Warlords of Draenor: What went wrong and how to fix it.

Here we are. We are nearing the announcement of another Warcraft expansion. We are in the fun period where we, the public, don't know what's going to happen or what the expansion will be.  Will we finally get that Emerald Dream expansion that people have been talking for years? Will we finally sail the South Seas to fight Azshara and her Naga? Will we travel the stars to Argus and battle the demons on their home base?

There are dozens of possibilities and fun things to speculate about. But its always good to look backward before we move forward. This leads us to our first question.

So what did Warlords of Draenor do well?

Warlords of Draenor did an excellent job cleaning up the user interface. The toybox, the looking for group tool, the inventory changes, the reagent bank, crafting from the bank. All of them went a lot way to fixing a lot of the user interface problems that emerged in Mists of Pandaria.

WoD also did a great job of making the classes more intuitive to play. All those unnecessary buttons are gone. Glyphs are better. Talents are better. The classes fit more into their niche/style/kit much better than they ever did before.

WoD also had an excellent leveling experience. The zones are great. The quests flow very well and the zone stories are great. WoD blows MOP's leveling experience away.

What went wrong?

One word. The garrison.

Ok, that's two but you get the point.

The garrison was an absolute disaster. Sitting in your own private instance playing an automated matching game is not fun. I want to be out in the world doing stuff.

Unlikely a lot of people who hated the dailies in MoP, I didn't mind them. It got me out of towns and got me to interact with the world in a meaningful way that was fun.

The garrison was the absolute opposite approach. You sit in your own private town waiting for the icon to start flashing.

How to fix it?

One word: Content

Is it as simple as removing the garrison? The answer is no. They need to go back to the MoP formula of getting players to travel the world do stuff. That means developing max level quest hubs and activities in the world. That means adding systems like scenarios back in the game.

They wanted us to ride around on our ground mounts for a reason. But there's no reason to be mounted anywhere when you are just sitting in your private instance.

Oh wait, one last thing.....

Is this the worst expansion they have done? Is it really worse than Cataclysm?

The answer is yes. Cataclysm had end game daily hubs; reasons to run dungeons beyond the maximum item level. It had multiple progression paths and a lot of more ways to interact with the world.

So yes, Warlords of Draenor is the worst World of Warcraft expansion, ever.