With Wrath of the Lich King came a new expansion to WoW Classic – and the most popular one, as many players still believe to this day. They explain that the reason for WotLK’s success actually lies in very simple systems.
This is what’s happening in WotLK:
- On September 27th, Wrath of the Lich King was released with many new features for WotLK.
- Only a few hours after release, the first players reached the new level 80, some of them only through ancient exploits.
- There is a huge discussion about elite players who only want the best teammates for the easiest content. The majority of fans say: just play and don’t sweat it.
- On October 7th, the first 3 major raids for WotLK were released. However, they didn’t last long: the first guilds cleared all the raids only one hour after release.
How popular WotLK was back then: Looking back 14 years to the release of the original Wrath of the Lich King, the excitement for WoW was just as great as it is today – if not greater.
Millions of players looked at WotLK during the original release. Blizzard still published official player numbers at that time. Worldwide, World of Warcraft reached its peak in October 2010 with over 12 million active players (via CNET).
This was shortly before the release of Cataclysm in December 2010 and is the last known peak of World of Warcraft. Back then, Icecrown Citadel and Ruby Sanctum were the major endgame raids. Since then, the numbers have declined, until Blizzard stopped publishing player numbers in 2015. Now there are only estimates.
However, the popularity of WotLK can still be seen today. Already at release, there were enormous queues in WotLK Classic, some of which lasted so long that players could simply sleep in between. The first ship to the new continent was packed:
“No wonder WotLK had the peak player count”
This excites the players: In a thread on reddit, fans are now discussing why exactly Wrath of the Lich King is actually one of the most popular expansions, if not the most popular one.
The reason is that you can easily achieve everything, but you’re not completely under-challenged. AlpacaWoolHat explains on reddit:
The raids are fun. 10-man for a fun togetherness, while you still need to pay attention. 25-man for a challenge. I think it was more challenging back then. You can easily get into PvP. You can easily farm gear and do stuff on multiple characters […]
The characters are fun, not as complex as in MoP and not as brain-dead as in TBC. Most classes are balanced with a few outliers. There are no MANDATORY TASKS in the game. It’s actually fun.
The user can see that Cataclysm became too hard for some players and why they love WotLK. Especially the point about mandatory tasks is well received in the community.
Within a few hours, the thread gathered over 3,500 upvotes and over 1,100 comments. There, players praise that WotLK is simply more accessible. As soon as you reach level 80, you don’t need any additional prerequisites like a campaign. You can just get started.
It is said: ‘You can just hop into an activity of your choice, enjoy the grind, and see the numbers you pump out grow. It’s like a drug.’ Many agree that WotLK was the best time they ever had in gaming. Others even discover that they have as much fun now as they haven’t had since childhood:
In the community, fans often discuss what makes WotLK so good. Elements that are mentioned repeatedly are the design of the world and quests, as well as Arthas as the big villain of the expansion.
There are indeed players who don’t want to know much about all of this and just want to achieve everything as quickly as possible. However, many enjoy the time they can spend in Northrend. And for those who want to jump in now, they can experience it all without any problems:
