Why people hate Cataclysm - a thought.

[Ghazan Julio]

MOP is even worse haha.

[Madruga]

a lot of content was scrapped, vashj;ir was meant to be bigger, there was meant to be a raid in uldum, war of the ancients got hit into a 5 man (the only good 5 man of 4.3) and abyssal maw was scrapped and we were told the cliff hanger ending of neptulon was a completion....

I had nearly forgotten we got 2 raids short in Cataclysm. War of the Ancients and Abyssal Maw...

3, if you consider Uldum was suposed to have a raid as well. And our expectations about Uldum were quite large in the beginning, some people (me included) believed it was suposed to be the continuation of Ulduar...

Well, maybe Uldum WAS suposed to be the successor of Ulduar, but Blizzard runned out of time. Who knows how amazing it could have been...

And this "Neptulon plot is complete" bullshit still drives me mad when I remember this. From all the unfinished plots WoW has (and there are a lot), this is the worst. it would be best for Blizzard to say that they believe it would be best to finish this in the Azshara expansion, or even admit they didn't have resources for this, than trying to push such a lie down our throats.

[Itisamuh]

I hated Cataclysm because it sucked compared to previous expansions. Now in hindsight it seems relatively decent since Mists is even worse.

[GennGreymane]

I had nearly forgotten we got 2 raids short in Cataclysm. War of the Ancients and Abyssal Maw...

3, if you consider Uldum was suposed to have a raid as well. And our expectations about Uldum were quite large in the beginning, some people (me included) believed it was suposed to be the continuation of Ulduar...

Well, maybe Uldum WAS suposed to be the successor of Ulduar, but Blizzard runned out of time. Who knows how amazing it could have been...

And this "Neptulon plot is complete" bullshit still drives me mad when I remember this. From all the unfinished plots WoW has (and there are a lot), this is the worst. it would be best for Blizzard to say that they believe it would be best to finish this in the Azshara expansion, or even admit they didn't have resources for this, than trying to push such a lie down our throats.

Uldum WAS supposed to continue the story.... instead we got indiana jones.... for a whole zone.....

[Deleted]

Cataclysm was rushed, even after 12 months of ICC.

The pre-TBC zones were quite finished, but at the cost of endgame.
One can argue that Cata sucked because after reaching 85 you were already done, and one would be correct.
Who honestly would be interested in progressing through that content without a guild. HC dungeons were a nightmare with PuGs.
To make it even worse, endgame was nerfed to the ground in horrific amounts because of the non-hardcore community.

I honestly think Blizzard lost their shit when they saw the sub numbers drop instead of going up post-launch, and they were so blind as to see hard endgame being the major issue for , just because people whined about it hard enough to be heared. So their natural response was to nerf all current content, combined with the scrapping of planned future content because of little time.

Cata added good stuff aswell though. Guild Leveling System is a good example.

[Osmeric]

I honestly think Blizzard lost their shit when they saw the sub numbers drop instead of going up post-launch, and they were so blind as to see hard endgame being the major issue for , just because people whined about it hard enough to be heared. So their natural response was to nerf all current content, combined with the scrapping of planned future content because of little time.

Of course hard endgame content was the problem. Blizzard didn't need to listen to "whining" to see that. They could see who was, and who wasn't, quitting. It wasn't the hardcores. Remember this blue statement back in Cataclysm:

"By looking at actual stats, actual progression, time spent playing, where, and to what extent, we can see that most people are looking for more accessible raid content, so yes, we absolutely are able to tell without a doubt that the plan we’re enacting is actually what players playing the game want and need, and are not just listening to people on the forums."

[cFortyfive]

I still find Vashj'ir to be the one unique zone in the entire game that manages be different and interesting.

Well to me it wasn't the underwater problem but simply finding most of the quests atrocious including the final questline. Obviously opinions may differ on that.

[Eliot123]

Main reasons why I hate Cataclysm are - too few 80-85 questing zones (and incidentally both Hyjal and Vashjir were horrible after doing them once), and the quests were way, way too streamlined. The main villain was rather eh, we never got to see him much and in the end we fought his back hair and his tentacles, PvP was pretty bad (rogues and mages made me want to scream myself to sleep). Raids were pretty ok actually, except Dragon Soul which was just so, so ridiculously bad, it might as well be the worst raid in history of WoW.

Archaeology as a new profession was implemented in a really bad way at first too... and other professions were turned into something so stupidly bland and uninteresting, especially with random enchants on items (yay for wasting tons of mats to get what you actually want) and very limited number of items to craft. In short - everything was way too streamlined and most of the time, there was nothing to do really. I never experienced that in WoW before, there was always *something* you could be up to -perfecting your professions, doing quests you haven't done, gathering this, doing that... Cataclysm was just kind of poorly executed.

One of the few things I actually liked about Cataclysm (even though PvP was horrible) was Tol Barad tbh.

[crakerjack]

Cataclysm was horrible... these threads aren't good because every person played the game differently. Not everyone in here was hardcore PvE and PvP like me... I witnessed the pros and cons of each side. I never messed w/ casual stuff... From my perspective, cataclysm was when the game turned to shit... the game was already heading in a direction that I didn't care for, but when cataclysm hit, the game completely changed to this new style. If cataclysm was such a good expansion, why was PvP in its worst state ever? Why was there MMR glitching? Why were people able to face 1300 teams all the way to 2500~ rating and obtain gladiator? More importantly, why did blizzard not do anything about it for over an entire season? Did they enjoy watching noobs face gladiators? Why did blizzard hard reset everyones rating when they could have searched up teams w/ high ratings whose their history shows facing 1300~ teams only? Why remove rating requirement? Was there some balancing issue around PvP gear? In any serious PvP instance, was there not some form of MMR? Was there no MMR for arena/rated BGs? There was, so why did rating requirement get removed for the following reason: To make PvP an even playing field. Well I thought that's what I thought MMR was for... so that means PvP, rating requirement was taken out to balance PvP in RANDOM BATTLE GROUNDS????? You bet your ass they did. That's equivalent to blizzard scaling the difficulty on heroic 25 man raids to the difficulty of a heroic dungeon... "Oh well the lesser good people in the heroics want to obtain the same gear as heroic 25 raiders, so lets just make every raid boss have the same health as a heroic dungeon boss." Unless you PvP, you won't look at it from my standpoint which is why I put in the PvE version... if that happened, would you be sick to your stomach? Sure there's glory in killing the boss, but every kid and their mother knows that the real reward for killing a boss is getting new BiS gear. Now why shouldn't PvP have that same rewarding feeling? It used to w/ rating requirement because you had to work to obtain the rating so that you could get the gear, but now there's nothing. You get the rating and there's no pat on the back of anything... there's a cosmetic elite set, but what's the point when transmog makes it so you can never tell whose wearing what? IMO cataclysm was the worst period in WoW's history. The only somewhat challenging raid was Firelands, which IMO still wasn't that hard, just a lot of paying attention and remember quick acting mechanics, but not everyone was able to play like me, thus making the kill take so damn long.

[Futhark]

I really liked Twilight Highlands.

[Irian]

Screwed over raiders with the first and last tiers being very uninspired, with the only well-made raid in the entire expansion only having 7 bosses.

Screwed over casual players with the Zul'Again dungeons that were impossibly hard for random groups and made VP grinding perhaps the most fun thing since passing kidney stones, pulling teeth and drinking bleach. Most casual players I knew didn't even bother to try after a few attempts. Old heroics weren't an option because they were less efficient and just as difficult, and all the more geared people were doing the troll heroics.

Screwed over lore with a well-known figure being completely screwed over in his ingame representation and extremely cheesy and lame storylines all around. Deathwing amounted to nothing and Thrall went from being one of the most universally liked characters to one of the most universally hated. Pretty impressive stuff.

Screwed over PvPers with easily the most terrible balance we've seen in this game to date. Whenever MoP frustrates you, remember the fun days of being globaled by frost mages and rogues. The class favoritism was disgustingly blatant.

Honestly, I thought the reason people hated Cata so much was obvious enough as it is.

[Deleted]

Of course hard endgame content was the problem. Blizzard didn't need to listen to "whining" to see that. They could see who was, and who wasn't, quitting. It wasn't the hardcores. Remember this blue statement back in Cataclysm:

"By looking at actual stats, actual progression, time spent playing, where, and to what extent, we can see that most people are looking for more accessible raid content, so yes, we absolutely are able to tell without a doubt that the plan we’re enacting is actually what players playing the game want and need, and are not just listening to people on the forums."

And in the end it was Blizzard's fault for not preparing the community.
It could've worked if it didn't go down that path. Not saying going for that path was bad, but they sure felt it.

[TJ]

In a raiding sense, Cata wasn't too bad. I took a few breaks but that was only because my guild was underperforming and getting dragged down by a few players. First tier was pretty solid, I really enjoyed Firelands, DS was interesting for a while, but after the content was done I had no intention of doing it for another 9-10 months or w/e it was. If DS was shorter, then it would've likely been received better, at least by the people I know.

[Osmeric]

And in the end it was Blizzard's fault for not preparing the community.
It could've worked if it didn't go down that path. Not saying going for that path was bad, but they sure felt it.

There is absolutely no evidence it "could have worked". This is your desperate wishful thinking speaking.

MoP confirms that it couldn't have worked. In MoP, they tried again to make raiding hard, and ended up booting all but a small fraction of players out of organized raiding entirely. Most players just can't handle that level of difficulty and/or frustration. That left those players with just a quasi-solo game (LFD, LFR), making casual guilds nothing more than chat channels/perk sources. Not surprisingly, player retention sucked.

They've learned that lesson, which is why WoD's "normal" mode will be much easier that MoP's was in T14/15. Casual guilds will do Flex (and somewhat tuned up heroic 5 mans), making membership in such guilds have real value.

[Deleted]

There is absolutely no evidence it "could have worked". This is your desperate wishful thinking speaking.

Neither is their any evidence it couldn't have worked. This is your desperate wishful thinking speaking.

[Strakha]

I loved Vashj'ir. Cataclysm wasn't that bad, it was just that it wasn't that good. The zone design and music was probably the highlight for me. Never really cared about the raids involved, just seemed like a bunch of random crap other than Cho'gall and Deathwing.

[koimagheul]

1. content was cut or simply not finished, too many promises were made

this, especially the "too many promises were made" part. IIRC, cata was supposed to be the first part of a 2 part plan, with Deathwing ending the first part and Azshara supposed to be the main villain for the second part. when they shifted from this to mop, a lot of things that were supposed to prolong vash'jir storyline got scrapped, and they said things were just ending fine (which was a pretty horrible hypocrisy).
When it comes to the "too many promises were made" part, the first one that comes to mind is "deathwing's fight is the most complex, difficult and epic fight we ever imagined"... hum... in terms of complexity... both parts were one of the most basic adds type fight, pretty static ones I might add. nothing else. the only difficulty was in the numbers you had to put out. again. and again. and again. and so on.
another promise not kept (except for the first tier) : "we'll be doing several lesser raids each tier to keep people from burning out on only one raid". and then BAM, RAGNAROS. its normal version was harder than 95% of all of cata's content. and they did it again with DS.

another reason why cata got hated... i'd say the fact that instances required more than the mop-wotlk usual "pack, aoe, rinse, repeat". though I enjoyed it quite a lot, it drove masses away from wow.

[Vulcanasm]

Excuse my french, but how the FUCK can you think that you have an opinion worth mentioning when you haven't even played the god damn expansion? People like you need to be shot into the stratosphere.

Reading is fundamental.

"I stopped playing the weekend before 4.1 dropped" does not mean "I skipped this giant turd of an expansion". It means "I played in 4.0, hit 85 second day of Cata, farmed out heroics a week later, and went straight to raiding. And all of it sucked so much that I left."

- - - Updated - - -

1.I liked cata leveling outside of deepholm.
2.I carried lfders that pulled 4k dps through every heroic it was doable.
3.This is your opinion, I love the revamped. Its the only reason I managed to get another toon to max level.
4.Bwl and bot looked totally different same with the uldum raid.
5.Dailies, Pvp, leveling Alts so basically the same thing as every other expansion before it.
6.Pvp was better then Bc with random resist talents, and mace stuns. Damage was better then wotlk because it took legendaries to trololol people and not random crit streaks.

The original poster was stating that "maybe people hated Cata just because of 4.3". I was stating my opinion of the 4.0 content (though 4.1 and 4.2 were exactly the same) to show that there are plenty of players who left long before 4.3 dropped. A number of my friends and guildmates feel exactly as I do about the 4.0 content. Our guild went from our realm's first Light of Dawn guild to <10 subscriptions in 5.0; several of those remaining players in 5.0 actually came back in 4.3. So I can think of at least 20 people who thought 4.0-4.2 were utter garbage, and none of them were bad players or the dreaded "casuals".

[kennyisnotdead]

This is when it got old fast for me. To a large extent they repurposed the game for new players. Deathwing broke the world but we didnt get to actually feel this happen we just logged in one day to a new environment and got to punch him in the face. Magically appearing to fire blast a town with no player engagement beyond death was lame and cheap.

[sunxsera]

i really liked cata, too ... but the last patch just ruined it.

firelands was an really, really aweaome raid ...