Bashing Cataclysm...why?

[bufferunderrun]

For me:

Pro:
-world revamp
-fly
-questing 1-60
-dungeon first and third tier
-raid first and second tier

cons:
-uldum and vashjir
-zulaman and zulgurub
-raid tier 3

[Aphrel]

first of all, the leveling up was way to fast (compared to how vanilla/tbc/wrath was)
2nd. heroic dungeons were to easy (just like wrath).
3rd. tabards made rep grind throu quests/dailys nonexistant pretty much.
4th. while teh first raiding teir was very good the following 2 was quite low in popularity.
5th and porbobly the biggest one, the zones. 5 new zones and while i found all of them enjoyable to play throu the fact that they were spread out in the world made them feel less grand, the expansions didnt rly feel like a new expansion. It didnt felt like a new adventure the way tbc/wrath did because ther was no new continent.
6th. tolbarad was way inferior to wintergrasp.


thou imo wrath expansion wasnt much better. dungeon content was pretty much nonexpistant there.. so was dailys/repgrind and teh first raiding teir only had 2 new bosses... What wrath did have that cata didnt was a new continent (oh the excitement ) with more zones.

[Eschatonin]

While Cataclysm brought a whole lot of good things, almost all of those good things had nothing to do with it being Cataclysm, it was the fact that it was the 3rd expansion, and such changes are organic.

The bad about Cataclysm though, there are a great many things in how it was done;

- Heroics were brought back with that challenging element, which had it's fun, but practically when you lower bars, it is either impossible or extremely difficult to raise them again and get a net gain.
- The first tier's loot and stat discrepancy was nonsense. Haste slapped on dps warriors, mages having to be under the hit cap in full heroic raid gear.
- 5.1 putting us in a 2 heroic paradigm using pre-existing elements, which took another vanilla raid away. This made quite a few people unhappy.
- Firelands... After Tier 11 being pretty good and diverse, we were given a 7 boss raid that, when nerfed, mediocre guilds such as mine found heroic Firelands to be 6 pinatas and a brick wall. It's only saving grace was Ragnaros being a pretty good fight.
- Dragon Soul was an experiment that came out poorly. Before the nerfs started, Heroic Morchok required many 10m guilds to use 4 healers to at least get a first kill and a foot in the door. Having a full guild and requiring our raiders to use alts they lost appeal for to kill the boss (and miss out on on their mains) was bad. Great healers could 3 or even 2 heal it.
The hardest fight that tier was actually pretty boring, and wasn't even the last boss. Heroic Spine of Deathwing required guilds to stack burst dps classes, so many felt useless or didn't get to do it as often.
Heroic Madness did not have an extra phase, and didn't feel as great as other important heroic fights, like Lich King or Ragnaros.
- Personal: Having to be Arcane to be viable, it really did suck and make me hate Firelands more than I should have.

That was just the PvE element.

[namelessone]

Every poll and thread here where expansions are compared, Cata gets worst opinions or close to it.

Im really interested why ppl didnt like Cata.

For me, Cata wasnt best expansion (wotlk and tbc are), but still, I cant say it was bad. It had great 5-man heroics (loved DM prenerf), we got old world flying, rewamp of old world zones.
Only bad thing were raids, DS in particular, maybe cos it lasted too long.

What do you think?

Because in a poll you usually get to compare it to the other ones. I agree, Cata was not, by any means, totally terrible, but I liked it less than the expansion before it or the expansion after it.

I personally liked the firelands patch - both daily area and raid.

[Malcor]

It had alot of potential to be what they wanted it to originally be, But somewhere along the line they dropped the bail, Even I have to admit.

Perhaps running DS for 11 months really got on peoples nerves, People call DS bad but in reality it was a great raid and fit the lore...grinding it for 11 months will naturally build up some hate towards it....Run DS LFR on your alts, Run DS on your main in your guilds raid...etc and so on.

I loved the look and feel of Cataclysm and I loved Deathwing, Cataclysm had great potential but they flopped a little bit on the execution.

[crakerjack]

I'm sorry, but from past experiences, everytime I've given my logical, non irrational opinion on which expansion is the best and provide facts... I get an infraction for trolling, it's the most ridiculous thing ever... I can't say TBC is the best expansion because it required you to work your way up from kara, then ZA, and then SSC etc. Apparently I'm not allowed to criticize the new formation of heroics and how they work. How every tier there's a new set of heroics that drops better gear... which voids the whole aspect of going to older tiers and working your way up. What's the point of an RPG if there's features allowing you to skip the whole gearing up process and be done within a couple hours? In Cata... I leveled a warrior to 85 and had him in full epics by the end of the day from running tank que. How is that fun? How is that more rewarding then working your way up from kara, eventually to BT? W/e... that's my 2 cents on the matter... I just don't like it when there are short cuts. I just hope someone isn't hot headed and gives me an infraction because THEY think it's trolling... I'm just trying to engage in the topic.

[reef]

Every poll and thread here where expansions are compared, Cata gets worst opinions or close to it.

Im really interested why ppl didnt like Cata.

Just because it was least voted for doesn't necessarily mean that those who didn't vote for it didn't like it. It could just have not been their favorite which all comes down to personal tastes.

[underdogba]

The fundamental problem with Cata is that Blizz overestimated how much they could get away with in keeping the existing playerbase, and violated the most common sense rule of business, that it's more efficient to keep existing customers than to chase new ones.

The entire rationale for the level 1-60 revamp (and this is pretty explicitly stated in interviews with execs around the time of Cata development/release) was marketing data indicating that the majority of trial players quit before level 10 (the figure typically quoted was 70%). Thus the majority of development resources were thrown at keeping those potential players in the game, and it couldn't be more obvious that as a result, the endgame suffered.

By putting out the most garbage endgame content of any expansion to date with monumental delays, they alienated the existing playerbase in a way that no competing game ever could.

[blackblade]

And then, there were dragon soul. Trash pack were bad. you use drake or teleport to go from one arena to another, no real feel of progressing through a dungeon. i did hate deathwing fight. I hate fighting shapeless tentacle and blobs. I prefer fighting dragon or demon with legs and arms. Also the fight was extremly repetitive. You have 3 plate to remove on spine, exactly the same way. You had 4 plateform to clean on madness, with next to no difference between plateform, was a very boring uninstpiring fight.

This. Actually.

DS was pretty rinse, wash, and repeat overall. Heroic Spine was pretty difficult, but more in a "Raw numbers" way and less in a "Learning the Mechanics" way.

It's starts out strong, with the approach to Morchok. then falls flat on it's face. Fight two bosses inside of giant tenticle maws. Fight an orc in EoE. Fight a Dragon atop wyrmrest tower.

There was no "Hard" trash. No "Tricky" trash. Essentially, It was ToC with a changing backdrop beyond Morchok, and slightly more trash.

In terms of the last fight with deathwing...

Well, I guess we all expected something very different than what we got.

[Osmeric]

...only you seem to forget how much SWoTORs numbers plummeted in that time. The game that was supposed to singlehandedly finally trash and kill WoW...and then there was this other little game Rift that apparently went from 600 000 to 250 000 subs (source mmodata.net) Now I call that a pretty drop.

While Rift and SWTOR are rather different games, they did share one property that really annoyed me: their clients had performance issues. I got over that to some extent in Rift, but when I tried to return for the Rift expansion I immediately found it unbearable.

I wonder how many MMOs suffer the same issue. I have never found one that felt as snappy or immediately responsive as WoW. (And I think this is what people found unpleasant about vehicles in Wrath: that mechanism also introduced response lag. Just look at the time delay from keypress to action.)

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Cataclysm had some things it did well, and the old world revamp was needed.

Problem is they decided that the game should be on-rails, and it's been suffering ever since because of the on-rails design.

[Outgoing131]

PvP went wayyy down hill

[Blufossa]

Every poll and thread here where expansions are compared, Cata gets worst opinions or close to it.

Im really interested why ppl didnt like Cata.

For me, Cata wasnt best expansion (wotlk and tbc are), but still, I cant say it was bad. It had great 5-man heroics (loved DM prenerf), we got old world flying, rewamp of old world zones.
Only bad thing were raids, DS in particular, maybe cos it lasted too long.

What do you think?

MoP by far is the worst for anyone with more than one max level character thanks to dailies/Rep and their "we've relaced 5mans with LFR" crap.

[Osmeric]

MoP by far is the worst for anyone with more than one max level character thanks to dailies/Rep and their "we've relaced 5mans with LFR" crap.

I have more than one max level character. I completely disagree with your assertion.

[Deleted]

I actually find both Cata AND Mop are a huge drop in standards from Blizzard. Sure they still had/have the Blizz sheen but what lies underneath is not much in way of substance. I hope the next expansion is better. Still had very enjoyable days in both but the mojo wore off for me far faster than it did in previous expansions.

[Azureqt]

Every poll and thread here where expansions are compared, Cata gets worst opinions or close to it.

Im really interested why ppl didnt like Cata.

For me, Cata wasnt best expansion (wotlk and tbc are), but still, I cant say it was bad. It had great 5-man heroics (loved DM prenerf), we got old world flying, rewamp of old world zones.
Only bad thing were raids, DS in particular, maybe cos it lasted too long.

What do you think?

Nearly ALL the PvE content was recycled... I can list it for you...

Dragon Soul (Raid)
Firelands (Raid)
Blackwing Lair (Raid)

Deadmines (5 Man)
Shadowfang Keep (5 Man)
Zul'Farrak (LOL 5 Man)
Zul'Aman (LOL 5 Man)
End Time (5 man)
Hour of Twilight (5 man)

And I personally felt PvP was completely ignored in every aspect, even with reasonable feedback from the better players of the community.

It was an okay expansion at best, but it was a VERY lazy expansion. That Worgen city is so awesome... they need to turn it into something.

[Tziva]

I don't think holding a negative opinion is necessary "bashing." Most people would be the former, but I think very few are the latter.

Anyway, my main beef with Cataclysm was the shortage of content. The expansion added a lot of new features like transmog, guild support, reforging, old world flying, etc, and I think the old zones revamp was phenomenal... but when it came time to actual stuff to do in-game, we had the least of it we've had since Classic. It's the only time in WoW's history I ever logged in, realised I didn't have anything really to do. I found myself logging in for the sole purpose chatting in guild. Firelands was cool, but it needed a sister raid or more bosses. Dragonsoul was also too short, and cleared too quick (at least Firelands was more challenging) and, in my opinion, was way too dull. Abyssal Maw scrapped, War of the Ancients as a raid was scrapped, etc. Even old fallbacks like leveling an alt were less desirable because the extreme linearity of Cata zones made repeating them really tedious.

I think the expansion brought a lot of good stuff to the table in the aforementioned list, but it just didn't do a whole lot to make the game compelling to actually play.

[Jacob6875]

Because we were given a 7 boss raid and then an 8 boss raid that were supposed to last 1.5 years.

Compare than to MoP where the game has only been out around 8 months and we have had a 16 and a 13 boss tier.

Basically all you did in Cata was log on and clear either Firelands or DS on tuesday then log off for an entire week unless you felt like leveling an alt. A couple hours of content a week is not how an MMORPG should be designed.


This doesn't even include the other issues of the amazing amount of recycled content. ZA / ZG/ DM / Shadowfang for 5 mans. In raids reusing Onyxia / Nefarian / Rag. Reusing models / areas in Firelands / DS / end time etc.

[Belloc]

Nearly ALL the PvE content was recycled... I can list it for you...

Dragon Soul (Raid)
Firelands (Raid)
Blackwing Lair (Raid)

Deadmines (5 Man)
Shadowfang Keep (5 Man)
Zul'Farrak (LOL 5 Man)
Zul'Aman (LOL 5 Man)
End Time (5 man)
Hour of Twilight (5 man)

And I personally felt PvP was completely ignored in every aspect, even with reasonable feedback from the better players of the community.

It was an okay expansion at best, but it was a VERY lazy expansion. That Worgen city is so awesome... they need to turn it into something.

What exactly was recycled about Firelands, aside from the NAME of the last boss? None of the other bosses were recycles, none of the fights were recycles, even Ragnaros had a different model and a completely different fight. So, please, explain what was recycled about Firelands.

Do the same with Blackwing Descent, because nothing in there, except two names, were recycled.

While we're at it, go ahead and explain what Zul'Farrak is doing on the list. I don't recall it being changed during Cataclysm -- certainly not as new/updated content.

You pointed out Deadmines and SFK... while failing to note that they were specifically requested by the playerbase as heroic updates. Is it lazy to give players what they ask for?

Zul'Aman, I will accept. It was an unnecessary recycle. Dragon Soul, I will partially accept, as they did recycle a lot of art assets (the fights and mechanics, however, were not any more recycled than any other raid).

What's wrong with End Time and Hour of Twilight? Oh, that they took place in previously visited areas? I suppose I can accept that for Hour of Twilight, even though it didn't particularly feel like it was an old area. I cannot, however, accept it for End Time. It's an instance that takes place in the future, meant to show us what becomes of the world as a result of Deathwing. It makes sense to take us to places that we've already been, eh?

So, you're basically bitching about them reusing 3 old NAMES (though the models and fights are all updated/new), reusing old areas (even though it made sense to do so from a storyline perspective), and giving us heroic versions of instances... that we REQUESTED.

Doesn't really make much sense to me.

[Chillstep]

I wish we could go back to cata. Wow was a lot more chill and easier.