What I think Wrath of the Lich King did right

Judging by my previous philosophy posts (this one and this one), you can probably guess that I feel that Wrath of the Lich King is a fairly flawed expansion pack. That said, there are very few dark clouds with no silver linings (just as there are very few silver clouds with no dark linings... work with me people), so I want to talk about what I think Wrath did correctly and talk about all of the good things it did for WoW, and believe me, there are many.

Although I do believe that Burning Crusade was not as bad for class balance as people say it was (see my second post that I linked above), it was far from perfect, as any feral DPS who tried to move beyond tier 4 content will tell you. When Wrath was released, all of the classes found themselves on more or less equal footing. Sure, its still not perfect, and death knights were pretty overpowered when they first came out, but any veteran player will readily tell you that class balance is a hell of a lot better than it used to be. In fact, in the class Q&A's, Blizzard flat-out admitted that class balance was not a concern of theirs in vanilla WoW. Luckily for all of us, that has changed.

I also think that championing was a good addition to the game. It allows for much more flexibility in how one gets to exalted with a faction, and it forces Blizzard to make dungeons interesting, rather than requiring players to run certain difficult or boring dungeons in order to get rep with a certain faction. (Steamvaults, I am looking at you.) It also allows players to choose to run dungeons based on gear, and though that could be seen as a way to force players to run a certain dungeon, at least there is more flexibility in gear than there is when it comes to factions. You can't really make the comparison between gear and factions, since you can eventually replace your gear from heroics, but certain reputation items like head enchantments remain necessary no matter how good your gear gets. As such, getting reputation with factions is less negotiable than getting good gear, so making the factions easier to get exalted with is a good change in my book.

An even bigger change, however, was the switch to make all raid dungeons either 10- or 25-man. This allowed players to run raids the way they want to, and allows more casual players to see the content. Like I implied above, it's a really good idea for Blizzard to try to make content for as many players as possible, and having two versions of each dungeon prevents players from needing to overcome the raiding hump encountered in Burning Crusade, where many guilds couldn't make the jump from 10-man Karazhan to 25-man Gruul's Lair. Thanks to Wrath of the Lich King, they don't need to make such a jump.

Another good thing I think Wrath brought to WoW was the addition of hard modes, which I already covered in this post. To give you the TLDR version, the presence of hard modes allows more players to see content without taking away the challenge that hard-core raiders look for in their raids. As I said in the first post mentioned in the first paragraph, many of the changes in Wrath seem to have been aimed at getting players in raids sooner, and the idea of making raids challenging but not difficult while allowing hard-core players to still have their difficult content definitely fits in with this idea. It allows more players to see the content that Blizzard put so much effort into making, which makes sense from a business standpoint; after all, why spend so much time on something so few players will see?

As for achievements, while I don't see them as a particularly outstanding addition, I do feel they added something positive to the game. If nothing else, they give players something to do, and reward them for doing things in the game. Thanks to the achievements, raiding and PvP are no longer the only ways to gain titles. (I wear my chef title with pride.) They also make it easier to look back on your past accomplishments and feel proud of them, since you have a tangible manifestation and record of said accomplishments that you can peruse with ease. Besides, if nothing else, that ding makes everything feel a bit more satisfying.

So there you go. I have opened up and shown that my opinions are not as one-sided as my previous posts seem to suggest. That said, I am looking forward to Cataclysm because many of the features being added will change many things I perceive as flaws with Wrath of the Lich King, like Path of the Titans, which will give solo-players a way to make their characters more powerful, and Reforging, which will give the armor-making professions some use again. Yep, it's going to be a good time.