What went wrong in Cata?

[RowdyAlz]

I'm a fan of Warcraft. I like the games, and I enjoyed all of the expansions, but it seems that not many people really liked Cata. What could Blizzard have done to make Cata better?
What did people like about it?

[Celarent]

After an expansion of accessible raid content, unique and painstaking environments, and a storyline built up for more than five years: it followed with a difficulty shock, unpolished and unfinished environments, and an uninspiring plot. MMOs weren't the next best thing anymore, and a lot of people took it as their cue to move on.

[Fluttershy]

Raids are literally all recycled, they suck, they're very short and you also needed to do 500 quests to enter firelands.

[Daetur]

After an expansion of accessible raid content, unique and painstaking environments, and a storyline built up for more than five years: it followed with a difficulty shock, unpolished and unfinished environments, and an uninspiring plot. MMOs weren't the next best thing anymore, and a lot of people took it as their cue to move on.

This pretty much sums it up, I think.

We had just come from Wrath of the Lich King, the expansion that had the more lore build up of them all, had the most hype, made raids and 5-man Heroics accessible to most of the playerbase for the first time, and had the most interconnected and story driven zones this side of Mists of Pandaria.

We went to Cataclysm, with a villain who had very little build up and very little contact with the players, scattered, unconnected zones, one which was essentially a reenactment of the Indiana Jones franchise and little else, and an extreme jump in difficulty in dungeon (and even raid) content. Add to this the removal of massive swaths of old, familiar, nostalgic content and a lack of content at cap (because so much development time went into redoing 1-60), and people were bored, frustrated, and alienated.

It also felt like it tried to do "too much." There wasn't really an interconnecting theme- even though "they were all working together!," we had elementals and the elemental lords, Ragnaros, naga, Old God minions, the Twilight Cultists... and a scrapped Abyssal maw storyline that, since it went nowhere, completely dead-ended the lore of an entire zone and dungeon.

[Deleted]

Levelling experience: The revamping of the "old" world, while egregiously done, took too much attention from the developers, therefore there were 5 (rather uninspired) zones that didn't really feel like "an expansion", when compared to the continents or the whole world of the other expansions. Having access to flying mounts from the get go "shrinked" the zones too, except Vash'ir which was a nightmare.

Dungeons/early endgame content: "bringing the difficulty back" did not meet well with the LFG tool, strategy requires communication, many player used to run heroics only with guildies for this reason. The number of reputations to bring to exalted was pretty high, forcing the player more and more to run heroics.

Archeology was a mess, seriously, a real pain to level, little reward for the effort.

Raid/Endgame: the first tier of raiding was very good, Fireland was an ok raid even if monothematic, DS was horrible -the bosses were anticlimatic (an orc and a tauren? Really?) and built around the 4p bonus set of the tanks, the location in the cavern of times was simply stupid.

In general the expansion was lacking novelties, many ideas were scrapped (Abissal Maw anyone) and a lot of content was recycled from Vanilla (Zul'Gurub-Zul'Aman, Ragnaros)

What was good: the emphasis given to the guilds was great, changing them from a chat to something that improves the character, the overarching story of the expansion had its epic moments (rallying the Ancients, the legendary quests), but as all it was too ambitious and fell flat of its intentions.

[Dnusha]

I actually liked Cata quite a bit. It wasn't the best expansion but I've enjoyed Raiding (except for DS) and 5 ppl a lot, I've got to say revamped world was my favourite feature. I leveled a lot of alts. I agree it could be better though.

[Osmeric]

Too many classes were too radically redesigned. Healers, in particular, were hard hit.

One thing to remember from Wrath is that despite it being the "easy" expansion, most people didn't finish it (in the sense of downing the last boss on normal mode). So guilds coming into Cataclysm were already wounded, and when confronted with a step up in difficulty, many just collapsed. The departure of in-game friends fed on itself.

I have a suspicion that they also tuned up the performance requirements to play the game well, and this led some people with older computers to have a subtly inferior game experience. MoP may have also had this problem (note the chronic raid lag issues.)

[Dangg]

The first content was excellent in my opinion, the patches that followed were terrible and didn't offer much.

[Shadee]

The lack of content. They rehashed 2 old raids as content for a major patch. Then gave us a half raid in 4.2.

[crakerjack]

Removal of rating requirement was ridiculous... The only people who opposed it were the bottom feeding noobs... You know what changed? Absolutely fucking nothing... those bad players might have the same gear, but they're still dead... gear is a factor, but skill has always been a WAY bigger factor... besides, if you had the best gear (2200+), how would you be playing against bad players at 1300 mmr? Oh that's right, you won't. If you suck at PvP and your excuse for not winning is "gear" and you're below 1800 rating, chances are you're just really really bad and have created this ego that creates excuses to defend your pretend skill. Honestly... there's more, but this reason alone was enough for me to want to quit. It's the same in PvE... if you don't kill a boss, you don't get loot... blizzard doesn't say "oh you got within 15%? Well darn, guess we'll give you the loot anyways for getting close." if blizzard did that kind of crap, everyone would be annoyed since you're not really getting rewarded for your efforts. So how is it any different in PvP when you work hard to get 2200 rating and some bad 1300 player is getting the same gear as you?? Doesn't feel all that good since you don't have much to show. Atleast a heroic raider can show off his high ilvl loot compared to some who strictly does LFR... but aside from colors and obvious skill, it doesn't show. The only point in this game where gear gave a slight advantage, is in BG's... but face the facts... if someone is in 2200 gear and you're not... it wouldn't matter if you had the same gear, because chances are you're just not as good as that person... considering they have 2200 and you don't.

This whole issue eats at me, because if they just kept it the same, I probably would have put up w/ WoW's changes over the time and would probably still be playing, but this chance was the final blow... I was already in an "eh" state near the end of ICC, so the direction Cata took was enough for me to drive the final nail into the coffin. I understand the thought process of someone who wanted to remove rating requirement... but those people still hate PvP because they still die to those good players... the only thing that changed for us better players, was that we can't 3v1 or 2v1 as easily, since gear is the same... but as far as 1v1 goes, things really haven't changed.

[Synstir]

One thing that was GOOD about Cata is that Blizzard learned a very valuable lesson.
They just can't do anything, cause the playerbase will just stop paying them money for it.
Cata was the first xpac where wow began to loose subs ... and that didn't stop untill now.

[Deleted]

Blizzard tried to make the game more challenging, specifically the 5 man heroics. Players, who didn't even know they had CC and interrupts and had to use their brain got absolutely demolished and cried a lot - many left in the process. Then when Blizzard made heroics piss easy again the other people left who actually liked the challenge (some of them, like Totalbiscuit left with a big wave of negativity and many people followed).

The zones felt disjointed and people felt bored sitting in Orgrimmar as there was nothing else to do. Raiding content wasn't the best. While the game wasn't bad, it was ok (and in my person opinion the leveling experience was MUCH MUCH better than MoP - I gladly level through Cataclysm zones) it became hip to hate on the game. And we all know that people on the internet are a bunch of sheep, so once hating was the fashion - everyone hated. Cataclysm drowned in tears and hate, while not being a terrible expansion by any means.

[Grubjuice]

on thing i can say for Cata, farming HoT was a great way to gear up alts

[Daffan]

Too many classes were too radically redesigned. Healers, in particular, were hard hit.

One thing to remember from Wrath is that despite it being the "easy" expansion, most people didn't finish it (in the sense of downing the last boss on normal mode). So guilds coming into Cataclysm were already wounded, and when confronted with a step up in difficulty, many just collapsed. The departure of in-game friends fed on itself.

I have a suspicion that they also tuned up the performance requirements to play the game well, and this led some people with older computers to have a subtly inferior game experience. MoP may have also had this problem (note the chronic raid lag issues.)

BAHAHAHAHAHAAH, Yeah those heroics man. Damn , i bet at the time they were thinking "Damn i wish i could just aoe everything down while watching tv" and now it's "wow dungeons are sooo boring AND useless! who would of thought"

[huth]

One thing that was GOOD about Cata is that Blizzard learned a very valuable lesson.
They just can't do anything, cause the playerbase will just stop paying them money for it.
Cata was the first xpac where wow began to loose subs ... and that didn't stop untill now.

No, they've always lost subs. It was the first expansion where they didn't get more subs than they lost.


As to what happened: They massively underestimated the effort required to redo the old world. Everything else was essentially a result of that.

[Krommm]

The overall lore direction and feel felt really uninspired in general. Dungeons were too hard for a typical pug and took too long. The final raid was a complete disappointment, despite the previous tiers being really solid overall.

[Monteverdi]

A lot of things went wrong in Cataclsym, and I don't think Blizzard can necessarily be blamed for most of them (though they can certainly be blamed if they repeat the mistakes.)

• The Old World Revamp made questing 1-60 easier to be sure, but it had two negative effects. First, and primarily, it meant that most of the expansions development time was spent on content that mains from pre-Cata would never see. This made the expansion feel hollow for these players, as there wasn't as much endgame content as they'd hoped. Second, it created a storyline disconnect by 'updating' the 1-60 story. Prior to Cata, as the levels progressed through the zones, so did the timeline, and it was assumed that the quests in WotLK were taking players at a later time than the quests in duskwood. Now, this isn't the case - and it's a problem that still exists.
• Blizzard reacted to players criticism of how 'easy' WotLK raiding was by making things harder across the board on normal mode. Normal mode raids and heroic 5-mans had fairly high barriers of entry compared to previous expansions - which casued player burnout.
• The Development cycle was horridly long. It took 8 months from the release of Cataclsym (which launched with something like 12 raid bosses) for more raid content to be released - and the only content between launch and firelands was ZA/ZG 5-mans, which were very difficult for casual players yet boring and rehashed to experienced players.
• The last tier of raiding - Dragon Soul - actually introduced some very popular game features (LFR and Transmogrification). However, the raid itself was very short yet was the only endgame content for a very long time (9+ months). Players grew bored and quickly quit. Not to mention that the addition of LFR was very unpopular with hardcore players, while very popular with casual players, leading to a much larger rift between the two player groups (which continues to worsen. This isn't Blizzard's fault - it's a community issue).

[Gospels]

I loved cata. I could cap my main very quickly on valor and upgrades for the week and then spend time on other stuff. I rerolled 3 different alts in cata, geared them all to current content. Got my "the insane" cheeve (before DMF came to town) as well as worked on alot of other obscure cheeves, had time to do old metas, mog runs, and even pvp.

Now I spend my entire week on my main, capping valor and running various crap to keep up on gear that never drops, rep grinds, legendary catch up etc..I have done zero pvp, cheeves, mog runs in mop as all my time is spent on the new and "improved" method of taking forever to do shit, forget about any alts or doing anything significant with them. Pretty lame expansion imo.

[Deleted]

well dunno but I had no time for raiding etc.

but I rly enjoyed new zones and their lore even if it wasnt in "brand new land" but all over Azeroth and Elemental Plane. Too bad that Vashj'ir lore was cut but maybe its not lost and its still waiting to be developed in Azshara expansion.
Horde-Alliance conflict was rly moved forward(especially in Eastern Kingdoms) so it was cool.
and Cata also did a lot of important things to increase life of WoW like flying in Azeroth, redoing old content, test of underwater zone, redoing game mechanics, improving game engine etc. etc. which was sometimes annoying for players but needed.

but most of whine is because of raid content which wasnt the coolest.

[Daetur]

I loved cata. I could cap my main very quickly on valor and upgrades for the week and then spend time on other stuff. I rerolled 3 different alts in cata, geared them all to current content. Got my "the insane" cheeve (before DMF came to town) as well as worked on alot of other obscure cheeves, had time to do old metas, mog runs, and even pvp.

Now I spend my entire week on my main, capping valor and running various crap to keep up on gear that never drops, rep grinds, legendary catch up etc..I have done zero pvp, cheeves, mog runs in mop as all my time is spent on the new and "improved" method of taking forever to do shit, forget about any alts or doing anything significant with them. Pretty lame expansion imo.

It's funny, I actually have the opposite response.

In Cata, the reason I leveled alts and did achieves was because I felt like I needed to find something to do, and I was bored on my main. In Mists, I've felt like I've had a lot more to do on my hunter, and I've really enjoyed that. The only time it's really started to feel like I want to get back to playing alts is now, since I'm pretty much done with the Timeless Isle.