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  1. #1

    We're almost 2 months into Mists, and I have a question for all of you!

    So, 2 months into Mists. People love it, like it, dislike it, or even hate it.

    Regardless of your opinions, I have a question not about Mists..

    More-so about Cata.

    I keep continuing to see people say Mists was better than Cata. The reason Mists is better than Cata for me, personally, is because the story telling is much better together, and the raids aren't as unforgiving as they were in Cata at launch.

    But, can you guys tell me why Cata was so bad?

    We had what, 9 months of Dragon Soul? Part of me feels like so many of you dislike Cata so much because we had a 9 month curb with no new content in Dragonblight against only 8 bosses. But if that's where your hate stems from, was Cata seriously that horrible?

    I liked the concept of the first tier of the Cata raids, and I thought the story and boss fights were fun. Even the lay-outs for the zones were gorgeous. I just didn't like how much of a difficulty curb they really threw us at launch.

    ZG and ZA redos, at the beckoning of the community after seeing Deadmines and I can't even remember the name of the second, which sucks .

    They offered gear to people who couldn't still down the Tier content because they didn't want to simply be like, "Hey, content's too hard, we'll give them better gear to help them overcome this challenge." And it helped, at least for my guild.

    Next came Firelands, which I honestly loved. Sure, we got sick of it against because of half a year with no new content, but it was still a very well constructed raid.

    And once more we're back at Dragon Soul, whose massive timespan without content is what seemed to ruin the game for so many.

    But my question after all this reasoning and laying out my opinion is the following:

    Was Cata actually and legitimately that bad?

    They redid the entire world, they still released 5 new zones, one with new Underwater Mechanics, along with 3 raids, 9 (?) new Heroics, along with the redone 2 Old Dungeons, 31 point revised talent system, and 2 new playable races, not to mention new class combinations.

    I bet some of you would still be griping about being Tauren Druids if you couldn't be Trolls :x.

    But, yeah, that's my question, I'm curious what you guys think given all this.

    Thanks!
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  2. #2
    For starters, the messed with small guilds like 1 week after Cata launched by reducing the amount of guild xp was gained. It was 100% earned gave you 100% for the guild. The drop was like to 25 pretty much ending any small guilds chances of hitting 25. Which hurt recruitment. Since early into T11 people only wanted to join level 2 guilds for the perks.

    Dungeons went from mass AoE zergs with lots of room for error to needing CC and careful pulls. And were long. Especially if you were in a bad group. 10 mans were brutal in comparison to 25s. There was no room for mistakes. 1 mistake and it was a guaranteed wipe every time. Heorics were brutally long. Yes 5.1 brought ZA/ZG again and people thought these didn't go far enough like Deadmines and Shadowmoon Keep.

    PvP was still a mess and TB was a disaster in Beta and nothing was changed until too late into live. Phasing nodes made it hard to farm. Then Blizzard did a 180, making heroics relatively easy again. Adding accessibility to those who couldn't raid due to time, or effort, and those that wanted to try raiding but didn't want to commit to it big time with LFR. casue a huge stink. That and 9 months of DS and the whole redoing Azeroth so we could fly and tie in the story, shortening the raiding for this expansion really stuck in the craw of many.

    Personally I enjoyed it all except for having to leave my personal family guild so I could raid.

  3. #3
    My only beef with Cata was that DS was out for too long without anything else.
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  4. #4
    Immortal TEHPALLYTANK's Avatar
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    Yes, cata was legitimately that bad. I would say it was slightly worse than wrath in terms of the raids. For questing cata was certainly better but the areas were inconveniently spread out which felt odd. Worgen starting area feels so horribly incomplete, female worgen are plain awful. I don't pvp so screw all that but pvp has declined with all this bullshit CC that keeps getting added(remove the insane amount of CC and pvp might be appealing...staring at your screen until you die just doesn't hold much interest). ZA and ZG were some of the worst decisions I've seen them make, getting stuck with people who didn't raid ZA during TBC while running the revamped version was just a nightmare(I liked ZA back in TBC, I now hate it after the revamp). The 3 dungeons added with dragon soul just pissed me off because 2/3 of them were simply bleak(I don't ever want an instance to put me in dragonblight again, I hated the zone during wrath and I hate it still). Underwater zone is a nightmare to navigate, if they had fixed that so quests inside caves actually directed you to the cave entrance I think I might've enjoyed it instead of getting lost when trying to figure out where the hell the entrance was.

    All in all I think MoP>TBC>Wrath>Cata, not listing classic because I didn't play then so I don't have any experience to to base an opinion on.
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  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by phillipisawarlock View Post
    My only beef with Cata was that DS was out for too long without anything else.
    Mainly this. Everything else was great about Cata.

  6. #6
    My only beef with Cata was Dragon Soul as a whole. I took a 9 month break starting in December, didn't come back until MoP. Was not a fan of anything about Dragon Soul, worst raid since TBC.

  7. #7
    My understanding was that Cata was supposed to be harder than WotLK, like BC hard. It wasn't

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Buttfear View Post
    My understanding was that Cata was supposed to be harder than WotLK, like BC hard. It wasn't
    T11 was, 5 mans and raids. T11 was harder than TBC.

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by LuminousAether View Post
    T11 was, 5 mans and raids. T11 was harder than TBC.
    Those Heroic Dungeons were just...

    The biggest kick in the nuts.
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  10. #10
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    my only problem with cataclysm is that it was even developed.
    it is without a single doubt in my mine the absolute low-point in terms of max level content available.
    Diabolical doesn't come close
    9 months of Dragon soul was a joke. that was pretty much all there was to do.

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Siggma View Post
    my only problem with cataclysm is that it was even developed.
    it is without a single doubt in my mine the absolute low-point in terms of max level content available.
    Diabolical doesn't come close
    9 months of Dragon soul was a joke. that was pretty much all there was to do.
    Well, there were the 3 new Heroics, plus PVP and the usual doing old raids.
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  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by phillipisawarlock View Post
    My only beef with Cata was that DS was out for too long without anything else.
    Same thing happened in Wrath unfortunately.

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by phillipisawarlock View Post
    My only beef with Cata was that DS was out for too long without anything else.
    I hope you had beef with WOTLK, because ICC was out almost an entire year. If you want to count Ruby Sanctum in there as actual new "content" then it was about the same time as DS.

    I honestly didn't like the raids past the first tier in Cata. They were just dull to me and that made me not very interested in the expansion as a whole since I mainly play to raid.
    Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.
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  14. #14
    The flaws of Cataclysm from my perspective:

    1. The zones were scattered and disjointed, and I felt like the storytelling was as well. Vashj'ir's story ended with a cliffhanger that shows no sign of being addressed anytime soon. Bennedictus' story was poorly handled and he just kind of shows up out of nowhere at the end, without the cool confrontation from Varian. Why was he the twilight prophet? All we get is one line about him looking into deathwing's eyes and losing hope. His betrayal served no purpose except to be a shocking twist. Thrall's 'character arc' was poorly handled in game, consisting of one quest chain where he flaws that he's never really shown in game before were brought up and he immediately gets over them. The Alliance intro to Twilight Highlands was gutted. There were interesting aspects, like Wrathion, but ultimately the storytelling wasn't great.

    2. Dragon Soul. I liked tier 11 and I don't really hear complaints about it. While Firelands only had seven bosses, I give it a pass because I loved all seven of them, and it was an interesting place. While I liked the idea of having DS set with Deathwing attacking Wyrmrest instead of sitting in a lair waiting for us to come kill him, the raid just wasn't so exciting. The fights weren't...bad exactly, but failed to WOW me. Deathwing was a disapointment. I'll give spine a pass because I got my wish of having the Deathwing fight having a 'break his plates off' aspect, but Madness was a letdown. It should have been epic. It looked epic. The concept was epic. But it felt like too much of an add fight and not enough like we were fighting Deathwing. DS was a letdown for me.

  15. #15
    Pandaren Monk Klutzington's Avatar
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    Cataclysm was only bad due to how long Firelands was out (just one month shorter and it would've been perfect) and DS. Oh and the troll dungeons were out of place. Blizzard could have revamped the zones and made it more epic of an experience, but they did not. Also: Dailies that came out at the time Firelands did were okay, but nonetheless a grind fest. The first half of the dailies were cool, but after that point you were just like... ugh, again?

    Tier 11 was fucking amazing. Comparable to Ulduar in my books. Yes I was a world class raider (top 100 world at that time). I liked Firelands, but some fights were meh. Ragnaros was way too hard compared to the other bosses, but I liked it, because it was an actual challenge. I liked the Alysrazor fight in Firelands, the spider bitch (forgot her name) and the DPS check boss which had shadow shards you had to absorb damage from. I have not played in a while so I cannot remember the names. I loved Majordomo heroic mode. Some fights in the beginning were okay, but Firelands was pretty decent if you ask me.

    Dragon Soul was OKAY. It was cleared too quickly, and should've been gated like ICC. It lasted too long. LFR destroyed it. There were too little bosses and they were meh.
    Last edited by Klutzington; 2012-11-20 at 02:07 AM.

  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by Florena View Post
    The flaws of Cataclysm from my perspective:

    1. The zones were scattered and disjointed, and I felt like the storytelling was as well. Vashj'ir's story ended with a cliffhanger that shows no sign of being addressed anytime soon. Bennedictus' story was poorly handled and he just kind of shows up out of nowhere at the end, without the cool confrontation from Varian. Why was he the twilight prophet? All we get is one line about him looking into deathwing's eyes and losing hope. His betrayal served no purpose except to be a shocking twist. Thrall's 'character arc' was poorly handled in game, consisting of one quest chain where he flaws that he's never really shown in game before were brought up and he immediately gets over them. The Alliance intro to Twilight Highlands was gutted. There were interesting aspects, like Wrathion, but ultimately the storytelling wasn't great.

    2. Dragon Soul. I liked tier 11 and I don't really hear complaints about it. While Firelands only had seven bosses, I give it a pass because I loved all seven of them, and it was an interesting place. While I liked the idea of having DS set with Deathwing attacking Wyrmrest instead of sitting in a lair waiting for us to come kill him, the raid just wasn't so exciting. The fights weren't...bad exactly, but failed to WOW me. Deathwing was a disapointment. I'll give spine a pass because I got my wish of having the Deathwing fight having a 'break his plates off' aspect, but Madness was a letdown. It should have been epic. It looked epic. The concept was epic. But it felt like too much of an add fight and not enough like we were fighting Deathwing. DS was a letdown for me.
    I will COMPLETELY agree with you that Deathwing was a disappointment.

    The first time I got on Spine of Deathwing, I was wow'd and thought it was epic and amazing.

    Madness was just..I mean, it felt great killing him but..meh.

    When you compare my hopes of Deathwing to the Lich King, and when the Lich King lived up to it, well, you get the picture.
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  17. #17
    Pandaren Monk Klutzington's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Destil View Post
    Those Heroic Dungeons were just...

    The biggest kick in the nuts.
    GOOD. I loved the Heroics when they first came out. I loved those and T11 as a whole. Such an amazing raid (the 3). I espec loved BWD, but BoT always gives me goosebumps.


    Obligatory Sinestra realm first kill video. Recorded by me. Sadly, that was the first night I ever played Arcane since Cata launched, lmao. (Was still top world 100 though).


  18. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by Klutzington View Post
    Cataclysm was only bad due to how long Firelands was out (just one month shorter and it would've been perfect) and DS. Oh and the troll dungeons were out of place.
    The Zandalari being introduced I can safely say was simply to start their development as a major threat in Mists of Pandaria.

    Zandalar was destroyed by the Cataclysm, and so the Zandalari, aka the original rulers of the "Troll Empire", were looking for a new land for their people, started calling in alliances, etc.

    And now we have the Zandalari Mogu alliance.
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  19. #19
    Too few new zones (for 80+, don't really care about low level zones, all my alts were already level 80), too much emphasis on Stormwind/Orgrimmar and DS was just bad (normal mode was really too easy, the whole tier lasted for waaay too long, boss mechanics were ''bleh'', etc). Also, Deathwing was a bit lame as a supervillain, we saw him like 1-2 times from the beginning till the end of the expansion, and then we managed to bring him down without ever really facing him, as such. Imo first fight in DS should have been Deathwing's humanoid form, and then Morchok 2nd fight and the rest the same, as it was it mostly felt as if we (the heroes/champions/whatever) were just some random people doing all the dirty work for the Aspects/Thrall.... it almost felt like Diablo 3 lol.

    Oh and the terrible, terrible, TERRIBLE implementation of archaeology.

    Cata also had a lot of loose ends story-wise, I think in general it felt very unfinished.
    Last edited by Eliot123; 2012-11-20 at 02:18 AM.

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by Melodi View Post
    I hope you had beef with WOTLK, because ICC was out almost an entire year. If you want to count Ruby Sanctum in there as actual new "content" then it was about the same time as DS.

    I honestly didn't like the raids past the first tier in Cata. They were just dull to me and that made me not very interested in the expansion as a whole since I mainly play to raid.
    I had more beef with Wrath then I did with Cata, but this isn't a thread for that.
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