Originally Posted by
Kaleredar
People's perceptions of cataclysm are interesting. It was not until about 4.3 that people started saying "Oh this thing sucks," and then started "remembering" about how much they supposedly hated the rest of the expansion, and then eventually started to pretend that they had hated Cataclysm the entire time. Things people did way back at the beginning, and didn't care too much one way or the other, suddenly became "the tragic failures of Cataclysm." It's really kind of cute. This extends to every part... leveling, raids, you name it. Hell, people even started to complain about how Cataclysm content "reused skins" too much (when they really meant skeletons, which blizzard has been doing forever) because they were so bored at the end of 4.3.
Cataclysm out of the box was fine. I felt leveling was done fine... all the complaints that arose about it, at the end of the expansion after everyone had by and far finished leveling for the better part of the year, seemed to revolve around it being too "disjointed" story-wise and yet somehow too linear. The linear-ness has merit to it (likely an issue that arose for people leveling alts) but I feel the stories in each zone were told with... competency (especially if you compare it to burning crusade... "stories?") I thought Hyjal and twilight highlands were bland and boring, but Vash'jir and Uldum were great zones.
I really enjoyed the so called "difficult" heroics. I don't recall ever really having issues with any of them... ask if anyone needs an explanation for a fight, stop, explain it, pewpewpew, move on. Moreover, the dungeons were really cool too... Lost City of the Tol'Vir and Halls of Origination are two of my favorite dungeons. I also liked how ALL of the boss fights, from all the dungeons, had fun little quirks to them (that you actually had to observe.) A shame that there was a community outcry to "dumb them down" into triviality.
As for the raiding... I thought the first tier and Firelands were quite well done.... Unfortunate that they fumbled it so badly on dragon soul. While Bastion of Twilight was a little... trite... (pointless corridors leading to boss, followed by more pointless corridors) Blackwing Descent was a really nice raid overall. (Though I feel It should have been more expansive layout-wise, and with more trash too.) Throne of the Four Winds was a nice, simple raid. All of the bosses from the raids had a nice unique aspect to them. Despite the raid's various shortcomings, they all had interesting boss fights.
I really enjoyed Firelands too. Again, all interesting boss fights (baleroc was a little bleh from a DPS standpoint though,) with a nice overall theme. You can tell Blizzard put a lot of work into making it... among other things, it and ZA are the only content patch raids in the game to use different newly introduced models for each boss.
As for Dragon soul... ehh. I've always displayed my distaste for this raid. The setting in Dragonblight, while sensible, is no less boring. While the bosses aren't bad in it of themselves, their complete pencil-lore status and relative simplicity (compared to earlier Cata raid bosses) drags the raid down. Most of all, I dislike it because I feel they thoroughly squandered Deathwing as an epic fight, and as a villain overall.
I do not believe the relative failure, however, of Dragon Soul serves to really "pollute" the actual good parts of Cataclsym.