Why did Cataclysm fail?

[Deleted]

So what's it gonna be? Apparently Cata destroyed social interaction and we don't need guilds.

Yes exactly and that is rather unfortunate in my opinion. It reduces the game to a single player game in my opinion and not an mmo. Why pay a subscription for what is a single player game?

[HardCoder]

I really disliked how Cataclysm fucked up Gold Road.

It really was the first bit of scenery I came across in WoW that made me go "WOW."

Now, not so much.

But, things change, and you gotta roll with it.

[Frolk]

"Archaelogy was retardedly boring" I quite enjoy it :>
For me only part that failed in Cata was that we has 4.3/Dragon Soul for 1 year

[Danner]

Cata failures:
- As a healer, I got mental scars from the "gogogo" guys expecting to faceroll heroics while undergeared. Had to stop healing heroics as a result. Heroics had instant healer queues all through Cata, so I was not the only one.
- Troll dungeons for half a year. The Zul'Again syndrome.
- 70 MINUTES after logging onto 4.1, I was out of endgame content. Failure content pack. "Now what? Guess I log off..."
- The death of 25man raiding (why would you ever want to go 25man?) meant that my guild ended up with 7 dedicated healers and 2 healing spots.
- My spec had zero gear drops in the firelands, beyond tokens, and that meant I had to sit it out every time. "Oh, guess you don't need gear on this guy either?"
- Looking at the Firelands portal as a consequence got REALLY dull, and the firelands faction is to date the only faction I haven't maxed. I consider this another trauma.
- ICC was good, but lasted far too long!
- Too much insta-teleporting. Half the point of a journey is the road getting there. I see this lesson learned in the isle of thunder.
- I do not want to have to read some third rate fantasy books to understand what is going on in a game. I alienates me as a customer. If you cannot tell the story of a game within the game, then you have failed your PRIMARY customers for the sake of secondary ones. When did garrosh suddenly take the leadership? Who is aggra? When did Cairne die? What's up with the statue in Ironforge? When did Thrall stop being the warchief anyway? All these tales are extremely confusing unless you read some third rate fantasty books. Confuse a fan enough, and he stops being a fan.
- Dailies are okay as a timesink. Repeating the same dailies every day is not okay.
- Release day content-stopping bugs in Vashjir. Storyline abruptly ending.

Cata successes:
- LFR. Everyone can see content. This means a sharp decline in raiders, but you don't HAVE to be a raider to get your money's worth anymore.
- Guild levels. Means people guildhop less. I think that is good.
- Goblin and Worgen zones were great.
- The new 1-60 zones were amazing (maybe except desolace). And they kept me well filled with stuff to do for the first 6 months.
- I really liked the greater stories told in the new zones.
- Though some of them were a bit too long...
- I seriously loved the mood and story of Vashjir. Favourite zone. Though it was far too big.
- New Nefarian was still awesome
- Eventually, all specs in the game got a purpose.

[HardCoder]

Yes exactly and that is rather unfortunate in my opinion. It reduces the game to a single player game in my opinion and not an mmo. Why pay a subscription for what is a single player game?

No, Blizzard has made it increasingly POSSIBLE to enjoy WoW as a single-player game.

The era in which people would group together to socialize in an MMORPG while killing fantasy pixels is, well, the Golden Age of that activity has passed. That was 2000, or 2005, or something. That end of that era was on the horizon even before WoW was released. The game has to change and accommodate a broader audience of people (who have grown up and have kids and jobs or whatever), or it will die.

Now, there is absolutely no way in which, if you have a group of 10 friends, you are impeded from enjoying WoW as a group activity. Not in the slightest. And the game will reward you faster and better if you play it that way.

[adorich]

Cata didn't "fail". To even say that is a fallacy, as WoW continues to enjoy a very strong player base and did throughout Cata and into MoP. You may not personally have enjoyed it, but it was still a commercial success no matter how you slice it. /endthread.

How can you define losing over 2 million subscribers a commercial success? Losing 2 million customers is the definition of "fail." Even Blizzard admits Cata didn't do as well as they'd hoped it would.

[Deleted]

Fair enough...but in Classic and TBC we had less, or about the amount of people raiding. So where was the need for a guild back then for 5-9 million non-raiders? The amount of people in raiding has been pretty stable. It has grown during WotLK and declined now again (talking normal and HM raiding) - so I am not sure where this claim of a non-existant community comes from.

Maybe it is easier to form 5 mans when you are in a guild, but my experience from TBC and Classic is, that due to the way tank and healing classes functioned (there was no dual specc) we still were looking outside the guild for members...sometimes for hours. It din't feel like a lot of "we all love and help each other" community back then...

I am in a guild on my Horde toons, all in one guild - and even on my Ally toons, I joined guilds (was invited) for the purely social aspect of chatting while questing. I don't even raid anymore, yet I don't exclude myself.[COLOR="red"]

well with LFD you do not have to search for a group anymore back in wrath often you did find a couple of people in your own guild or the whole group for a dungeon run.
And the same is happening with LFR you do not have to build a group and spend time building said group instead press a button and join LFR.

Well it is fine for you that you have joined guild and are using it as a chat room, I myself has also done that on some alt horde chars, but I didn't feel connected to those guilds or the people in those guilds. Unless you do something with the other people in your guild and for me that is primarily raiding then guilds are simply chatrooms in a single player game.

---------- Post added 2013-05-05 at 10:43 AM ----------

I agree here and will give another example (jup..anecdotal evidence):

We raided 25 current content in TBC. I had a lot of free time then and when we were in BT, 3 other of my toons were in Kara and I started decking them also out in BoEs from T4 and T5 from our guildbank, crafted stuff and eventually when IoQD hit in Valor gear. Eventually my healer could have stepped into BT - she had the necessary gear.

BUT: Not in my guild, not with friends was there a chance in hell to find a group to get her through T4 and T5 to attune her. WHERE was that fantastic community then? And I can even understand it. LV and TK remained painful even when you were already in BT.

Today with LFR it would have been a dozy. So, no matter how I look at it, the way the game was tuned in TBC, community or not - I STILL had issues finding groups. Today, that issue is gone for the price that I do very undertuned content.

But: There are sites like openraid etc, that let you join organized raids in normal and HC if you so chose to invest in this.

Sorry but as far as I know they removed the attunement quest for BT and hyjal during tbc I think it was when sunwell was released. I remember that we hat alts in our run because farming bt got a bit boring. And I know for a fact that I went into BC with my holy priest doing a lot of circle of healing and I hadn't done the attunement quest with that char.

---------- Post added 2013-05-05 at 10:45 AM ----------

No, Blizzard has made it increasingly POSSIBLE to enjoy WoW as a single-player game.

The era in which people would group together to socialize in an MMORPG while killing fantasy pixels is, well, the Golden Age of that activity has passed. That was 2000, or 2005, or something. That end of that era was on the horizon even before WoW was released. The game has to change and accommodate a broader audience of people (who have grown up and have kids and jobs or whatever), or it will die.

Now, there is absolutely no way in which, if you have a group of 10 friends, you are impeded from enjoying WoW as a group activity. Not in the slightest. And the game will reward you faster and better if you play it that way.

so a Massive MULTYPLAYER online roleplaying game is actually a single player game hmm ok. Oh well then I can only say that for me the game is moving in the wrong direction and that is that.
It is ok that you can do a lot of activities alone or as a single player but I just think that some endgame schould be something that players band together for to defeat. For me raids is an area that schould be a player organised activity and not something that you press a button to que for...
If I want singleplayer RPG I would go for baldurs gate 2

[Gimlix]

It didn't.

Dragon Soul lasted too long. Everything else was business as usual again.

Though, I do think Vasj'ir sucked because there is no depth perception in the water. Personally, I think Mists of Pandaria is as terrible as some people like to make Cataclysm sound.

Haha you haven't played MoP i see.

[Deleted]

It was a fail,nothing to add.

[Darth-Piekus]

One of the reasons Cataclysm failed was the story.

First of all Deathwing wasn't even felt unlike Arthas or other villains.Yes he created a small Cataclysm but nothing after that.
Second I didn't like how the Horde was presented in the whole story. They were presenting as a War Machine that has unlimited forces like the Zerg and could stomp on everyone either that was Alliance or a Neutral Kingdom or Faction without any reaction.
Third I expected more heroes to fight alongside us and not only Thrall who of course I admire a lot.
Finally the whole Zone Revamp. I was a complete waste of time in my opinion and it was only done because some Pro War Horde lovers without any knowledge of the Warcraft game prior WoW wanted more zones to quest which that wasn't the problem. The result was Lore was butchered in priority to game mechanics and a story that didn't make sense was presented.

I may sound harsh but a lot of my friends Alliance most and some Horde stopped playing for those reasons.

[Gimlix]

One of the reasons Cataclysm failed was the story.

First of all Deathwing wasn't even felt unlike Arthas or other villains.Yes he created a small Cataclysm but nothing after that.
Second I didn't like how the Horde was presented in the whole story. They were presenting as a War Machine that has unlimited forces like the Zerg and could stomp on everyone either that was Alliance or a Neutral Kingdom or Faction without any reaction.
Third I expected more heroes to fight alongside us and not only Thrall who of course I admire a lot.
Finally the whole Zone Revamp. I was a complete waste of time in my opinion and it was only done because some Pro War Horde lovers without any knowledge of the Warcraft game prior WoW wanted more zones to quest which that wasn't the problem. The result was Lore was butchered in priority to game mechanics and a story that didn't make sense was presented.

I may sound harsh but a lot of my friends Alliance most and some Horde stopped playing for those reasons.

Also, i think that one of main reasons that they seperated the zones to far from eachother and you kept using portals, and portals doesn't feel like WoW because everything is connected.

The part of a great world went away because you just used a portal everywhere.

[Destinas]

Sorry but as far as I know they removed the attunement quest for BT and hyjal during tbc I think it was when sunwell was released. I remember that we hat alts in our run because farming bt got a bit boring. And I know for a fact that I went into BC with my holy priest doing a lot of circle of healing and I hadn't done the attunement quest with that char.

They still had it until Cata. I got the attunements in Wrath, and was genuinely disappointed that all my hard work in collecting keys for an achievement had been for naught, since the achievement didn't become a Feat of Strength. In Wrath and all the expansions before, only one person had to have a key for everyone to get in. They removed the attunements shortly before transmogrification was established in the game.

[Deleted]

People forget the biggest thing of all though. You say think that cata was empty and didn't have too much going for it but then you choose not to include the entire world being updated. That's a lot of resources right there and ofc an expansion where they redo the entire world is going to have less in other places - butter can only be spread so much over bread.

If cataclysm didn't update the world everyone would still be whining about how outdated the world is. No-one is ever happy!

[Deleted]

So what's it gonna be? Apparently Cata destroyed social interaction and we don't need guilds.

It did for a large part, before 4.0 there were no guilds created on the sole purpose of having as many members as possible to make the cash flow as high as possible for the guild master while offering perks to leveling were no one says a word in /g, at all.

In wrath and earlier the only two reasons someone would join a guild would be to join a social community and/or raid with an organised group, the kind of guilds purely built upon the earlier of these two options are far from as many as they used to be.

[Blade and Soul]

I started playing WoW again when Cataclysm was released. I rolled a Goblin and leveled him to 85, then started leveling more characters.

Overall it was the expansion that brought me back to WoW, after having left towards the end of the Sunwell opening in BC.

I enjoyed it.

My most memorable early Cata moments were joining a Stonecore heroic and wondering if the people in my group had the composure to get through it. I enjoyed the difficulty, it made things seem more satisfactory.

With that said, there was too much emphasis on the rework of the "old world" 1-60 experience, especially considering how many players (myself included) leveled into Outlands territory very quickly. It was interesting to see how Azeroth had changed, but it passed by so quickly. I definitely agree that the world needed to be updated, but it would have been nice to include some areas built for people between 60 and 80.

[lunchbox2042]

My only problem with Cataclysm was everything after launch just seemed lazy. It had plenty of content to hold you over for a few months, but then when 4.1 came out, it just reeked of laziness. Unfortunately 4.2 and 4.3 weren't any better either.

[klaps_05]

You cant compare Cata to Wrath. The majority of people played through 2 Warcraft 3 campaigns and had a great image of arthas. if those games were focused on Deathwing this thread would be titled why did wrath fail.

Even for max level characters low level zones were interesting as there were many cool and funny quest chains in the old zones. so there was plenty of content. Did it feel a little mundane? yes prolly as arena season lasted for ages and pve content wasnt as much after the first tier.

Judging by "my friends left" or "my guild disbanded" or "my arena pals quit" isnt accurate as the game is played by 10 million players and you and your friends are a minuscule part of the whole public. Not to mention if you are a 1) high rated arena player or 2) hardcore pve player you represent even smaller portion of the population compared to all the RPers/Casual players.

Like others pointed out, its completely subjective and if you want to see if it did really fail you need statistics and a sample.

Most importantly - blizzard have learned their lesson with 4.1 - you will never see such a patch in the future - so far content patches always have couple new scenarios, tons of events zones like the one coming in 5.3, buckets of lore and new features coming out like heroic scenarios. Not to mention the "BIG GUN FEATURE" is not released yet for this expansion and it will surely fill up your time.

[Deleted]

They still had it until Cata. I got the attunements in Wrath, and was genuinely disappointed that all my hard work in collecting keys for an achievement had been for naught, since the achievement didn't become a Feat of Strength. In Wrath and all the expansions before, only one person had to have a key for everyone to get in. They removed the attunements shortly before transmogrification was established in the game.

No you are wrong.
I will now use an external source of information namely wowheads comment board for black temple. http://www.wowhead.com/zone=3959#comments

By Pyrot (544 – 4) on 2008/02/08 (Patch 2.3.3) Report
Attunement lifted in patch 2.4.
"Players will no longer require an attunement quest to enter the Black Temple.
Players who have completed the attunement quests for Black Temple and Hyjal will be granted the title of “Hand of A’dal”.
Last edited by Pyrot on 2008/02/09 (Patch 2.3.3)

and http://www.wowhead.com/patchnotes=2.4.0
Players will no longer require an attunement quest to enter Hyjal.
Players will no longer require an attunement quest to enter the Black Temple.
Players who have completed the attunement quests for Black Temple and Hyjal will be granted the title of "Hand of A'dal".

sure you could still do the quest but you didn't need to do it in order to get access to BT, which was what det complained about saying that nobody wanted to take his alt through t5 to do vashj and kael'thas so that he could get to BT. And he did say that his alt had done isle of quel'denas which was an 2.4 addition...

[Deleted]

It failed? oh good to know.

In my opinion it wasn't the best expansion ever, but it didn't "fail".

[ZenX]

Cataclysm lacked the accessible end-game content that are offered in WotLK and MoP, period.