This is a good review. I was thinking about making another review like this one, but I\'ll mostly share my thoughts on Warlords here.
The alternate timeline was definitely weird, although it was nice to meet and fight people we haven\'t seen since Warcraft was an RTS. For me, the leveling experience was the highlight of the expansion, particularly the treasure hunting and sense of exploration present. As such, I probably enjoyed Tanaan Jungle more than Hellfire Citadel, and once was actually glad to sit out on Fel Lord Zakuun pulls so I could grind some follower rep.
I definitely agree that Mythic was a good way to make dungeons relevant. Mythic raids, however, were overly difficult, and the 20-man requirement was a slap in the face to smaller guilds that had done fairly well with 10-man raiding. For example, my fairly promising guild, which got 10/14 Heroic in Siege of Orgrimmar (we had a \"core 13,\" with people who rotated in or out, and sometimes brought alts depending on what we needed), wasn\'t able to get the members to do Mythic, and this, combined with the loss of some people, resulted in us disbanding before WoD. Of course, I barely even got onto Mythic this time, only killing Kargath on Mythic, taking Blackhand down to roughly 2 percent on Heroic before the patch, and only getting halfway through HFC on Normal/Heroic (we were stuck on Xhul\'horac and Tyrant) before I called it quits a little over a year ago.
The resource gathering part wasn\'t a bad idea in theory, since it did provide incentive to get out, explore and do quests. Of course, you end up with a vast surplus of guild resources anyway, to the point where it was rare that I didn\'t have my GR at or near the cap. Like most parts about the Garrison, it was a better idea in theory than in practice.
To be honest, the running specific raids part of the legendary quest wasn\'t a problem for me, since I could complete each phase of the legendary quest while it was current, and focused on my main.
The content drought was definitely a problem, although I didn\'t play any of the classes that were affected.
I actually liked Cataclysm, and I\'d rate it above early Mists, but below Throne of Thunder and Siege of Orgrimmar, as well as ICC (the only Wrath raid I played while it was current). Warlords is at the bottom, although there are a few extenuating factors, such as the fact that the guild I was in for all of Warlords wasn\'t all that good. In the end, I once again decided to leave, but unlike in the past, I\'ve never looked back.
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A Retrospective on Warlords of Draenor
I will start by saying that I mostly enjoyed Warlords of Draenor for idiosyncratic reasons. The biggest was flexible raids and the Group Finder tool, introduced at the end of Pandaria. I have an irregular playing schedule that prevents me from being in a raiding guild, and these two made it far easier to run raids with pick-up groups than at any earlier time.
But there are other things I liked with Warlords, despite the wonky alternate-timeline story. The Iron Horde is a wonderful mix of the aesthetics of barbarian hordes and the first world war. The world of Draenor is big and inventive, full of hidden treasures, and at times I really felt lost in a mysterious world with monsters all around. Mythic mode finally made dungeons relevant past the first few months. The area-objective quests offered various tricks and tactics and encouraged grouping up, but were far too difficult at launch; later versions were better. Also, new character models.
Yet three things let down the expansion. Firstly the garrisons; intended to add a strategy element, they simply did not meld with open-world gameplay. I liked at first having professions advance while offline, but it became tedious and repetitive keeping it up on each character. Even the followers had little identity.
Second, the legendary ring, the most powerful item in the game, was locked behind a quest chain that required running specific raids over and over. For someone like me who started a little behind, it meant being stuck in obsolete raids when I wanted to move ahead. These two features pushed me to focus on one or two characters and leave aside the rest.
Finally, the "content drought", a lack of new development compared to earlier expansions, seemingly the consequence of a hurried redesign during early alpha that cut out several planned features like Farahlon and the railway in Gorgrond. What I missed most was that the classes and their gameplay, the true core of the game, remained largely static from Pandaria; Combat rogues and Shadow priests badly needed innovations.
I rate Warlords above Cataclysm but below Wrath and Pandaria (my favourite so far). But with Legion now started, I can see that lessons have been learned from it. The Class Halls take the best features of the garrison (followers and missions) and improve on them, with none of the tedious resource management; they have more flavour, engage with the wider world more and the variety actually encourages playing on different characters. Legendary questlines and valor (which I never liked as item-upgrade currency) are replaced by Artifact weapons, obtained early on and using fungible upgrades from any source. Scaling promises to make dungeons relevant from start to finish, and allow players of all levels to group up. Above all, major effort and innovation went into the classes and their gameplay, animations and identity.
So I think Warlords is best seen as test for ideas that have come to fruition in Legion.