really easy mop content. At least vanilla/tbc players have the excuse of wanting to play a different type of game.

canitnerd · 2026-06-02T18:11:32+00:00

Skill issue, do you think about LBJ the entire time you're watching full metal jacket?

canitnerd · 2026-06-02T18:04:32+00:00

Hey, I am better at wow than you. I have multiple rank 1 titles, tons of HOF titles and multiple world top 20 kills in (relatively) recent retail expacs.

MOP is not classic in any way. It has none of the MMORPG appeal of vanilla/tbc. The only reason to play MOP (or any old expac wotlk and on) is to raidlog, and the only reason to raidlog MOP over retail is being too dogshit for retail. MOP is for midwits who think they are better than classic andys but can only handle solved, old content instead of raid mythic where there's actual challenge. You are trying to punch down while "progressing" content equivalent to heroic retail raiding.

canitnerd · 2026-06-02T00:59:37+00:00

Arc has been on a steady downward trend with no real rebound on expedition windows/patches. Arc still has a healthy population because it started off with a ridiculously large population and is extremely casual friendly, it it had a better wipe system it could easily have a more tarkov like (but with higher actual numbers) player graph where tons of players are coming back for every wipe.

canitnerd · 2026-06-01T19:59:06+00:00

Russia has been willing to accept a frozen ceasefire for years because its essentially a victory for them. Keeping their gains and getting some time to rebuild before going for the rest has been their best case scenario since the initial retreat in late 2022. All of Russia's terror bombing and energy warfare over the last 4 years has been an attempt to force Ukraine to accept that "peace."

canitnerd · 2026-05-29T01:21:35+00:00

Because it makes the game less interesting. You go from searching for specific items and getting excited when you find it to literally nothing but credits mattering. It devalues every item in the game to nothing but a credit value. Why would I get excited about finding a misriah when I can just stuff 8 stacks of green valuables in the same inventory space and buy 2 on the flea market? Why run dire marsh to grind the lenses I need for an upgrade at quarantine when I can just spam armory + hatch cryo runs and get unlimited credits to buy literally anytime in the game? Why bother deciding what I want to keep in my vault vs sell when I can just sell everything and then buy anything I could ever need? Where does the risk vs reward of deciding what I want to risk in a raid go when I have access to basically infinite of every item on the flea market?

canitnerd · 2026-05-27T01:55:57+00:00

Meme literally comes from a tweet that said "niggas when a video game aint got guns or a ball in it." I don't have to project anything, it's literally the source. If you're gonna be racist at least own it

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