Why bash Cata?

[ringpriest]

Cata was the worst expansion of them all!
Just like Wrath was the worst expansion of them all during Cata!
Just like BC was the worst expansion of them all during Wrath!
Just like Vanilla was terrible compared to BC!

Except that wasn't how it was seen. Vanilla and BC and Wrath were all seen pretty much equally up until Cata, with maybe Wrath seeming not quite as good as BC in a few ways. Cata was hated once the ZA patch came out, no one was complaining about Wrath - we were wishing for it back. And once MoP came out, while far from perfect or universally loved, it was far better than Cata - even most of the "Panda and Pokemon Haters Club" will agree with that. Now, a lot of people aren't liking what they've seen of WoD... your "pattern" is anything but.

[Barendon]

Hated in cata:
-80-85 leveling zones, all of them. The lore behind them was very nice, but their actual design, and progression was dull.
-Some heroic dungeons, such as grim batol ,halls of origination or lost city of tolvir. Did not enjoy one bit.
-PVE was exclusive for non casual players. Did not get a glimpse of BWD, BoT, Firelands till DS tier, and LFR was a giant crap at that time.
-PVE gear design was flat and uninteresting
-DS
-Long periods of time for every content patch.
-Ruined my image of Deathwing, one of my favourite villians.
-Tauren Paladin.
Loved:
-Revamped zones, enjoyed it so much! Couldn't enjoy leveling alts prior to the revamp. The game needed this change very badly.
- My paladin tanking was my first tanking experience , never had so much fun tanking (MoP ruined that part for me)
-Heroics were challenging and my favourite ones never got old for me.
-Heroic Achievements.
-Opening cinametic.
-Worgen starting zone.
-Garrosh calling sylvanas a bitch.

[Deleted]

Most people probably remember Cataclysm with distaste because of the fact that the last raid tier lasted for an inordinately long time, something close to 46 weeks if I remember correctly. I mean, it was an interesting raid, but it lost appeal quickly, and it just continued to grind on, and on.

4.3 lasted for 301 days, which is 43 weeks.

You think that was bad? Try 52 weeks of ICC.

Except that wasn't how it was seen. Vanilla and BC and Wrath were all seen pretty much equally up until Cata, with maybe Wrath seeming not quite as good as BC in a few ways. Cata was hated once the ZA patch came out, no one was complaining about Wrath - we were wishing for it back. And once MoP came out, while far from perfect or universally loved, it was far better than Cata - even most of the "Panda and Pokemon Haters Club" will agree with that. Now, a lot of people aren't liking what they've seen of WoD... your "pattern" is anything but.

Nobody was complaining about Wrath? Dear lord. Where do you think the term "Wrathbaby" came from? It was used to label the vocal minority of players who started in Wrath and were used to the easy faceroll content and thus weren't able to deal with the increase in difficulty of the new endgame content in Cata.
A lot of players were harping on Wrath of the Lich King for it being an incredibly easy expansion in terms of endgame content for most of it's duration, and were extremely happy with this return to harder content.

[Barendon]

4.3 lasted for 301 days, which is 43 weeks.

You think that was bad? Try 52 weeks of ICC.

TBH, I barely felt it. ICC was a decent raid.

[Deleted]

TBH, I barely felt it. ICC was a decent raid.

I disagree, due to points I've made earlier:
- Gated content
- Limited number of attempts (while great on paper, wasn't really that good in practice, best reserved for optional bosses)
- Most bosses were a bit dull and very easy, even on heroic difficulty (Lootship, Loot Queen, etc)
- Constant redo of the RP bits, even after wipes. (Alright, I have seen this bit the first week. I do not to see it while doing heroic mode arright?)

ICC was the first instance that I actually cancelled my sub, Dragon Soul was the second. Killed final boss, enough of this torture. But then again, different people, different opinions. From the perspective of a more casual player, like on my first few runs of the instance, it was a pretty good instance. Cool art design (Druid set was kinda shit tho, but that's besides the point), boss design was interesting in some places (Valithria, Putricide, Lich King, etc).

Some people bitch about green jesus Thrall felling Deathwing with his Lazorz. With Lich King, it was pretty much the same. Tirion gets frozen in an ice cube and sits there and then comes in with one fell swoop and does the job. Fantastic, we basically just held the main baddy off till Thrall charges up his kamehameha and till Tirion pisses himself to melt his little ice cube.

It's just the minor quirks that I've listed above that ruined the instance for me personally.

Edit: Now here is a good throwback bossfight with Sargeras. Tirion gets frozen en Thrall has to charge up his fancy golden coin and we dance till the sun goes down.

[Dasani]

I've heard this a lot. I don't mean to be a dick, but anyone that actually LIKED healing in Wrath really didn't like healing at all. It was nothing but an infinite mana spam fest that offered no significant challenge and required no real thought.

At least Cata healing forced you to prioritize, manage mana, and work at your actual output. [/FONT]

Changing nourish from less than a second cast to a 2.5 second cast and making it heal much, much, much, much less because they arbitrarily decided it should be the "cheap efficient" heal, then fucking up regrowth as well changing it's whole functionality, and so on. Matter of fact they revamped the functionality of all the druid heals just to make them homogenized with every other healer. You already had to prioritize what heals to cast and on who or people would end up dead. I see people defending that change saying it was good or whatever, but how many people killed heroic lich king when it was current? You think if healing was so mindless, skillless, and easy people would be able to just go in there and steamroll all the content right? Or hell did you ever do mimiron firefighter when THAT was current? I dont think so, because it wasn't just no thought, no challenge BS like you are saying.

I also find it hilarious that they made healing so grossly mana inefficient so healers had to really manage their mana carefully, then turned around and gave every DPS class that used mana basically infinite amounts of it. You generate mana as a DPS now so quickly you have to fuck up ROYAL to have your mana go down, and even then it'll just pop right back up because they all have mechanics to stay full mana all the time now, removing any skill involved in prioritizing and maintaining their mana pools.

Since I started healing again in MOP, I have seen no increase in challenge or difficulty what so ever from what it used to be. The main difference now is I cast regrowth instead of nourish because they made nourish slow and useless while regrowth is OP as hell when glyphed. Who cares that it removes spell identity from all the healing classes, at least they all have comparable heals now right? Gimmie a break. The only "challenge" that exists for healing now is the stupidity they did to the dispel system where it has a cooldown when you dispel something or just wastes mana if you don't. Another ridiculous change. But hey, the "dispel bitches" who had to do all the dispelling cried about it so once again, changing mechanics because people can't deal with each other. So now they have cooldowns forcing multiple healers to use dispels.

The nerf to healing in cata was exactly like the nerf to vengeance that has gone on during MOP. In wrath a good healer could snipe heals from the others very easily and efficiently and the other healers could get butthurt about low numbers. It's just like DPS pissing and moaning now about tank DPS until vengeance got nerfed through the floor and more nerfs coming in WoD. It had nothing to do with challenge, that's just bullshit excuses they feed gullible people who don't know any better.

It's just like all the MOP bosses, every one of them includes a tank swap mechanic for NO OTHER REASON than to force you to have two tanks at all times. They really aren't threatening and have no relation to any other aspect of the fight, they are just there to force two tanks on you. The ONLY boss in the entire raid without this archaic mechanic is Protectors, every single other boss has a tank swap mechanic just to force two tanks to have equal face time on the boss. Although you can and should ignore them with high enough quality people when pushing content hard like Thok for example. But the point is, its another "casual complaint" from people. Having one tank fights that one of your tanks has to go dps for etc etc, its the sole reason that shit exists. To force a second tank on you at all times so you don't have one feeling like a second class citizen.

It's all about making the casuals feel better. They all want to feel special and useful even if they aren't.

[Barendon]

I disagree, due to points I've made earlier:
- Gated content
- Limited number of attempts (while great on paper, wasn't really that good in practice, best reserved for optional bosses)
- Most bosses were a bit dull and very easy, even on heroic difficulty (Lootship, Loot Queen, etc)
- Constant redo of the RP bits, even after wipes. (Alright, I have seen this bit the first week. I do not to see it while doing heroic mode arright?)

ICC was the first instance that I actually cancelled my sub, Dragon Soul was the second. Killed final boss, enough of this torture. But then again, different people, different opinions. From the perspective of a more casual player, like on my first few runs of the instance, it was a pretty good instance. Cool art design (Druid set was kinda shit tho, but that's besides the point), boss design was interesting in some places (Valithria, Putricide, Lich King, etc).
It's just the minor quirks that I've listed above that ruined the instance for me personally.

It is my opinion you know.

[championknight]

You mean you LIKED the old system of traveling halfway around the world for a quest, or trying to figure out where the hell you were supposed to go next, or finding out that a whole massive zone had like 2 quests in it? That didn't even come in hubs?

Some of us love it not for the travel, but for the immersion that the world is connected instead of the self contained crap that is now. That leaves you to decide exploration instead of always asking mummy to hold your hand everywhere.

TBC improved Vanilla questing, Wrath polished it into a very streamlined system where you go to a hub, get 3 quests and complete them side by side, then return and get pointed to the next hub. With the occasional big quest that caps off that area. It worked a lot better from both a gameplay and storytelling perspective.
In Cata and MoP they pretty much followed in that mold because that's about the best the WoW questing model can be. It's gotten kind of repetitive now but that's because we've done like 9,000 quests or something. And questing as a concept is starting to show its age.

Cata decided only the game should decide how you should quest (want to do redridge mountains? DO the whole rambo quest chain from step A to Z or get out noob). Wrath had the best balance yet they learnt nothing from it and they onlt started to undo this a bit with MoP

Trust me you do not want to go back to the way quests were laid out in Vanilla. Or rather, the way they weren't.

I would take my Linken quest line, EPL Tirion Fording and pre-Cata Legend of Stalvan, over almost any other quest in Cata (1-60 and 80-85) and beyond, everytime

[Seefer]

Changing nourish from less than a second cast to a 2.5 second cast and making it heal much, much, much, much less because they arbitrarily decided it should be the "cheap efficient" heal, then fucking up regrowth as well changing it's whole functionality, and so on. Matter of fact they revamped the functionality of all the druid heals just to make them homogenized with every other healer. You already had to prioritize what heals to cast and on who or people would end up dead. I see people defending that change saying it was good or whatever, but how many people killed heroic lich king when it was current? You think if healing was so mindless, skillless, and easy people would be able to just go in there and steamroll all the content right? Or hell did you ever do mimiron firefighter when THAT was current? I dont think so, because it wasn't just no thought, no challenge BS like you are saying.

I also find it hilarious that they made healing so grossly mana inefficient so healers had to really manage their mana carefully, then turned around and gave every DPS class that used mana basically infinite amounts of it. You generate mana as a DPS now so quickly you have to fuck up ROYAL to have your mana go down, and even then it'll just pop right back up because they all have mechanics to stay full mana all the time now, removing any skill involved in prioritizing and maintaining their mana pools.

Since I started healing again in MOP, I have seen no increase in challenge or difficulty what so ever from what it used to be. The main difference now is I cast regrowth instead of nourish because they made nourish slow and useless while regrowth is OP as hell when glyphed. Who cares that it removes spell identity from all the healing classes, at least they all have comparable heals now right? Gimmie a break. The only "challenge" that exists for healing now is the stupidity they did to the dispel system where it has a cooldown when you dispel something or just wastes mana if you don't. Another ridiculous change. But hey, the "dispel bitches" who had to do all the dispelling cried about it so once again, changing mechanics because people can't deal with each other. So now they have cooldowns forcing multiple healers to use dispels.

The nerf to healing in cata was exactly like the nerf to vengeance that has gone on during MOP. In wrath a good healer could snipe heals from the others very easily and efficiently and the other healers could get butthurt about low numbers. It's just like DPS pissing and moaning now about tank DPS until vengeance got nerfed through the floor and more nerfs coming in WoD. It had nothing to do with challenge, that's just bullshit excuses they feed gullible people who don't know any better.

It's just like all the MOP bosses, every one of them includes a tank swap mechanic for NO OTHER REASON than to force you to have two tanks at all times. They really aren't threatening and have no relation to any other aspect of the fight, they are just there to force two tanks on you. The ONLY boss in the entire raid without this archaic mechanic is Protectors, every single other boss has a tank swap mechanic just to force two tanks to have equal face time on the boss. Although you can and should ignore them with high enough quality people when pushing content hard like Thok for example. But the point is, its another "casual complaint" from people. Having one tank fights that one of your tanks has to go dps for etc etc, its the sole reason that shit exists. To force a second tank on you at all times so you don't have one feeling like a second class citizen.

It's all about making the casuals feel better. They all want to feel special and useful even if they aren't.

.........wow very very very well said, you just made my Christmas card list

[Deleted]

It is my opinion you know.

Exactly, and that was mine. Opinions are like turds. Everyone has one, and wants to get it out. But an opinion with reasons to back it up doesn't really mean a thing.

I am sharing my turd with you, just like you are sharing your turd with me.

[Barendon]

Exactly, and that was mine. Opinions are like turds. Everyone has one, and wants to get it out. But an opinion with reasons to back it up doesn't really mean a thing.

I am sharing my turd with you, just like you are sharing your turd with me.

Turdfabulous!

[Dormie]

Cata wasn't bad as far as the art and theme and zone/stories go. It was more of the system they used with dungeons/gear and such that made it bad for me.

Highlights of Cata for me are Uldum and Hyjal zones, Firelands raid, a handfull of 5 mans(I like the Egyptian ones), and camels. That's about it.

[docterfreeze]

The story was poor and so was the pve content.

[Deleted]

The finale was such bullshit. DS was a catastrophe of epic proportions to say the least.

Morchok: one of the easiest and most forgettable encounters in the entire expansion.
Zon'ozz: A game of pong which accidentally became hard due to the fact that people got caught off guard when Pong suddenly made a reappearance in WoW.
Yor'Sahj: The only boss that was genuinely challenging and that's because apparently 90% of WoW's playerbase are colorblind.
Ultraxion: Was mostly hard in LFR because half the raid somehow ended up in Theramore shortly before the battle begun.
Blackhorn: Not much to say. It was a Tauren on a flying boat.
Spine: A soulsearching experience where players had to reach a place of self-control to be able to stop DPSing on a dime while standing absolutely still most of the fight while trying their best not to cry and cuss at their teammates.
Madness: And the grand finale? -*drum roll*- A trash fight! Yey! \o/

We killed Deathwing? How exactly? We pretty much did a full medical check-up on him. He should be healthier than ever.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

But there was some good things about Cata as well. The leveling zones were sort of amazing and had plenty of fun questing, Harrison Jones is still one of my favorite quest chains. It was mildly enjoyable to make alts due to questing and the ease of gearing up and availability of raids. Heroic dungeons remained sort of relevant throughout the whole expansion which was neat and I really liked the recycling of ZA/ZG. Overall it was a fun filler expansion for casuals. Also the PVP was pretty well balanced and enjoyable most of the time.

[GennGreymane]

Cata did not have a lot going for it. When your ending 5 mans are more involved than your ending raid, there is a problem.

When an entire raid tier was scrapped, there is a problem

When they decide to cut out another raid and repurpose some of it into a 5 man, there is a problem. (War of the Ancients raid cut into a 5 man)

When an entire zone becomes a movie reference, there is a problem. (Uldum had watchers, Titans, real lore that could have been shown, they decided to be Indiana Jones.......Whats worse is there was no closure to Uldum and no real expanded story to the Titans)

When you can tell they put a lot more effort into the 1-60 experience for one faction over another, there is a problem (other than a few exceptions, questing on the Horde side is more fluid and fun than on ally side, I did both. It also used more of the newer mechanics)

When you try to make 5 mans like TBC/Vanilla while promoting a tool like LFG, there is a problem.

Cata could have been more, but you could tell they cut corners where they could.

[Lucarocks92]

Blizz promised more content than ever before and said it would be coming out much faster than previous expansions. It had the least amount of content of any expansion and also was very slow in releasing the content. Blizz got very lazy and the expansion overall was a borefest with terrible designs and no real content to keep people playing.

[Vandchi]

The cata 5 mans and tier 11 raids were fantastic. As a normal raider, I found that although I had to grind valor in 5 mans, the difficulty was at least somewhat similar to a raid, at least while everyone was undergeared. Then they added ZG/ZA in 4.1 and made them give double freaking valor...essentially requiring you to queue for them only and ignore the rest of the 5 mans. They did made healing non-faceroll, which I loved. In WotLK I would just spam flash heal all day and in BC it was CoH (holy priest). 4.1 also made a lot of raiding guilds break up since they kind of teased us with firelands, only to pull the chair out from under us and delay it to 4.2, leading to the mother of all summer lulls.

[Deleted]

Last patch was screwed by DS in pve and with pve items playing the most important roll in pvp, so for all of the playerbase the last 1 year went to crap.
At least for me the start was awesome, pvp was kinda ok, but the 80-85 was kinda fun and the first raids were really fun. Didnt really like the lost of Barrenns

[Tripax]

Cata was nothing but feces.

Some people in the world are really into that stuff, but it's still FECES.

[Deleted]

Let's see, from my casual point of view:
4.0 - The new world to explore. The old world to re-discover. New races to play. Dungeons that actually filled me with a sense of accomplishment after doing 1 a day(I was tanking in LFD, so I had to lead 4 strangers, and we still managed). Epics regained their status! (considering Wotlk epic status, that was something) Dailies with every faction that made me go out into the world. Interesting raids for those that were raiding. Lots upon lots upon lots of system changes that are present until this day and were veeery needed in the game. Examples: scaling spells, removal of weapon training, cleaning some useless spells, revamping of some classes.
4.1 - Right after the best patch so I had high expectations. Boy, did it not deliver. I after watching videos of new dungeons once, was able to NOT fail in them, however you can't carry whole team with 1 person. Difficulty went up, which I welcomed, but so did the length of dungeons too. In result, lots of people where quiting mid-instance and they would take forever to complete. Now for the worst part. Apart from 2 new, long and unforgiving for baddies dungeons and a handful of quests you had NOTHING to do the whole time. You cleared dailies in 4.0, you got the gear you wanted from 4.0 dungeons and now you were stuck with 2 dungeons for next months without any sign of hope. Lots of people left then, including some of my friends.
4.2 - Good patch for raiders. They also added a new type of daily hub, that is changing the more dailies you have done. The idea was neat, however in reality it meant you were going to bother with 1-2 characters, because the amount of dailies piled up and was just too annoying to deal with. Again, as a casual, you were stuck with same 2 dungeons you were doing for past months and dailies that you had to re-do like 10 times before you could move on to new stuff. Quite draining.
4.3 - Nice patch, but came way too late. Every friend of mine had by this time quit WoW and so did I for a while. It brought very useful features like: LFR and transmogrification, which I can't imagine the game now without. It also brought 3 new dungeons (good) that were giving better gear than before (good) but also were a ton easier than the 2 dungeons you were stuck with for past months(bad). I myself see this as a kind of degradation, since I didn't feel good about getting stronger gear with less effort than before. It also made the 4.1 dungeons feel completely useless, as you could get into new 4.3 ones without having to set a foot in 4.1 ones. Which meant that the last months you spent doing them were all... nothing. The LFR allowed me and countless other people see the content and actually participate in some quasi-raiding. Sadly, it also exposed us to the worst our community had to offer. Just like LFD but on a bigger scale. The effects of it still linger to this day.

Summary: Cata had some good system changes that were very much needed in a dated game like WoW. However it failed to add meaningful things to do for people that weren't raiding. It felt like "bare-bones" expansion, as if they released it half-way done. Also, it started a sub loss snowball effect. Friends leave the game, then friends of the friends leave the game and so on. The game is supposed to be played with the others, not alone.