Why did Cataclysm fail?

[Linkedblade]

Cataclysm? We saw Deathwing get mad at Alextraza... and those few who did the Blasted Lands quest saw him hunt down an egg.

Aside from that - Deathwing's cunning plan through all those zones was to shout "RAAAAAAARGH!" and burn random patches of land.

What? What? What? Did you not play the same game as me? Deathwing was literally everywhere. He was communing with Ragnaros on the the FIRST QUEST in Hyjal, which also happens to be the first quest you can do at the level cap. While absent in Vash'jir his old god comrades are working evil deeds there. Deepholme was is resting place before the Cataclysm, and you show up to fix all the damage he had done. Uldum you deal with him corrupting the Tol'Vir, allying with the Air Elementals, dealing with his lieutenant via the harrison jones quests. In Twilight Highlands you deal with his old gold lieutenant and the twilight cult and actually encounter him. All the raids were us chopping down all of his forces and the Dragon Soul raid was taking the fight to him.

So again what about Cataclysm made the antagonist so distant? And the BS about him being not being in any other game is bad. He was a character in lore before Arthas, Illidan, Kael'thas. Warcraft II . . .

[markdall]

I disagree that it failed. I enjoyed it more than I do MOP.

[Ielenia]

Launch
- Too much focus on remaking 1-60 zones, not enough on end-game
- Unlike Arthas, Deathwing required research to understand his motives. You're TOLD he's bad, not shown
- During the expansion launch, big cry out over difficulty and Blizzard made the controversial move of mass nerfs
- Quest linerarity, sense of discovery lost?
- Heroic dungeons had little entry barrier, so heaps of unskilled/ungeared players jumped in and ruined it, trash was bad too (ie. sheeping mobs) and the difficult disparity between Cata and WotLK was too much of a leap
- Places like Vash'jir had a rich storyline but was dropped because people didn't like the zone
- It was too easy to outlevel the 1-60 leveling content and end up stuck in Outland (ie. you level in Northern Barrens but then everything is grey 3/4s through) and taking off heirlooms seems silly
- Archaelogy was retardedly boring
- Though the expansions tone was appropriate, moving from zone-to-zone felt disorienting and nothing seemed 100% connected
- Not enough 80-85 leveling zones, moreso: not enough options when leveling through them (ie. 5 zones compared to Northrend's 8 and Pandaria's 7)
- People loved Worgen/Goblin starting zones, but didn't like that you were forced to stay there until level 10-15

- I think there was a good enough amount of end-game. Only the 'almost half a year between Dragon Soul and MoP' bugged me;
- You're shown many times Deathwing destroying everything. Geez, he would even sometimes fly over a random zone and KILL EVERYTHING THAT MOVES in it. How is THAT not 'show'?
- I loved the difficult heroics. Loved them. Enough challenges to spice up the dungeon runs;
- Won't argue there. The 'linear questing' have its pros and cons;
- 'Heroic dungeons had little entry barrier'? Seriously, did you start playing after the massive heroic dungeon nerfs? There was a huge 'entry barrier' for the heroics at the beginning, due to many nearly auto-kill abilities bosses would get in heroic mode;
- Actually, the Vashj'ir raid was dropped due to other reasons. I don't quite remember which ones, and I can't find the blue post about them, so I can't give any specifics;
- Not sure how you played, but, leveing an alt with heirlooms back in Cata, I'd breeze through the 1~60 levels, and then would practically breeze through Outland as well, losing only a little bit of steam. During 70~80 is that things slowed down for me;
- There were reasons for that. Time shifts and whatnot. As for me, it was the opposite. We'd stay there until nearly level 20, and then we wouldn't be able to return there. Sure, you can fly into Gilneas, but the area is a dead, deserted zone;

4.1
- Valour points from the same two dungeons over and over
- Getting missing purples from the heroics was good, but then who could be bothered doing 4.0 raids when you could just get the loot from said heroics?

- Those purples are of lower quality than the 4.0 raids;

4.2
- Small raid tier, no content except the raid
- Dailies were only mildly interesting

- Uh... Fireland zone and dailies say 'hi'? Plus I wouldn't exactly call the Firelands raid zone 'small', just because it has less bosses. 4.0 had 13 bosses, 4.2 had 8;
- I loved those dailies.

4.3
- Raid finder = good but too easy?
- Killing Deathwing through raid finder felt lame
- Deathwing fight had a lot of rehashed environments and models though, especially over the course of one year
- The ending cinematic was bizarre and had no lead-up

- Raid Finder isn't supposed to present difficult challenges. It was made to let the average player to experience all of the tier content;
- I'll concede that point;
- Cho'gal fight also had a lot of rehashed environments and models... So did Nefarian 2.0... Halfus... Actually, I could keep citing bosses all the way back to vanilla that used 'rehashed environment and models'. Sorry, but that argument just won't fly even if you strap a rocket on its back;
- Why did it have to lead up to anything? Deathwing's dead. The Aspects lost their powers. We know what we needed to know. You can't have an 'epilogue' cinematic if the game hasn't ended. The expansion was over, but not the game;

[Deleted]

Don't really think it failed. The content it brought was good. mop for example bring a lot of content, but all of it sucks so bad makes me want to puke. And changes to classes just bad.

[Myrandron]

A few people have brought up the whole, deathwings motives and that it wasn't clear. First off they technically weren't his motives they were planted into his mind by old gods, and the reason he was destroying stuff was to(I believe this is true never found out if it would happen) break the world and help old gods escape.

All in all though I loved the starting of the entire expansion, it was a new experience and it was fun an exciting and amazing to explore everywhere! But then it degraded into sitting inside or org or stormwind waiting for your ques to pop not having to worry about going anywhere other then the max level zones if you needed gems or herbs or the rare occasions of getting to the raid first. I don't think I will ever feel what I did in the first few months of cata ever again, nothing could come close. The troll dungeons were kinda fun, they were just kind of a wall that I didn't care about because they were difficult and seemingly unimportant really only coming into play when I was locked from entering firelands because of the Item level requirement, firelands was an interesting and fun experience for a while but it got old after the first initial week was over and it was the same old stuff farming constantly until I got to a point where something was thrown into the mix to change it up and add a little spice. Dragon soul was boring for the most part, it didn't feel satisfying killing Deathwing as it did with killing Arthas, they took such a lore rich character that could have been the most incredible fight in the history of WoW ever and turned him into a boring old god creation, it was kinda cool fighting this big imposing lord of destruction that threatened to end all existence as we know it the first time or two, then it become another boring raid.

So cata was like most other expansions, it had high points and low points, I can't really see how it was the worst expansion of all time, hell I've seen plenty of people and guidlies saying that Bc was the worst experience ever. To each man his own, I guess.

[Lastlivingsoul]

I went into Wrath not knowing a damn thing about Arthas other than he was responsible for EPL/Strath/Scholo.

By the time we killed him, I knew EVERYTHING about him.

I fought at his side to "purge" Strath of the plague.
I saw him get manipulated to focus on his anger.
I saw him betray Muradin and his friends to get frostmourne.
I saw him grant powers to beings
I saw him punish and betray those same beings he gave powers to
I saw him torture an old friend just out of malice
He killed me in Howling Fjord, saying death isn't eternal - and that he has a plan for me.
I even got to PLAY as him... creating armies of undead to slay more people to raise even MORE undead!
In the end, he kills me again - revealing his plan was to raise us as an elite army.

Aside from those things, yeah - we didn't see NOTHING of Arthas' back story or motivations.

Cataclysm? We saw Deathwing get mad at Alextraza... and those few who did the Blasted Lands quest saw him hunt down an egg.

Aside from that - Deathwing's cunning plan through all those zones was to shout "RAAAAAAARGH!" and burn random patches of land.

This pretty much sums what was great about Wrath.

In my opinion Catacylsm started out as a great concept but halfway trough it looked like there was a dramatic shift in control over the story. The Scar of Deathwing was originally the entrance to Deepholm Deathwing broke through not the Maelstrom. That is why in the Cinematic you see Deathwing breakout of a mountain. Also in the Throne of Tides there is an un-used raid Portal that will never see a raid. There was a model datamined to be an underwater raid but it was scrapped. So many ideas were scrapped mid way through development they didn't bother to add continuity between them.

I blame the revamping of all questlines in Azeroth. Many of those questlines also went unheeded. Kolitra and the Western PL, The Old God in Stonetalon messing with the Emerald Dream etc. Still rebuilding every last quest and zone took more time an effort than you could imagine but most people above 80 never bothered to find out what changed.

As for me personally I found that the use of the SAME Old God models from Ulduar over and over and over and over again got real Old really fast. No imagination was seen whatsoever in the Siege of Wyrmrest. The best instances where actually the Caverns of Time, seeing Noz and the Queen (the present was kinda lame but it fit the story I guess.)

It lacked focus just as Mvallas explained what was good in Wrath. Had they finished what they started they might have actually had people excited to see more. But our attention was everywhere and after a while no one cared.

Mist of Pandaria gives me a hope they have learned their lesson.

[Airwaves]

Cata didn't fail. MoP is the failure since that's where the players have left in big numbers. The only bad thing about cata was how long we had to raid DS for before MoP came out.

MoP is the failure.

The numbers went up in mop...

[TheDDGuides]

The numbers went up in mop...

They went up (as to be expected from an expansion launch) but they're slowly sloping down. I find this is more due to time than the quality of present content though.

[Purebob]

Cata was just too easy imo, Dragon Soul was a joke.

[Rixarius]

Cataclysm was pretty good up until 4.3. It seems post Firelands they just tried to sweep it under the rug and promote MoP. Dragonsoul was such a massive letdown. It's a shame that the dungeons that came with it were better than the raid.

[Alvito]

Much of the ground work for the unhappiness of Cata was laid in the last year of Wrath. If we didn't have a long drawn out year of ICC with its odd gating of wings and boss attempts and a much shorter raid period Cata would have been much better off. When you don't set yourself up for success it is much easier to fail, this holds true for WoW and how popular each tier or raiding, seasons of pvp or expansions go.

[Rixarius]

I disagree that it failed. I enjoyed it more than I do MOP.

You enjoying does not mean that it was a success. In terms of subs lost, and overall opinions on it by the community, it was the worst expansion. I personally can't see why anyone would prefer Cata over MoP when the later has done everything that Cata did and improved it beyond measure. The only thing that I could see people not liking is the asian theme, but as far as raids, content pacing, and general 'stuff to do', MoP is the clear winner.

[Frizzlewits]

2 years later

topic:
we want cata servers!

cata was awesome bla bla rose tinted glasses.



yes im pretty sure those topics will pop up

[Count Zero]

People are ignoring the MMO market in general has been on a downturn since around when WoW started bleeding subs.

And we live in a very cynical, critical age. Absolutely nothing gets by without having a very vocal minority of critics screaming at the top of their lungs that it is the absolute worst thing ever. Hyperbole overload. People feel the need to stand out, and over-exaggerating criticisms is one way to do that.

Don't get me wrong, I don't at all think Cata was perfect or anything, but I don't think it was honestly particularly more flawed than any other era of WoW -- in different ways, but not really more than any other.

Too many people also ignore that nothing is immune to the effects of age. How many videogames of WoW's age are anywhere near as popular ? None. Being basically the most popular mmo ever, it's been the very first mmo of many, many people -- particularly, many people who tried it out just because of how popular it was/is, and their moving on was less about the game and more about those people. And even for people who love the mmo genre to death, nothing can stay fresh and exciting forever, no matter how many changes it undergoes.

There is only so much that can be done in the mmo genre. And Blizz tries to keep it fresh. Oddly enough you both have people saying it's too much of the same, and others saying it's not enough like past eras of WoW. With how many million people play it, there are going to be many, many different opinions -- and there are going to be conflicting opinions that each have seemingly-large bases of support.

[Deleted]

Imo, Cataclysm at launch was one of the best, if not THE best expansion, if you look only at that expansion's content. However, the problem was that the direction Blizzard went in WOTLK changed the game forever. Cataclysm was an attempt to respond to the critics of WOTLK, but it was too late by then. There had been an exodus of "old school" players, replaced by the mass influx of casuals, gearscore, achievements, faceroll heroics etc.. Cataclysm tried to return us to some of the TBC glory - difficult heroics, epic, difficult first tier, and just in general a fairly decent expansion opening.

But it was too late - the playerbase had changed (or a sizable part of it), so everything got nerfed in to oblivion, content got scrapped, and the expansion got ruined.

[Aleksej89]

IMO:

Many specs and classes were just not viable, especially in pvP. Some did not even have AoE of any reliable kind.

Lack of constant PvE content, they skipped several major content patches - especially the entire abyssal maw lore/quest line with the Water Lord.

Certain big investments like the Firelands were not worth running more than once - people would finish it on 1 character and never do it again.

I dont play PvP but it was definitely not it's golden game either.

Horribly long and annoying 5man instances, so much that people usually left when they saw that DM or similar was up.

Overall no "expansion feel or uniqueness", there was no specific feeling during leveling or raiding... i actually wanted to kill LK, Thaddius or Kel'Thuzad or Illidan, while i did not give a damn about some lame dragon or a flaming bird.

There was no new continent or a focused place of new wonder, just some random zones you teleported to from SW.


There are many reasons, really too many to limit to a small list like this one.

[Murderdoll]

I thought it did alright, shit start but ended ok.

Opposite for me. I thought it started off great.

The first raid tier was fantastic. Dungeons were challenging and there was plenty to do.

As it went on it became very clear that content was coming slower and there was less of it. We were ultimately stuck with one of the worst raid tiers in this games life - Dragon Soul. Not only were we stuck with a boring tier, we were stuck with it for what? 10 months?

[Deleted]

Cataclysm was pretty good up until 4.3. It seems post Firelands they just tried to sweep it under the rug and promote MoP. Dragonsoul was such a massive letdown. It's a shame that the dungeons that came with it were better than the raid.

Nah, 4.1 was also shit with 4.2 being the only decent patch in the entire xpac cycle and even that one was far behind both the quality and quantity of WoW's best content patches. Sure, 4.3 had transmog and LFR, both valuable additions to the game, but they werent 8 months worth of awesomeness. And yeah, 4.3 was full of " We'll fix it in MoP". My take on Cataclysm is that it sandwiched in a very awkward production cycle for Blizzard where the were moving from productions were the small team they had a long time to produce their work to the current system of having separate teams working on alternate patches simultaneously and they had neither the expected level of content prepared nor the manpower to deliver it. Hopefully they won't find themselves in a similar position in the future, because the lack of content made players look at the content there was with less than favorable eyes and it wasn't pretty.

[xezar]

I agree with the OP pretty much. Oddly though, I rather liked the more difficult heroics, they weren't anything you couldn't eventually outgear, so imo the nerfs to them were unwarranted. The raids were decently tuned, if not a touch easy.

Now the opposite is true; heroics are too easy to faceroll, and the raids are a bit overtuned considering how many people were able to progress through the first 3 raids of cata compared to now, and FL to ToT. Then you have tons of baddies in lfr, and it just becomes an ugly situation...

[Wishblade]

They went up (as to be expected from an expansion launch) but they're slowly sloping down. I find this is more due to time than the quality of present content though.

Sure the amount of subs might be decreasing atm, but by how many? I do believe we won't know until Blizz tells us (which should happen in a few days I believe). Unless subs have decreased by millions then MoP can't be considered a failure. A couple hundred thousands less subs? That's just life. Busy people, banned accounts, etc etc.

Besides, never know if subs might've actually gone up slightly... We'll know when Blizz shares the numbers with us.

But Cata wasn't a failure, a failure would leave a massive blow to the game and last I heard we're still at 9-10 million subs. If Cata failed and made millions of players leave then sure seems like others have taken their place. Cata had its negatives, but also its positives, all expansions did, and WoW is still going strong.