I need to understand Cataclysm hate with rational argumentation

[Mormolyce]

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.

I think it's pretty clear that since Cata, they've been putting more time into raids than dungeons. I think that's partly fallout from DS's poor reception - one reason DS was so small is that they spent a lot of dev time developing the three HoT dungeons.

The other thing is that BC and Wrath had really inflated dungeon counts because of the way they reused assets to save time. BC was the worst in that respect - four Auchindoun dungeons that are all basically the same but with different mobs, three Coilfang dungeons (and the raid wasn't much different), three Hellfire dungeons and three Tempest Keep dungeons (again heavily reused for the Eye). They basically made four dungeons and split them into bits to plump up the dungeon count.

[DaHomieG]

Am I the only one that thinks every expansion was amazing and each one slightly making the game overall better each time? WoW has aged very well like fine wine tbh

[Shaqthefat]

Because they're different things. Before the AQ event could mean 1 month or 1 year.

But late pre-BC could mean before AQ+, even the BC pre-patch

[Deleted]

I think it's pretty clear that since Cata, they've been putting more time into raids than dungeons. I think that's partly fallout from DS's poor reception - one reason DS was so small is that they spent a lot of dev time developing the three HoT dungeons.

The other thing is that BC and Wrath had really inflated dungeon counts because of the way they reused assets to save time. BC was the worst in that respect - four Auchindoun dungeons that are all basically the same but with different mobs, three Coilfang dungeons (and the raid wasn't much different), three Hellfire dungeons and three Tempest Keep dungeons (again heavily reused for the Eye). They basically made four dungeons and split them into bits to plump up the dungeon count.

True, good point on the BC Dungeons, though they did still have to test out the various boss fights, etc. regardless, so they did have to put in a degree of effort, even into those, to be fair.

As for the Well of Eternity Trinity; wasn't that a Raid that got scrapped & revamped into those 3 Dungeons that we got in the end, instead?

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Flying implemented from the beginning.

Wrong Expansion, mate. Cata was the one with flying from the moment you hit Hyjal & started moaning about the Mammoth fuckers with Size Potions sitting on top of the Questing NPCs.

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WoW has aged very well like fine wine tbh

......

No.

When you still have no long-term vision for either gameplay or classes, & you're still just making shit up as you go along more than 10 years after launch, that's not a fine wine, that's a 100 year old building being restored by slapping some stucco on the walls, & calling it "safe to live in." Though, to be fair, the good ones really only need so much restoration work, outside of the walls peeling & whatnot (assuming they're not war-ravaged), so maybe I should have gone with a better comparison..... >.<

Regardless, you get the point; bad long-term vision (read: a complete lack thereof) has been crippling WoW ever since Wrath Beta (Ulduar delayed, Naxxramas rehashed), & it's been a standing fucking problem ever since, as exemplified by the EPIC FAIL that was Warlords of Draenor, & their continued insistence at bulk class redesigns every expansion, "because."

[nekobaka]

Hour long queues for dungeons because of how stupidly high tuned they were

Meanwhile many who bitched about Cata difficulty defend the shitty queues of LFR. Fucking hypocrites.

I think it's pretty clear that since Cata, they've been putting more time into raids than dungeons. I think that's partly fallout from DS's poor reception - one reason DS was so small is that they spent a lot of dev time developing the three HoT dungeons.

GC commented that they tried to replace dungeons with LFR and admitted by mid MoP that it was a mistake while too late to add post launch dungeons in MoP. WoD was supposed to be the return of post launch dungeons. Watcher cut them to focus on the last raid. So far we only have the one new post launch dungeon coming with no news of more. Seems Watcher is trying to drag his feet as much as possible when it comes to sharing resources.

[Irian]

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

Yeah that did suck, but to be honest the reason I separate those two is that the star pony was clearly the inferior version, with no texture and a tackier and less interesting appearance. It feels strongly apparent to me that the celestial steed was an afterthought and that Invincible itself was the more properly developed mount.

Heart of the Aspects was exclusively on the store and in fact that same model was never used again for another mount. Sure it's just a guess so I can't really say for sure, but it sure as hell seemed to me that that mount was going to be the big reward for finally downing heroic Deathwing before money signs popped in some developers' eyes and they tossed it onto the store and gave the most dedicated players a shitty dragon recolor instead. It didn't help that it came out right alongside 4.3.

[Deleted]

Yeah that did suck, but to be honest the reason I separate those two is that the star pony was clearly the inferior version, with no texture and a tackier and less interesting appearance. It feels strongly apparent to me that the celestial steed was an afterthought and that Invincible itself was the more properly developed mount.

Heart of the Aspects was exclusively on the store and in fact that same model was never used again for another mount. Sure it's just a guess so I can't really say for sure, but it sure as hell seemed to me that that mount was going to be the big reward for finally downing heroic Deathwing before money signs popped in some developers' eyes and they tossed it onto the store and gave the most dedicated players a shitty dragon recolor instead. It didn't help that it came out right alongside 4.3.

Ah, right, good point ^^

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GC commented that they tried to replace dungeons with LFR and admitted by mid MoP that it was a mistake while too late to add post launch dungeons in MoP. WoD was supposed to be the return of post launch dungeons. Watcher cut them to focus on the last raid. So far we only have the one new post launch dungeon coming with no news of more. Seems Watcher is trying to drag his feet as much as possible when it comes to sharing resources.

Also a good point, though, to be fair, they cut an entire raiding tier, not just post-launch dungeons when it came to Warlords. Not to mention what else [almost] got cut, &/or may have also secretly gotten cut. It's also worth pointing out that Karazhan was a rehash dungeon, rather than a new one, so it's possible they're going to start saving those for post-launch as often as possible?

[Deleted]

I wasn't on mmo-champ during cata. Why would anyone hate it? It brought a lot of fresh content and and indubitably the best questing zone in the history of WoW , Uldum.

[Mormolyce]

GC commented that they tried to replace dungeons with LFR and admitted by mid MoP that it was a mistake while too late to add post launch dungeons in MoP. WoD was supposed to be the return of post launch dungeons. Watcher cut them to focus on the last raid. So far we only have the one new post launch dungeon coming with no news of more. Seems Watcher is trying to drag his feet as much as possible when it comes to sharing resources.

I think that once flexi came along they decided that raids were accessible enough to everyone to focus their efforts there.

At the end of the day, dungeons are content you outgrow in a few weeks. But they take almost as many resources to make as raids.

I'm sure the raid vs dungeon balance will always be controversial though.

True, good point on the BC Dungeons, though they did still have to test out the various boss fights, etc. regardless, so they did have to put in a degree of effort, even into those, to be fair.

As for the Well of Eternity Trinity; wasn't that a Raid that got scrapped & revamped into those 3 Dungeons that we got in the end, instead?

I suppose dungeon quality is subjective, but in terms of complexity I think Cata definitely took a step up - the initial heroics in Cata had more complex mechanics than some raids in the pre-Wrath era. That ogre boss in Deadmines had the mechanics of the main boss of Ruby Sanctum!

I think they had a lot on their plate when they made BC - Karazhan was originally going to be a Vanilla raid tier but they pushed it out to BC, so the only raids they had time to build for launch were Mag and Gruul which were tiny. The "hub" concept that came into play when they split Scarlet Monastery into smaller dungeons seemed successful so they went to town on that. They did it a bit in Wrath too but apparently phased it out in Cata. I'm guessing the team was much smaller back then so they would've been short on resources.

I'm not sure how much they'd developed the War of the Ancients raid before scrapping it. They might've just built some assets and reused those. Either way they were converting raid resources into dungeon resources I guess.

[Swizzington]

......so you were just sitting around and were suddenly struck by an irresistible need to understand why some people didn't like Cataclysm?

Wtf?

Exactly my thoughts

[SirCowdog]

Wrong Expansion, mate. Cata was the one with flying from the moment you hit Hyjal & started moaning about the Mammoth fuckers with Size Potions sitting on top of the Questing NPCs.

Uhh....ok? I thought we were discussing cata? I never had trouble with people trying to block NPCs, tbh. Not saying it wasn't an issue, but there was a simple fix of turning on friendly NPC healthbars and clicking on those.

[Spicymemer]

Cataclysm was a legitimately good expansion, only ADD idiots dont give it the time of day.
Saything that, Dragon Soul was a huge letdown and the cutting of throne of tides was incredibly disappointing.

[Lillyth]

Cons:

• Looking for Raid further encouraged decreased effort and communication to raid. Its just 1 button away, why would you talk?
• Largely long gaps between the last content released and the next expansion.
• Otherwise beautiful zones filled up with memes instead of quests that have something to do with the lore itself. Thanks Kosak, this game is definitely one of your horrible comic strips. This is why you got benched with the rest of the useless people on to the Hearthstone team.
• Furries.
• Bastardized Thralls otherwise compelling story to make him some kind of super hero. Thanks Kosak.
• Destroyed some of the largest hubs in the game that were used by players to roleplay or to simply meet and greet. (Auberdine, Menethil, The Park, Southshore). Wich actually lead to the dispersion of large Kaldorei oriented RP guilds because there were less hubs to interact with, thus less roleplay to create.
• Formed Azshara to look like the horde insignia. Absolute suckup there, Kosak.

[ThrashMetalFtw]

Cata was amazing all the way until Dragon Soul. Then we got a year of that...

T11 and T12 were vastly superior to any WotLK or MoP raids tbh, and the Cata 5mans are still the best 5mans ever designed to this date.

Otherwise beautiful zones filled up with memes instead of quests that have something to do with the lore itself. Thanks Kosak, this game is definitely one of your horrible comic strips. This is why you got benched with the rest of the useless people on to the Hearthstone team.

Also, can ppl stop posting this shit? This statement applies to half of Uldum, the Indiana Jones questline more specificly. Hyjal, Vasj'Ir, Deepholme, the other half of Uldum and Twilight Highlands were all serious questingzones with interesting lore and good quests.

[Dormie]

It looks nice on paper was very boring at the time. The new zones were good but became irrelevant pretty quick and the redesigned world was hit or miss. The only "good" raid was Firelands. There were 2 daily areas but they were both pretty lackluster. The rest of the time people either PvPed or farmed heroic 5 mans with tabards on for rep. It was worse than WoD tbh, people will remember WoD as worse only because it's more recent. I've never hated any of the expansions so I still enjoyed a lot of it. But all I recall is Firelands, Tol Barad, and 5 mans for rep.

[xylotism]

From best to worst:
Revamped zones -- awesome.
New races -- great.
Questing -- okay.
Flying -- convenient, but every player in the air is a player not socializing with strangers, showing off gear or otherwise being part of the MM in MMO. Not to mention experiencing the game world.
Technical stuff -- would have happened regardless of what the expansion was. The game improves over time, it's just developmentally convenient to tie it to an expansion.
Themes -- absolute dog shit. vashjir is far more interesting as a concept than in practice, and every other (new) zone is completely forgettable. Uldum, Hyjal, Deepholm, all boring as shit. Pandaland, as you call it, is a thousand times more diverse, interesting and beautiful, once you look past the Kung Fu Panda jokes.
Dungeons -- the 5-mans were basically carbon copies of the zones they're set in (see above), and the raids were all over the place, even from boss to boss the quality difference was bonkers.

[bufferunderrun]

Good stuff:
-> Redid the entire old world content yet still had more new expansion content than either Pandaland, TimeTravelland and World of Illidanland
-> LFR system that allowed newbie raiders to see content and get some shit gear in the process
-> Rated BGs
-> Excellent dungeons and quests dripping with lore, filled with Warcraft characters we wanted to see
-> Updated all the old world lore and environments to make sense with new events, and didn't cut any corners
-> Updated graphics very heavily with water, shadows and lighting
-> Flying in Azeroth
-> Shared gathering nodes
-> New races

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

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)


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I don't get it, how is pandaland or legion any better? They have more daily quests? Because as far as dungeons and raids are concerned, I'm pretty sure both have less. And last time I checked, pandaren and monks are both the least played race and class in the game, or constantly trading first place with gnomes and something else so.....yeah.

I've started playing since late pre-BC, winter before the AQ event. I've seen it all. Cataclysm was fucking phenomenal in many aspects, and not in my eyes worthy of the ranking it often gets classed in as "omg cacaclysm, /wrists".

I can only give my personal 2 cent
-a total reverse on the Wotlk philosophy
-hard dungeons that took forever to complete
-10/25 men equivalence that basically ruined the pug scene and was the true reason of why lfr was introduced
-first round of stats and talents pruning
-non engaging story
-uldum gone from a mysterious zone highly speculated since vanilla gate to a gag zone based on harrison jones

[Coffeexbean]

Cata was a good expansion until the dragon soul patch. For me, normal tuning was far easier than firelands and that ruined it for me. I dont want to clear the raid within the first two weeks. There was nothing else to do as Im not interested in clearing it again on a higher difficulty. It also brought lfr which also changed the way people played world of warcraft. A lot of players ran in not knowing what to expect and spoiled the raid by doing it in kindergarden mode.

[WowIsDead64]

Good stuff:
-> Redid the entire old world content yet still had more new expansion content than either Pandaland, TimeTravelland and World of Illidanland
-> LFR system that allowed newbie raiders to see content and get some shit gear in the process
-> Rated BGs
-> Excellent dungeons and quests dripping with lore, filled with Warcraft characters we wanted to see
-> Updated all the old world lore and environments to make sense with new events, and didn't cut any corners
-> Updated graphics very heavily with water, shadows and lighting
-> Flying in Azeroth
-> Shared gathering nodes
-> New races

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

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)


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I don't get it, how is pandaland or legion any better? They have more daily quests? Because as far as dungeons and raids are concerned, I'm pretty sure both have less. And last time I checked, pandaren and monks are both the least played race and class in the game, or constantly trading first place with gnomes and something else so.....yeah.

I've started playing since late pre-BC, winter before the AQ event. I've seen it all. Cataclysm was fucking phenomenal in many aspects, and not in my eyes worthy of the ranking it often gets classed in as "omg cacaclysm, /wrists".

After WotLK, being very successful at providing new kinds of content to casual players, such as dungeons and raids, in Cata Blizzard decided to backpedal and make dungeons and raids for hardcore players and guilds only again - all casual players were forced to join "mega-guilds". So, while being best xpack ever made in terms of leveling content, all of a sudden Cata provided literally ZERO content for casual players => losing one player every 15 seconds. When 3 new 5ppls and LFR were finally implemented in 4.3 - it was already way too late. And as Blizzard rushed 4.3 to save situation with sub loss and effectively abandoned xpack after that - this patch was extremely unpolished and had way too many rehashed content. Also "pruning" campaign started back in Cata - this xpack had extremely terrible class mechanics back in 4.0-4.2, including almost completely useless healers and tanks.

[Deleted]

I've started playing since late pre-BC, winter before the AQ event. I've seen it all. Cataclysm was fucking phenomenal in many aspects, and not in my eyes worthy of the ranking it often gets classed in as "omg cacaclysm, /wrists".

I started playing in vanilla also, and quit in Cataclysm (during Firelands). For me it is the xpac that killed WoW.

The main reason was the 25/10-man raiding difficulty screwup. At that time I was playing mainly to do 25-man heroic raiding on a medium/low population server. We used to have a healthy raiding community from vanilla to Cata (multiple serious raiding guilds). Cata created this pressure in all 25-man guilds to downsize to 10-man. "I'm sick of wiping because of these idiots, lets just take the 10 best and get the server first kill on this." That killed every single 25-man raiding guild on the realm. Not a single one made it through Cata, being replaced by a mess of 10 man guilds constantly forming and disbanding. I just checked now and even after a server merge, there still is not a single mythic raiding guild on my faction there.

There were also a host of other reasons that pushed me to just quit rather than migrate to a bigger server: I hated the world revamp that removed the connection I felt to many of the areas. I hated Blizzard's blatant money grabbing, having to pay around $100 for transfers just to keep raiding 25 mans (that is after failing to deliver almost half the content they promised in Cata advertising). I disliked the general direction of the game system design with LFG/LFR and full reset in every patch (automatic access to the new content).

Looking at MoP/WoD/Legion, it was the right choice. The game that went in a completely different direction from what I enjoy.