And that is why Cata failed. It went back to the day when Blizzard put in tons of man hours into doing a raid that less than 3% of the population even saw let alone finished. They wanted to save a few hard core raiders and in turn lost millions of subscriptions. More than any other xpac. Blizzard stuck its head up Paragons backside and found out it stunk.
But seriously people have to remember Cata was half a failed expansion before they even brought it out. It was supposed to have a ton of new content around the path of the titans and they failed and pulled it. They then put some junk together because they had to get SOMETHING out. They then found out they blew it and had to do something. So MOP. Another thrown together half an expansion.
Last edited by Oldermark; 2013-05-07 at 02:40 AM.
MoP has made me realize how lackluster Cata was. Hell, I even consider MoP to be better than WOTLK. Storywise they're even leveled, WOTLK being somewhat ahead, but in content and overall feel I like MoP the best.
Cataclysm as a whole...not sure I'd say it failed. But Dragon Soul WAS a failure and it left a sour taste in peoples mouths for the end of the expansion.
I think that this is the most accurate description of what went "wrong" with Cataclysm, at least compared to previous (and the current) expansion. It's not that Cata was bad, it just failed to really "shake things up". The old world changes were nice, and necessary, but they end once you finish the the 1-60 stretch. Now that it's been done, however, the groundwork for something really special has been lain, and, going forward, we can look ahead to all the awesomeness on the horizon, which (in my opinion) Mists has been steadily delivering on.
Minor point of order: he was only in the expansion to Warcraft II. Where we unceremoniously killed him.
(But pssst they retconned it so he survived. And was a lot more powerful than he was in the game. A LOT.)
---------- Post added 2013-05-07 at 03:23 AM ----------
This is fairly accurate, although don't forget the talent tree redesign. Since eclipsed by MoP's though... Blizzard played it a bit safe with the talent trees in Cata because the reforms they needed to make (MoP) were going to be controversial and they wanted to give old style talent trees one last chance. I can see how that and many other features could be seen as playing it too safe and not enough change, but if something's not broken then why fix it? I think that's how Blizzard felt when they made Cata. Wrath had done such a good job of streamlining the game that continuing it made sense. It was only partly successful.
Maybe if they'd had LFR and/or transmog by launch or FL it would've been different. Although LFR continues to be controversial with some people (despite it being a huge bonus to people who previously couldn't raid) so maybe not.
I'm beginning to see a trend with posts today. This like every other post of a similar theme comes down to the hard-cores, and those who want to be hardcore claiming Cata was amazing. The other spectrum says hell no, and you have those in the middle. I guess its irony that 2-3 years ago id be the one complaining it was to easy, once you grow up and video games and the accolades of others of a similar mindset no longer mean anything you become like those I used to loathe, the ones who didn't want to commit an immense amount of time for a reward that was replaced in 6-9 months.
Ditto. Guild RP kept me playing Cata (and honestly, not even that was enough to keep me going for months at a time), LFR/HoT 5-mans got me back into endgame PvE... but MoP made me fall in love with the game again after Cata basically said 'Sorry, you can go sit in the 5-man Normal Mode corner.' for most of an expansion's lifetime.
Last edited by Thage; 2013-05-07 at 04:08 AM.
Be seeing you guys on Bloodsail Buccaneers NA!
Dragon Soul was a terrible, terrible final raid zone. The Deathwing fight was also tremendously dull as a fight. Firelands though I believe was amazing and felt way more like a final raid zone than DS. Apart from DS I don't think cata was that bad. Even BoT and BwD were nicely done raids imo.
I think it was the least good expansion.
Yeah, it was really only DS that was terrible. The final fight is awesome in concept, with the setting, Deathwing's deformed body rising from the maelstrom, the aspects alongside us, etc, but the fight was just boring mechanic wise.
As for his appearance in wc 2, they retconned Deathwing into a major lore character all the way back in Warcraft's first novel, Day of the Dragon. Also Knaak's first contribution to the series.
I still think people are exaggerating how bad DS was. Wasn't great and a few fights were like "why am I killing an orc shaman/mage when I'm here to fight Deathwing?". But it doesn't even make the short list for my least favourite raids. It was just mediocre when end of expansion raids have been expected to be amazing since ICC and Sunwell.
Well that was in 2001, not long before Warcraft 3 was released IIRC. Long time after Warcraft 2.
Whoa whoa, call off the airstrike. You're saying that Catacylsm was lackluster for other reasons BESIDES that Heroics and Raids demanded a brain?Cataclysm had... guild leveling? Did that really change the way you play? It was more like something passive that happened in the background. Archaeology? I guess archaeology counts. It was only in the final content patch of Cataclysm that we really got some awesome new features (LFR and transmogrification) that shook things up and gave the game a breath of fresh air. It's also worth noting that this was the only expansion where none of the BGs (aside from Tol Barad, perhaps) introduced a new game mode; they were just different arrangements of WSG and AB.
You're crazy! Don't you know this is MMO CHAMPS? LFR HEROES RUN THIS TOWN BRO!
I think the heroics where a giant failure and really hurt the game. There is more one shot mechanics in Cata heroics than there is in Mop LFR. I wanted a bigger challenge than wotlk heroics. For me those where way to boring but they went way off with Cata heroics. There are several fights where a single bad player can wipe a group. That is just bad design for 5 mans.
MoP heroics are perfect imo. Slightly easier than the nerfed heroics of TBC and that is what I wanted.
Every ball thrown can't be a homerun. Idk why people expect a 100% win.... It's delusional, totally unrealistic and we all know it.
"If you want to control people, if you want to feed them a pack of lies and dominate them, keep them ignorant. For me, literacy means freedom." - LaVar Burton.
LFD wasn't a Cata invention. It came out in Wrath.