Smolderforge Support Community

First off I want to say congrats to Smolderforge for releasing a WotLK realm. Glad to see such progress; but I personally am in love with TBC and everything it offers. Sadly, I am currently on vacation with only a borrowed computer to vote, read, sit and ponder about the game we all love. So as I sit here and think about how much I want to play (yeah even on vacation) I'm going to sooth this passion with writing what I love about Burning Crusade.

First of all I think this was when World of Warcraft was in its height of popularity making it earn its title of MMO a massively played and loved game. How many millions of players did it have? The people I met while playing in this expansion where truly some of the best people I have met in my LIFE. Sad right? "People on the internet" giving me more fulfilling relationships than people I can look at and talk to. Sitting up all hours of the night talking to guild mates. Developing strategy. Deep stuff for a socially awkward man such as myself.

Second, everyone having their own difficulties and triumphs making the game feel truly rewarding. Kara was a great raid for players new to the game and easily ran by guildies to give items to guild mates they wanted to bring up to speed. The fact it had 12 bosses made it easy to do so. Bosses were (fairly) easy allowing "leet guildies" to give gear to friends. TK and SSC for moderate players, challenging them to "step up" and really earn their journey toward T6; Remember the Lady Vashj fight? Holy crap! Which leads me to my next point. Attunement! Honestly, does retail even have attunement quests anymore? I haven't played retail since I joined the military two months after Wrath was released therefor, I've played very little of Wrath and literally NONE (zero) of Cata. From what I've read Blizz has done away with this kind of thing so every child can "get to fight the last big bad guy." If I'm wrong please tell me so I'm not ranting like some uneducated lunatic...Too late? Oh well.

Lastly, the gear. The gear of vanilla was very fitting however to see such crazy numbers on a piece of green gear at level 61 made me and my friends gasp and giggle like happy little school girls. Then at 70? The scaling just seemed so perfect. I'm kind of drawing a blank trying to give more examples I'm sure you all will help me but feeling so much more powerful at level 62 in blues than level 60 epics was a very bitter-sweet feeling. Looking at the stats of level 85 gear seems like blizzard gave up. I loved looking at my Merc glad set on my rogue with its gems and enchants. The item description took up half the screen showing me all the stats and abilities the WoW Gods have granted me by showing myself worthy of having this piece of gear. Now you see gear and its stamina and mastery. Shame.

Am I way off base? Is Wrath really the best expansion? Maybe I haven't played wrath in its entirety to fully appreciate it like I do TBC. I played retail from 2005-2010 and never had as much fun as I did playing with friends and learning like I did during the years of The Burning Crusade.

While Wrath delivered a lot of fun content to raid and continue the lore of WoW, The Burning Crusade was also my favorite. It was the pinnacle of WoW's success, and it also happened to be when I started playing.

I joined in TBC on patch 2.0.1, right after it dropped. Essentially it was the patch that prepared the game for TBC's release, but TBC itself wasn't out just yet. It was an excellent time to play. The friends I had in my guild on there, are ones I will never forget. Sadly, I am not longer in contact with them as we all moved on sometime after Wrath. The memories I have will last a long time.

I took the time a few weeks ago to level on a Pre-TBC server that just recently opened up. I've always admired the content on Pre-TBC but I noticed when I was playing, the game felt like it did for me back then. Apart from the x8 leveling rates of course. The gap between TBC and Vanilla was the smallest gap the game every had. Nothing changed in the old world really---just Outland got added. To me, the game felt exactly the way it did all those years ago. Somehow I had been blown back into 2007 and was re-experiencing the game. It was... quite nostalgic I won't deny.

Actually, in terms of amount of subscriptions, Wrath was the pinnacle of WoW's popularity.

I like TBC the most , cause of best balance so far ( even tho its also poor lol ) .

If you guys say TBC was the best you surely didnt play pre TBC. Pre TBC was made for the real players. It was really hard to get epics and to be successful.

With each expansion the game has just gotten more noob friendly. When i stopped playing just after wotlk got launched i felt like the bottom were reached. I mean it couldnt be any easier to get epics.

In pre TBC epics were status, if you had epics you were awesome/non lifer. In TBC it were more like "ok that guy has done some karazhan runs." And in wotlk you were laughed at if you didnt have any epics.

Damn i miss pre TBC! :(

Yes, because the real players were the ones who tunnel-visioned epics. Nothing more to the game. Not at all.

Epics. Skill. Real players. Ok.

Assninja wrote:If you guys say TBC was the best you surely didnt play pre TBC. Pre TBC was made for the real players. It was really hard to get epics and to be successful.

With each expansion the game has just gotten more noob friendly. When i stopped playing just after wotlk got launched i felt like the bottom were reached. I mean it couldnt be any easier to get epics.

In pre TBC epics were status, if you had epics you were awesome/non lifer. In TBC it were more like "ok that guy has done some karazhan runs." And in wotlk you were laughed at if you didnt have any epics.

Damn i miss pre TBC! :(

Vanilla = Overrated, PvP was a lot more balanced though I must admit PvE gear vs PvP gear and PvP gear just had more stamina.

Well maybe I'm just saying this cuz paladins were total mushrooms back in the day.
Auto-attacking and hoping for a SoC procc. Without reckoning we weren't amazing.

Assninja wrote:If you guys say TBC was the best you surely didnt play pre TBC. Pre TBC was made for the real players. It was really hard to get epics and to be successful.

With each expansion the game has just gotten more noob friendly. When i stopped playing just after wotlk got launched i felt like the bottom were reached. I mean it couldnt be any easier to get epics.

In pre TBC epics were status, if you had epics you were awesome/non lifer. In TBC it were more like "ok that guy has done some karazhan runs." And in wotlk you were laughed at if you didnt have any epics.

Damn i miss pre TBC! :(

This. Getting to 60 alone was a huge feat. Getting ALL THAT GOLD for the epic mount was hard for me too personally. Maybe I just sucked ...probably still do. When my friend introduced me to the game I started my Tauren hunter (lulz) as he was getting his epic mount and I felt bewildered by the journey that was ahead of me. While I'm thinking about it, the people have really turned into @$$holes too as the years go by. I remember when I gave up on my hunter and rolled a mage I randomly met a trucker who played on his laptop at truckstops and he personally walked me through levels 16-29 giving me tips and tricks all the way. Scarlet Monastery was great for powerleveling. See OP for my *awesome fun timez* rant.

Shirudo wrote:

Assninja wrote:If you guys say TBC was the best you surely didnt play pre TBC. Pre TBC was made for the real players. It was really hard to get epics and to be successful.

With each expansion the game has just gotten more noob friendly. When i stopped playing just after wotlk got launched i felt like the bottom were reached. I mean it couldnt be any easier to get epics.

In pre TBC epics were status, if you had epics you were awesome/non lifer. In TBC it were more like "ok that guy has done some karazhan runs." And in wotlk you were laughed at if you didnt have any epics.

Damn i miss pre TBC! :(

Vanilla = Overrated, PvP was a lot more balanced though I must admit PvE gear vs PvP gear and PvP gear just had more stamina.

Well maybe I'm just saying this cuz paladins were total mushrooms back in the day.
Auto-attacking and hoping for a SoC procc. Without reckoning we weren't amazing.

You cant really be serious when you say that Vanilla were overrated?! Im sorry and dont want to be rude but the people who didnt like Vanilla were in most cases just too "noobish" and didnt handle the pressure and skills required on 60.

Assninja wrote:
You cant really be serious when you say that Vanilla were overrated?! Im sorry and dont want to be rude but the people who didnt like Vanilla were in most cases just too "noobish" and didnt handle the pressure and skills required on 60.

While I personally like vanilla more than any other expansion I do have to disagree with you there. Vanilla had a lot of problems. It was the earliest version of the game and lacked a lot of things that could have made the game MUCH better that have been added in later expansions. The game had less to do with skill and more to do with free time. You had to invest a LOT of your life into the game to get far and some people weren't able to do that. It gave you a feel that you really worked for you items and character which is what I enjoyed the most, but a lot of people just couldn't handle making WoW the most important thing in their life and if you couldn't do that you really couldn't enjoy it to its fullest.