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

[Deleted]

I personally disliked a lot about Cata. First, the questing on rails. Don't like this quest? Too bad, you have to do it anyway or you can't go on to the next quest hub! ...on every alt! The number of times I missed the dungeon queue on my dps characters while questing in Uldum and being stuck in some video I couldn't cancel... the rage.

I still have no clue why we killed the bosses in BWD. There's no quests (at least not at Cata level - I never redid the lowbie quests as I had already done loremaster and I'm no great lover of questing) pointing there. Almost the same with BoT. Cho'gall - sure, but all the other bosses? Saw Valiona before, but no idea how she's involved with the plot other than showing up in BoT and Grim Batol. And Al'Akir, why did we kill him?

Firelands as a raid was okay (if a bit small for being the only raid that tier), especially Raggy, but it just didn't feel like a living instance to me. What was Rhyolith lord over and why was he stuck on that island? Same with Beth'tilac as she was just sitting there in her spiderweb not doing much at all. We were supposed to attack Firelands because they were going to invade Mount Hyjal, right? But that's not what I saw at all in there. They just seemed to stand around and chill, no preparations for war anywhere. Compare this with Karazhan where the ghosts actually seem to live regardless of whether you are there or not. Or Mount Hyjal where the mobs actually came to you, attacking where they feel like rather than waiting for you to walk up, discuss tactics for a bit and then attack them.

It's a bit similar with Dragon Soul. Once again too small, once again I'm not sure why we killed some of the bosses in there. Sure, Mor'chok was in our way so I get killing him, but Yor'sahj and Zon'ozz? I mean we even had to take a flight path to get to them and they didn't really seem to hold anything important like Hagara. The mechanics of Spine felt really meh as dps and heroic Madness wasn't that great either having to stop dps to wait for tank cooldowns.

While in MoP, I can actually understand why we're killing the raid bosses as they're connected to the quests outside, to the lore in general. I just hope the future tiers will have a decent amount of bosses anchored in the in game lore as well.

Actually, the one thing that I really don't like in this expansion (apart from too many dailies) is being teleported in somewhere random in the instance after running in after a wipe. It's really annoying on progress when you want to go back out for a repair. Though I imagine it's even more annoying for 10mans entirely without engineers or warlocks.

[Mawnix]

Because they overtuned the endgame for most players until the latter part of the last tier.

And they have repeated this in MoP.

Your argument in the Dailies Thread was you couldn't down the bosses due to your gear, which you "have" to get from dailies.

What boss are you even on in MV, or HoF, or Terrace? I never asked this.

If you're stuck on like..Spirit Kings or Garajal, no offense but your Raid Team isn't good.

[Deathquoi]

I quit from March 2011 to MoP because of the raids. T11 demanded ranged heavy groups. Any melee were a liability. It sucked.

[bigdubs]

Only expansion so far where the sub numbers dropped significantly.. of course its a fail expansion. Same will happen with MOP. You will see the numbers drop another 2 million.. it will be a very slow death for this game.

[theWocky]

Cataclysm for me was the beginning of the end. I finished every single quest in each zone from 80~85.

I liked the leveling and enjoyed the dungeon, but when I got to 85, I was bored out of my skull. After finishing every single quest, leveling an alt was not "fun", it was just a mindless chore.

The healing in the beginning (pre-nerf) was a friggin' nightmare and more frustrating than fun.

Somewhere after the first month or two, I started logging in less and less till I was just over the game. Came back for a week free for 4.3, but after doing LFR once and the new dungeons a few times, I just stopped logging in. Fun things to do were just severely lacking.

The world was destroyed - The capital cities just had masses of people afk and people fly everywhere, so you almost never see anyone unless you're gathering. This is why I moved onto another mmo.

Just tired of WoW, I guess. It started for brief periods during WotLK when I took a break for a month or two every now and then.

MoP still hasn't impressed me enough to consider buying it. TBC was my favourite era in WoW.

[valliant13]

i quit in cata because simply it was fuckin boring. I didn't pvp because my server was a craphole for pvp. Tier 11 was amazing and so were the original heroics. they were unforgiving and thats how a dungeon should be. They made people actually have to know how to play their class to get through. After tier 11 the entire expansion went to absolute garbage. Firelands had some fun fights dont get me wrong, i loved flying on alysrazor and heroic rag is one of the best fights in wow. However that's about it.

Next is them canning Abyssal Maw for the molten front daily quest hub...So vashj'ir as a zone should just fricken disappear...since the story is unfinished and at the looks of it will remain unfinished as long as wow goes on.

Turning war of the ancients into a 5 man was another absolute shit-tastic move. if you dont know which 5 man is war of the ancients then you fail, but let's just say it could have been SOOOO much more as a raid.

DS was such a steaming pile of crap it was beyond awful. Terrible encounter design, terrible dungeon design...oh wait it was just a copy and paste of a few other raids...Seriously....it was such a piece of crap...

and lastly, it began the end of real frost dk's. Dw frost was exceptionally amazing in 3.3-cata. The rune system and everything just worked so well and was so fluid and you actually had to know how to play correctly. Now frost is such a spammy spec and the band-aid fix that happened in 4.1 should have been a legit fix into mop yet they still haven't fixed it. it's quite astonishing on how awful the design is yet it still isn't fixed and probably never will be.

MOP has its share of problems that i personally hate, but as a whole I find it a lot more enjoyable than ALMOST all of cataclysm. My biggest gripe I would have to say that I haven't said above is they used the revamp of irrelevant content(1-60) for lazy design the rest of the expansion. And while yes i agree that cata has the most content of all the expansions most of that content is irrelevant to people at max level and that is why cata is the worst wow expansion to date...and im actually afraid it will be happening again when they redo outland or whatever they do to finish off the burning legion storyline

[Aeula]

I never realized how much i liked cata until mists hit, i always veiwed cata as an "OK expansion" but it was too hard for me at the begining (Was a total noob), i didn't have to grind so much, i just ran dungeons when i felt like it, maybe did a few raids, but cata gave me time to explore all the old content.

Cata brought quite alot that i liked, such as transmog, new darkmoon faire, a reason to run old content, mists of pandaria brought very little of it, i recently quit WoW due to mists... far too many daylies for rewards that should not have been attatched to them, and then 5.1 was announced and 100 more daylies are heading our way, it was just too much for me: so i quit.

I hope blizzard learn their lesson with the next expansion and don't add so much grinding, but for now WoW isn't the game for me and i actually MISS cata, i miss the 9 months of dragon soul i miss being fairly good geared on my warlock only to loose all my gear to quest green in a few hours...

[Lightfist]

By the end of Cataclysm, yes. But completion stats dropped precipitously going into T11 and then into T12. The number of people going through the raid content had fallen too much, which is why they gave up with the massive FL nerf, with LFR, and the downtuning/progressive nerf of DS. The loss of subs plateaued for a long time after the nerfs, before the final dip, which I think we can blame on boredom more than anything else.

Raid completion stats in T14 normal mode (never mind heroic) are very low right now.

The loss of subs never evened out because of anything related to Cataclysm. It evened out because Blizzard gave away literally millions of dollars in free merchandise - and even then, they could only stem the tide for such a precious little time.

Also, I have to ask what you're comparing the raid difficulty to?

[justlols]

The one thing i disliked about cata was how the Worgen and Goblin storylines were forgotten and left to rust, as well that their presence in cata was only as new playable races, unlike the draenei and blood elfs who had motivations of going up againts Illidan and the Burning Legion. The worgen and goblin could had easily had motivation to kill Deathwing.

Goblins for sure wanted to make Deathwing pay in blood for nearly destroying their merch and HQ at Kezan while the Worgen storyline could had been expanded on with the Scythe of Elune. They could had made it that the Twilight's Hammer retrieved it and are finding out a means to use it to force all worgen to obey Deathwing, or some weird shit like that. Im just disappointed that the Worgen and Goblins did not have Cata to themselves similar to how B Elfs and Draenei did with BC.

Also another thing that made cata horrible for me was the fact that Thrall was treated like he was some god, showing love for Horde. They could had made it so that Malfurion played a vital role in helping Thrall, possible needed both of them to be able to use the Dragon Soul. Shit Malfurion was able to save Darkshore.

[Lightfist]

I never realized how much i liked cata until mists hit, i always veiwed cata as an "OK expansion" but it was too hard for me at the begining (Was a total noob), i didn't have to grind so much, i just ran dungeons when i felt like it, maybe did a few raids, but cata gave me time to explore all the old content.

Cata brought quite alot that i liked, such as transmog, new darkmoon faire, a reason to run old content, mists of pandaria brought very little of it, i recently quit WoW due to mists... far too many daylies for rewards that should not have been attatched to them, and then 5.1 was announced and 100 more daylies are heading our way, it was just too much for me: so i quit.

I hope blizzard learn their lesson with the next expansion and don't add so much grinding, but for now WoW isn't the game for me and i actually MISS cata, i miss the 9 months of dragon soul i miss being fairly good geared on my warlock only to loose all my gear to quest green in a few hours...

I'm honestly really, really sick of hearing about dailies. Blizzard needs to add in the 25 cap just so I don't have to listen to it.

I understand the mentality behind feeling like you have to do them, but you don't. It will help you be more competitive, but those with the most devotion have always had an edge.

[Magpai]

It doesn't really matter if Cata was good or bad. All that matters is that it became much more fashionable to criticize WoW and lots of people jumped on that bandwagon.

Most (certainly not all) of the people who put a lot of wordcount into criticizing demonstrate a marked inability to think for themselves.

[valliant13]

I'm honestly really, really sick of hearing about dailies. Blizzard needs to add in the 25 cap just so I don't have to listen to it.

I understand the mentality behind feeling like you have to do them, but you don't. It will help you be more competitive, but those with the most devotion have always had an edge.

you dont NEED gear from the dailys yes...but not all of us are blood legiod, method, vodka caliber players. Anything that will help the moderate skilled players is essential to min/maxing. Which is forced by their guild to down bosses. The fact that there is no other way to gain reputation with said factions is the problem, not the dailies. And yes the dailies are one of the things i find wrong with this expansion...they aren't fun and they are grindy regardless of why you are doing them. I have yet to find any daily quest offer any form of fun. So i stopped doing them and will refuse to do them the rest of the expansion and im not even sure i'll be playing in a month nevermind by the expansions end because I seriously have zero interest in raiding right now and just RBG a few days a week....

[the0o]

/cracks knuckles

First off - the begining of the death of 25 man raiding. Being one of the only 25 man guilds since vanilla on our server (even survived after 40) really murdered us for trying to recruit people.

Secondly - I LOATHED the heroic dungeons... they were way too long and slow moving. I FULLY admit this is because I had an action-packed year of Wrath-LFD awesomeness. I fully admit that Wrath completely changed my standards of the game that I played in Vanilla/BC. Wrath LFD taught me that you don't need to slam a car door on your head for an hour to have fun.

The zone stories were VERY lame... and the one zone I was looking forward to was Uldum - After experiencing Storm Peaks, I couldn't imagine how an Egyptian Storm Peaks would be like... I never thought they'd turn 90% of the zone into nothing but a Raiders of the Lost Ark lampoon. >_<

After that, it was an absolute LACK of quality content. I left for a year and only came back for 4.3 when I heard they brought back the dungeons to Wrath-style play. First off... they didn't. They instead introduced 3 dungeons at Wrath-difficulty that were a) not dungeons, just funky events - two in Dragonblight! >_< and b) were locked into their own separate queue, so you burnt out of them INSANELY quickly! I didn't burn out from Wrath-LFD dungeons because I had 15+ dungeons in my random queue. I could go theoretically 5 days at 3 dungeons per-day and not see the same dungeon twice in wrath.

Deathwing was a stupid joke... especially if you were a fan of him in the books like me. The way he's in the books vs the way he was in the game was 250% different and contradicted many of his key characteristics. The fact he is a willing pawn of an Old God goes completely against the point of his character.
In the books, he was a paranoid mastermind manipulator hatching complicated schemes. In the game, he's a brainless Godzilla flying around who's cunning masterplan was to fly around and burn random patches of land.

In Wrath - I got to see everything of Arthas. Why he became who he was... his corruption... see him grant powers, betray allies, and hatch a plan that ultimately involved me. Deathwing I saw jack squat of. No origins... next to NOTHING that told me of what his character was about at all.

Wrath also had another thing going for it... a unified theme for the expansion. Nordic mixed with Titan/Roman styles. Cataclysm was an insane bunch of unconnected zones that seemed very disjointed with no real feeling of being in one place or overall theme.

And don't get me started on the story... Thrall suddenly getting Super Shaman Powers inexplicably overnight. Malfurion Stormrage waking up and going totally neutral despite his people getting murdered in Ashenvale, and DON'T get me started on the Alli/Horde design imabalances. Even Blizz admitted they lacked on the Ali side in order to get the game out... particularly with the Worgen.

Seriously, I could go on and on... I really REALLY could not understand how they could follow up something as cohesive and epic as Wrath with something as abysmal on almost ALL fronts as Cataclysm. It broke more than the world... it broke the game.

I hate quote long posts but ^ this.

A 5 man should be a longer group quest, not a mini raid. CC's should be used to make the run easier but not required to complete it.

No end game = Bored players. WOTLK had this as well.

No style. you go from a burning mountain forest to aquaman's crib to rocks, rocks everywhere to a bootleg raiders to another mountain forest...
Deepholm was interesting and my favorite zone out of the 5.

Arch. enough said. oh fuck that blue cockroach.

LFR. It was broken, players could afk though the whole thing, roll on loot they ALREADY had, and ninja all the gold. LFR should be watered down but not faceroll.
If players dont switch to adds = wipe, if players tunnel = wipe, if dps is not high enough because people are half assing it or just AFK = wipe. MOP kinda fixed this (see deaths by ele's platform) but it needs to be tuned up. abilities should not be ignored.

[Deleted]

I don't know, I liked cataclysm, at the start that was atleast. There were a lot of raidbosses to kill, dungeons weren't hard but you still could'nt chug down 5packs at a time. To me and my friends, dungeons in cataclysm felt just tedious, time consuming and long rather than complicated or hard. I would like to say that there's a fine difference between those and shouldn't be mixed. I didn't really want any change to the dungeons, Wotlk dungeons was about the time investment there needed to be. Let's be honest, if you want challange you go raid hardmodes, not take 4 random people for a spin in something that would be described as hell.

I think the redesign of all of azeroth wasn't just awesome but also very much needed. It was the first expansion I actually could start leveling new characters without just giving up because it was to boring or tedious. I also liked the new zones, spare Vash'ir... God I hate that place...

The raiding started out great, well sort of, there were a shitload of bosses to kill but they all lived in their evil 1-room appartment-lairs which I sort of despise very very much. Common you're an evil genious Nefarian, why did you go from that amazing castle to a college hallway?
Then firelands hit, a raid that walked the line between okey and utter shit for me, some bosses were okey some just stank of failure. The trash wasn't really a problem, but the fact that you didn't really get the feeling of "the firelords amazing palace of fire and evil" sort of made it another place to go pick up loot. I wanted more flames, more lava, more feeling that malfurion and the people you got helped by actually came along not just stood at the portal (without guards for that matter) and sold you loot. It's war idiots, come help a bit!
What they could have done, added a bit of npc's battling or something, tidal wave of Druids pooring in smashing into a bulk of Ragnaros's army. He came knocking on our door with just a handful of soldiers? Mechanic wise I liked the birdfight and raggy hc!

Then came the ultimate showdown. What a joke.
You rememberd when we (lorewise) hit the gates of the Icecrown citadel? There were a intro movie, there were NPC's, there were epic feeling. This time around we stood in a cave and then got ported to wherever we went in time or whatnot. As a finalé they could have instanced whole of dragonblight and made it feel a bit more like the end of the world was present not just like "oh well guiz you take care of that evil lizard or whatnot you talking about imma stay in ogr/stormwind". Absolutely no immersion of lore, absolutely no epic feeling that the world truely were going to end if we fucked this shit up.
9 months later we were still killing the same 8bosses of epic failure, atleast ICC had a follow up AND more bosses inside of ICC.

PvP was shit, became okey then went bananas at the end with all the legendaries, heroic DS gear and whatnot, no fixes besides vial of shadows just made me want to cry... Would I play it all over again? ye probably, but I rather have TBC, Wotlk or MoP... Preferably MoP.. It still have alot of potential, still got to do the dungeon challanges, do more dailies (I just don't like to do em so often ^^ so I don't) aaand finish up the raids on HC. : ) cant wait for the rest!

[TrapTripper]

I haven't dun daily's since sunwell

[Deleted]

Same thing happened in Wrath unfortunately.

But ICC was way better than DS!

[Mawnix]

But ICC was way better than DS!

I liked DS but I have to agree.

12 bosses plus an amazing final boss filled with not only heavy lore, but also amazing story telling and a wonderfully constructed ending.

[Valenhil]

I think Cata redesigning the whole world was amazing, the new zones were good, the pvp was a step up. The only bad part was at the end with the extremely slow content, it just happens to be the part everyone remembers the most. I'd still take it over WotLK's exhaustive repetition any day.

[Rhianne]

The healing in the beginning (pre-nerf) was a friggin' nightmare and more frustrating than fun.

TBC was my favourite era in WoW.

I don't understand how someone can make these two statements in the same post. Do you honestly not remember TBC? Tanks had to go over strategy on trash pulls. "Kill this mob first it fears, I'll be tanking over here because of the AoE silence, healers you should stand there." etc. Only in TBC, if the tank got feared, all mobs stopped attacking him/her and went after the number 2 agro for them. Also, most tanks couldn't hold AoE agro, so on the lovely 6 pulls (think Shadow labs), the healing strat for priests was, bubble, pom, tank charges, you start your greater heal, followed immediately by fade, and a couple of prayers that the tank would be able to pick up all the mobs before fade wore off, which they had about a 50/50 chance of doing.

Healing only seemed bad at the start of Cata, because Wrath was so so freaking boring as a healer, most of us just dps'd, and the DPS had gotten lazy and didn't bother moving out of stuff. Once people realized they had to pay attention to mechanics it got a lot better.

Personally I loved the start of Cata. Yeah it kicked my butt, but I enjoy that kind of a challenge as a healer. I continued loving CATA until the patch with DS, and the new heroics. The new heroics were boring. From the very start they were boring. The only time they were even remotely challenging to me was when I was playing my new pally healer who cheated ilvl to get in, and I got paired with a tank that also cheated ilvl to get in. Dragon Soul was a joke. We cleared it the second week on normal, which left nine months with nothing but heroic to look at. Boring.

So I guess my biggest gripe with Cata was the huge swing in difficulty. It started pretty far on the challenge side, then swung way way way over to the laughably easy side. I would have preferred consistency.

[dukem]

the point about cata was that it managed what no other expansion could do.
it killed my guild.
on my server I was in one of the top raiding guilds. we had the best reputation and persisted through the transition from 40 man to 10/25 in tbc and did very well there. wrath also was no problem. it was easier, it sucked but the principles were the same.
what killed our guild was that we were focused on 25man raids. wow's population was dropping and 10man raids got the same loot as 25man raids. with the dropping population and the shift from 25man to 10man (our recruitment ran dry) the guild finally seized to exist.

it's one of the reasons I don't play wow anymore.