I need to understand Cataclysm hate with rational argumentation

[darkwarrior42]

Point by point.

Good stuff:
-> Redid the entire old world content yet still had more new expansion content than either Pandaland, TimeTravelland and World of Illidanland

Old world revamp was necessary, but whether or not it's better is entirely subjective. I feel it was better on first past, but has infinitely less replay value and infinitely less value when leveling with others, making leveling alts through questing an activity that was no longer enjoyable to do with my wife. Huge loss.

-> LFR system that allowed newbie raiders to see content and get some shit gear in the process
-> Rated BGs

I like LFR as a system, don't do PvP so won't judge that.
-quote]-> Excellent dungeons and quests dripping with lore, filled with Warcraft characters we wanted to see[/quote]
Cataclysm dungeons did not excite me for the most part. This is very subjective.

-> Updated all the old world lore and environments to make sense with new events, and didn't cut any corners

And now they are very out of date again, we all knew that was a temporary fix at best... and again, subjective. You're substituting your personal opinion for fact, and asking for rational arguments.

-> Updated graphics very heavily with water, shadows and lighting

True, but WoW still looks like crap compared to a lot of other games, so largely irrelevant in my opinion.

-> Flying in Azeroth

This was good, and long overdue.

-> Shared gathering nodes

Not a Cataclysm feature.

-> New races

Not unique to Cataclysm, and I'm not actually all that fond of either of the two Cataclysm races (and Worgen are among my least favorite in the game atm, not least because of their evil and genocidal leader. No, I'm not exaggerating, based on his history and actions I class him both as evil and as genocidal, a mad dog that needs to be put down for the good of both factions.)

Not great
-> New world PVP zone
-> Cool new zone with Uldum, but shit story with that indiana jones copy paste bullshit. New race wasn't even voiced

Agree on both of these points

[qupte]Bullshit:
-> Thrall
-> Deathwing not having that much presence except randomly burning down patches of land in random zones
-> Long ass wait for the next shitty expansion (although no different from most end of expansions, you could unsub as always)
-> Azshara raid cut (although there was no lack of content)[/quote]
Leaving aside your personal comments, agree. I disagree with the personal comments.


Leaving all of that aside, here were my major complaints:

-Talent system revamp. Cataclysm was the mid-point between the old "spend your points anywhere, trees split by spec" system and the modern "choose a spec, get a small number of talents" system, and it managed to incorporate the worst elements of both systems.
-Raids. The only Cataclysm raid I didn't dislike aesthetically was Firelands, and I didn't actually like that, I just didn't dislike it. Firelands and Dragon Soul were pathetically short.
-Healing early in the expansion was unnecessarily annoying. Doable, certainly, but not enjoyable, in the name of keeping healers from being OP later on, a goal they failed miserably at. This made dungeons through the group finder very painful early on.
-Dungeons. There was only one dungeon I think I actually liked, and it didn't even manage to make it into Timewalking.

*shrug* And if nothing else, it was the first expansion I actually didn't stay subscribed for. I came back before it ended, so I did wind up raiding all 3 tiers, but since I started in 2006 I had stayed through all of Vanilla, TBC, and WotLK. Cata was the first to make me take a break of any sort.

[Deleted]

But that's all I remember about Firelands! The dailies and people bitching about his tiny legs!

His original legs were skinny as fuck, then Blizzard wised up & made them a little hulkier, at which point they were fine.

Thank fuck MMO-C leaked that shit, really.

[DaGhostDS]

Lol for saying the first tier was bad when the third tier was literally the worst raid in the game; arguably worse than T9 (ToC).

I rather liked T11. Annoying with the whole 3-raid thing (which I really do hate), but I didn't dislike the fights.

I dunno i left before Fireland was even released, but going through Dragon Soul now, its god awful and boring compared to many other old raid.

[MatadorMedia]

The main reason for Cataclysm hate is that the devs spent all their time revamping the 1-60 experience and not enough time generating end-game content for the expansion. It caused a massive drop-off in subscribers. Even Blizz admitted their mistake and scrapped plans to revamp Outland so they could instead focus on new max level content.

[The Stormbringer]

Less dungeons, raids, zones and quests than Wrath. How did it have more content than Cataclysm, for example, which had like 18 dungeons?

Content isn't purely dungeons, y'know.

[Deleted]

-Talent system revamp. Cataclysm was the mid-point between the old "spend your points anywhere, trees split by spec" system and the modern "choose a spec, get a small number of talents" system, and it managed to incorporate the worst elements of both systems.

Seriously, who the fuck implements an en-mass talents revamp mid-way through Beta...... ugh.

[Eleccybubb]

The main reason for Cataclysm hate is that the devs spent all their time revamping the 1-60 experience and not enough time generating end-game content for the expansion. It caused a massive drop-off in subscribers. Even Blizz admitted their mistake and scrapped plans to revamp Outland so they could instead focus on new max level content.

Do you have a source on their supposed plans to revamp Outland?

[Deleted]

The main reason for Cataclysm hate is that the devs spent all their time revamping the 1-60 experience and not enough time generating end-game content for the expansion. It caused a massive drop-off in subscribers. Even Blizz admitted their mistake and scrapped plans to revamp Outland so they could instead focus on new max level content.

I thought the Outland revamp was always a hypothetical "maybe at some point down the line" thing?

Isn't that why Warlords was originally taking place on a revamped Outland?

[Volitar]

I think redoing the old world is a negative. The story was out of date as soon as Cata ended meaning all that revamping was just a colossal waste of time that could of been spend elsewhere while simultaneously destroying all the old vanilla zones nostalgia. Maybe the Abyssal maw raid wouldn't of got canned.

Also Deathwing was a horrible horrible villain. He just flew around burning random things, he could of destroyed stormwind but he just farted on the park and then flew away and his two boss encounters were horrendous, you just fight a big red pillar that says deathwing on the nameplate.

[Zeta333]

As someone who personally loved most of Cataclysm, these are what I can agree were huge faults of the expansion:

1. Valor Points only being from raiding and dungeons and requiring you to do them daily in order to reach weekly cap with very little in the way of options was an excellent way for people to burn out on the whopping two they had in 7.1. I believe this is what caused Blizzard to press the eject button and ditch dungeons for a long while.

VP should have only been from raids, if your not raiding you dont need raid gear.

2. Raiding was simply not as enjoyable as Wrath. T11 was the buggiest raiding tier since classic. The raids themselves, after stuff like ICC and Ulduar, felt bland and forgettable. Difficulty was just generally too high in heroic with no real curve to the bosses, with some being utterly cheesable at launch and early-tier bosses like Omnitron being arguably the hardest in the raid.

Im sorry but next to ulduar tier 11 was my second fav tier. The fights were intense, several very good skill checks.

[Deleted]

I think redoing the old world is a negative. The story was out of date as soon as Cata ended meaning all that revamping was just a colossal waste of time that could of been spend elsewhere while simultaneously destroying all the old vanilla zones nostalgia. Maybe the Abyssal maw raid wouldn't of got canned.

Also Deathwing was a horrible horrible villain. He just flew around burning random things, he could of destroyed stormwind but he just farted on the park and then flew away and his two boss encounters were horrendous, you just fight a big red pillar that says deathwing on the nameplate.

*Dungeon. War of the Ancients was the cut Raid, which, at least got converted into 5-player Dungeons....... (again).

But, you've got to give it to him; it was one hell of a fart.

[Adoxe]

Firelands, while great, had only 7 bosses due to Abyssal Maw being cut and no raid content to replace it, Molten Front and other features of 4.2 were great but then came 4.3. Dragon Soul also had only 7 bosses, incredibly disappointing end fight and lasted over a year, not to mention the implementation of LFR. Anything good that Cataclysm had at launch, 4.1 and 4.2 was completely overshadowed and ruined by 4.3. The only expansion that is worse than Cataclysm is WoD.

- - - Updated - - -

Pandaland, TimeTravelland and World of Illidanland

Don't do that.

[-Joker-]

Can sum it all up with this:

CHANGE

Players were great with adding flight, and a few other tiny adjustments. Personally, I enjoyed the expansion, but there is still a part of me that misses an undisturbed Barrens, Westfall without walls or tornadoes, and the Badlands without the scar. I've HATED, full on hated that zone since the Cataclysm and have quested there ONCE and explored there ONCE just for the achieves.

I think if given the chance, a fair many would vote to restore the physical aspects of Azeroth, add flight, and update a few questlines, but ultimately reverse the horrid transformation suffered by places like Booty Bay, or South Shore.

[Ssateneth]

shared gathering nodes wasnt added until Legion.

[mickybrighteyes]

Good stuff:
-> Redid the entire old world content yet still had more new expansion content than either Pandaland,.

stopped right here...

You must have a different idea of new content than most people if you're saying MoP had less than any other expansion....

[Deleted]

The second raid patch tends to be best of the expansion when you think about it.

Blackwing Lair (Debatable)
Black Temple
Ulduar
Firelands
Throne of Thunder
HFC

Naxxramas.
Black Temple.
Ulduar.
Firelands (not much competition, anyway).
Throne of Thunder (though Siege was quite the close second).
Hellfire Citadel? I mean, again, not much competition, to be fair. Hell, if Highmaul were bigger, I'd have probably picked that, instead.

- - - Updated - - -

5. The Heart of the Aspects mount was very, very obviously designed to be the Invincible of Dragon Soul, considering the model is actually used in the encounter with Deathwing, and was instead slapped on the store for a cheap cash grab. This is when people started to catch on to the fact that Blizzard was overstepping their bounds a bit with the store.

5. While I agree with the basic principle of this, I do have to point out that they did the same thing in Wrath as well, with the $15 Invincible ripoff mount. And no, I'm not pointing that out as a means of defending this action, I just wanted to point out that it did have precedent, is all :P

[Dhomeli]

I felt like there was a lack of world content at max level in Cataclysm (edit), or at least, what world content there was was not rewarding enough to make me want to do it. Didn't need to do dailies since you could just wear a faction tabard in dungeons. The firelands outdoor content was pretty good, but that was about it. So after that it was just do your weekly raiding or weekly pvp and you're done.

Whereas, in both Mists of Pandaria and Legion I had/have a lot more random other things to do when I log in. Warlords had a lot of world content in it, but the reward structure is what made it unappealing to me - (edit) and as a result I didn't want to do the world content at max level that existed.

[Deleted]

<snip>

Dungeon count dropped with every subsequent Expansion Pack, regardless of what was revamped & what was new, so less new dungeons was inevitable in MoP.

Hell, we're lucky Warlords of Draenor even matched MoP's numbers, & that was with the revamped dungeons.

Edit: Actually, my bad, even Warlords managed to drop the number of base tier dungeons by 1, didn't it? Either way, at least MoP had scenarios to "compensate" for the ailing numbers, unlike Cataclysm & Warlords both, which offered nothing to make up for the smaller number of dungeons than their respective predecessors.

[Mormolyce]

Personally I loved most of Cataclysm. People got way too hung up on DS in my opinion. Sure it was short and it could've been better but it wasn't AWFUL. Almost everything else in the expansion was great.

My biggest criticism of it was actually how they handled the ZG and ZA heroics. Those dungeons were great but putting the way you were incentivised to run them over and over to cap VP every week really wore them out fast. If it was done today they'd put them on a weekly lock or something.

It also probably gets a bit of flak for not being very innovative. It basically took the Wrath formula and tweaked it a bit. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing...

[Not A Cat]

Deathwing was such a bad character. He's just a pawn of the old gods made out to be some supreme badguy, but he's just a very big and powerful puppet. That on top of Thrall's Green Jesus arc just made the story shit.

They made leveling way too easy and structured imo. Vanilla, despite lacking in quests in some zones, had more variety. There was a sense of exploration, but the new zones are so linear that there's no exploration. It's like playing a rail shooter.

And don't get me started on Dragon Soul. On top of Deathwing being a shitty character, his raid is the most abysmal thing they've ever created. The only fight I enjoyed was Heroic Mor'chok, and only because I got to be a rogue tank. Speaking of rogue stuff, the legendary daggers questline was also great, it's just too bad you had to farm a shit tier raid to get them.

"Gather me these shadowy gems inside gem clusters. Great! Now get me just the gem clusters unopened!" Fuck you Wrathion.

The raid just felt unfinished. I feel like there was supposed to be more after Deathwing, where we would fight the real mastermind behind the twilight cult.. But no it just ends. And then we had that shit for a year. You can tell that something went wrong, even the patch trailer was garbage and looked rushed.

Such a shame, the first two tiers were great imo. Then it's like they just gave up after that.

So to sum it all up, it was a lot like WoD. It had a great start, then for some reason they just stopped giving a shit half way through and gave us nothing but garbage.