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  1. #221
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    There are more reasons why Cataclysm was the worst expansion so far and very damaging for the game than the generic "Dragon Soul" answer. Cataclysm tried to do the right thing by the (by a huge majority, casual) playerbase, but the features implemented were poorly thought out.

    1. The endboss was someone that nobody gave a flying fuck about, if they even heard of him before 4.3. (Just like Garrosh tbh)
    1a. Green jesus saves the world, not us.
    1b. We faced that random pointless dragon nobody cared about, for a year.
    2. The experiment to make 10 man equal to 25 man in terms of ilvl was a serious mistake, made people believe they were better players than they actually were and, of course, caused massive irreparable damage to more 25 man guilds than anyone will ever realise.
    2a. This mistake was not corrected until 6.0 but Blizzard still didn't have the fortitude to just make Mythic 25 man.
    3. The series of nerfs to raids and dungeons in 4.2 onwards was unnecessary and Blizzard should have been firmer with the playerbase and encourage them to play better and be more community minded. Possibly they should have made LFD/LFR choose players from single servers until the queue hit 30 mins or so.
    4. The introduction of LFR was basically the final nail in the coffin where server community is concerned.
    5. Vanilla zones being revamped and introducing flying to azeroth was nice, but obviously cost to much time and money that could not be spent on meaningful content.
    5a. Dis-contiguous Cataclysm levelling zones.
    6. Azeroth only revamped for flying until you get so far north, then its loading screen and no more flying...
    7. The total fuckup with the lockouts and raid sizes wasn't the only damage done to guilds. All guilds suffered in some way from the ridiculous guild perk and levelling system. The point of a guild is to play with like minded people and advance your character through working towards a common goal, gearing up and having fun. Together. With other people. In a civilised manner.
    7a. Guilds are now the source of 10% increased run speed and mass ressurection. Fucking mass summon, jesus h christ.
    7b. Good fucking luck to you if you were a small guild and therefore doomed to be sub lvl 25 for longer than the guild next door.
    8. They followed the expansion with Pandas that nobody gave a fuck about and in fact were so tenuous to the lore, that even if you played the WC series, you'd be bloody lucky to know anything about Chen. Also, 1 quest in WoW does not justify an entire expansion about an April fools joke.

    There will be more reasons why Cataclysm was totally shit, but I'm getting to angry thinking about it so I'll leave it at that.

  2. #222
    I liked T11, but it's too bad they rushed ToTFW and released it before it was finished. I think they should've waited until 4.2 with more bosses, bigger raid, bosses actually having a voice, and their heroic modes not being terrible.

    But then we got two lousy troll heroics. ZA hardly being any different to ZA 10 man. A good comparison would be Naxx 40m -> Naxx 2.0. No one really cared for them. You can't release 2 dungeons and call it a content patch.

    That was followed by a 7 boss raid. That might have been tolerable if we didn't get bosses like Shannox and Rhyolith. And oh god that trash. Too much.

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think those troll heroic and FL were supposed to be out on release? With 12 months of ICC and such minimal content in Cata, I really want to know what they were doing for 18 months.

    Once they realized sub numbers were really starting to take a hit, they blanket nerfed FL by 15-25% midway through the tier, even though that had nothing to do with why people were quitting. It was that most players only had dailies and terribad LFD groups to look forward to.

    Lastly, we got a raid worse than ToC, and as a final raid no less. Everything about it was so bad. It makes we wonder how a company like Blizzard could consider that acceptable. Story had a lot of plot holes, no new environments, boring bosses clearly designed in a way to make LFR a success (though Hagara was good), "hand on the dial" monthly nerfs to invalidate the accomplishments by guilds, and all of that dragged on for 10 months.

    Oh yeah and Abyssal Maw got scrapped, the raid I was looking forward to the most.

    Cata still makes me kind of sad, I don't think most people realized how much potential it had and how much of that Blizzard threw away.

  3. #223
    Mechagnome BEYR's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ballack View Post
    I'd say it was quite bad in comparison to any other expansion. Maybe PVP was fine (didn't play much PVP in Cata). Other than that, if even that, PvE content was god awful. Tier 11 had very boring raid instances except for TotFW, Firelands was too small (the quest island was decent I guess), and Dragon Soul was a pure disgrace, no new environments, fly into the fucking corruption pits and kill blobs etc..... It didn't really feel like a new area, as it was so spread out. The remade questing from 1-60 was kind of cool, but they removed group quests and took away any challenge whatsoever from that. 4.1 was lousy patch. The hard heroics were awesome though, allthough using the LFD with it was a pain at times.

    Imo TBC was a 9/10, WotLK a 7/10, MoP 6/10, while Cataclysm was like 3/10. Of course just my personal opinion but I've tried to be as objective as possible, some nostalgia might be represented still though
    The only thing PvP had going for it (as a warrior) was throwdown. Getting to any clothie was pretty much insta-death for them. But we were stun-locked most of the time.
    You either die a Varian, or live long enough to see yourself become a Thrall...

  4. #224
    The problem with Cataclysm was the lack of a continent. The world felt disconnected and they added reused dungeons instead of a raid as a major patch.

    The loot was messed up too people just skipped content and now we have no progression with LFR and all.

  5. #225
    Honestly, Cataclysm was my favorite expansion. Didn't particularly like Dragon Soul, but I loved the dungeons, t11 and 12 were great, and Deepholm/Vashj'ir are probably my favorite zones in the game.
    Quote Originally Posted by Bootybear View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by Valancer View Post
    I play as a holy priest and when I ran hfc lfr I noticed after the first boss my heal spell wasn't casting. So I looked at it and it shows that it has a 34.4 min cast time
    Do you have the class trinket? If so, the cast time is correct. /s

  6. #226
    1. I did not hate the troll-dungeons as much as most people seemed to do. In fact, I enjoyed them a lot and I didn't really care that I'd done them before. Like other awesome instances, they are awesome even to this day. But of course, I can understand that most people were sick of them at that time.

    2. Firelands however was a huge disappointment, and I seriously don't understand why so many people seem to have fond memories of it. Sure, there were some cool fights such as Alysrazor and Ragnaros, but I found this raid to be incredibly boring.

    3. As for Dragon Soul, I'm not even gonna bother. The black sheep of WoW raiding, and rightfully so. What a disaster of a raid.

    Overall, I'd say that Cataclysm was a pretty mediocre expansion compared to the other ones, and not just in terms of raiding. Looking at the lackluster amount of content we got during the expansions' patch cycle, I've always felt like Blizzard simply gave up on Cataclysm about halfway in and moved their focus to MoP instead.
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  7. #227
    The Undying Slowpoke is a Gamer's Avatar
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    The nostalgia is kicking in, by this time next year we'll be comparing Cataclysm to BC and Wrath as "the pinnacle of WoW, unlike MoP and WoD."
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  8. #228
    Quote Originally Posted by Kangodo View Post
    How is that nostalgia? It's realism.
    Nostalgia would be if this thread was about "the good old days" in Cataclysm, but it isn't. It's that Cataclysm wasn't as bad as people are pretending it to be.
    Because that is fact, and not subjective. Am I right?
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  9. #229
    Mechagnome Solonar's Avatar
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    Personally, I've enjoyed most of Cataclysm but even I have a few negatives of the whole expansion.

    1) Deathwing. He was portrayed as a cunning and manipulative individual in the Warcraft novels, which made him awesome. However in Cataclysm he's just a "RAWR ME SMASH" kind of guy, which sucked out a lot of the good story he had. It's like he just flipped a switch and decided to zerg the world.

    2) Thrall. I loved Thrall as a character, but Cataclysm really broke him for as far as I'm concerned. He was just overdone. I can't quite explain it well but he was way too powerful for the amount of time he's actually spent to fully embrace Shamanism rather than his warrior-like approach. As you can see him struggle in Nagrand, even in the books this happens for a bit - but on many other cases it's like he's been doing it for years and has no problems whatsoever to do his thing.

    3) Several contradictions in WoW compared to what you read in the novels. For example, Kalecgos' ascension to Aspect is a whole lot different in both the game and the book. The Eye of Eternity is destroyed, when we killed Malygos the former Spellweaver shattered the platform, which is still acknowledged in Thrall: Twilight of the Aspects. In 4.3 we casually fight Hagara on that same platform.

    4) 4.3, I think this patch ranks amongst some of the worst patches in WoW's history atleast when it comes to content. Something about End Time made me not like it, can't really place my finger on it though. I loved the Well of Eternity dungeon, but felt like it would've been -much- nicer if it was a raid, telling a more detailed story of the War of the Ancients. Would've also increased the boss count for raiding if it were one. Hour of Twilight was...kinda weird, similar to how I feel of End Time. And then the true horror, Dragon Soul. While fancy new models aren't a must for me, it felt a bit bland that all of it was re-used except Deathwing's Madness model. Not only that, the difficulty of the raid was beyond boring and it was a faceroll festivity to me, and from a storytelling pov, it made Deathwing look really bad, and I mean like a cartoon villain that ends up failing miserably. I couldn't even take him serious, it was that horrible. LFR...meh, didn't care - it was useful, just a shitty loot system back then.
    Last edited by Solonar; 2013-11-30 at 02:06 AM.

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  10. #230
    I really really enjoyed Cata questing actually...

    Gilneas and the Goblin starting experience were both awesome and the whole new Undead story (from Tirisfal to Silverpine to Hillsbrad and then the Plaguelands) were to me some of the awesomest quests in the game.
    I also really liked some of the stuff in Vashj'ir and Twilight Highlands. I thought Uldum was all right, but Deepholme was pretty boring though.

    But then I like questing and get bored really fast with running the same dungeons over and over again.. Haven't gotten around to real raiding since TBC (and only Karazhan there... and one ill-fated attempt on Gruul).

    - - - Updated - - -

    I really really enjoyed Cata questing actually...

    Gilneas and the Goblin starting experience were both awesome and the whole new Undead story (from Tirisfal to Silverpine to Hillsbrad and then the Plaguelands) were to me some of the awesomest quests in the game.
    I also really liked some of the stuff in Vashj'ir and Twilight Highlands. I thought Uldum was all right, but Deepholme was pretty boring though.

    But then I like questing and get bored really fast with running the same dungeons over and over again.. Haven't gotten around to real raiding since TBC (and only Karazhan there... and one ill-fated attempt on Gruul).


    I also agree with Number Eighteen above me... I think one real weakness of Blizzard's storytelling is that the 'Dragonball Z effect' is really starting to show. They have to one-up themselves with every new story and it's leading to some pretty unbelievable and frankly rather lame stuff.
    Oh and I played Dragon Soul a handful of times on LFR and it was sorta cool the first time but after that it was a real snoozefest :P (I think I literally fell asleep once.. but I get that with raiding anyway xD)

  11. #231
    Mechagnome
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    I have loved all the expansions (including Cataclysm) and I definitely think that the hate on Cataclysm is waayyyy overblown.


    Quote Originally Posted by Kritisch View Post
    You crazy? wraith was the best expansion with tbc. I wonder did you even play wraith at his time, we played icc for a year (with 3-4 chars a week a 2 resets (10/25)) and still had higher subs than in cata and mop together. Not to forget 4 raidtiers plus an Extra Boss halion. Thats content you never saw in an expansion.
    Actually, subscriptions reached their peak just after Cataclysm launched.

  12. #232
    Quote Originally Posted by Khiyone View Post
    I have loved all the expansions (including Cataclysm) and I definitely think that the hate on Cataclysm is waayyyy overblown.




    Actually, subscriptions reached their peak just after Cataclysm launched.
    IMO it was mostly just DS that sucked. Firelands was short and that hurt it too, but at least IMO it was still an interesting raid. DS...Deathwing in particular was a huge letdown.

  13. #233
    2 words: soul and dragon (not necessarily in that order)

  14. #234
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    cataclysm was the expansion where the game started to decline, I'll leave it to you to figure out why

  15. #235
    I am Murloc!
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    Still as bad as I remember. Just not enough raiding content.

    Absolutely loved Firelands and the Molten Front area, my problems lies with a very short/rehashed Dragonsoul and a short Firelands.

    Launch was fantastic despite feeling very disconnected going everywhere. The raiding content aside from being tuned awfully was plentiful, dungeons were difficult and the revamp was fun to level through.

    For me however expansions have to have smooth sailing throughout, and Cataclysm was probably the worst example of smooth from launch to end.

    TBC - Launch (awesome), end (awesome). Not going to include a middle because they threw everything at us at once and had massive gaps. Personally the wrong way to do it, but it was still good.

    WoTLK - Launch (awful), middle (awesome), near end (awful), ending (pretty good).

    Cataclysm - Launch (awesome), middle (good), ending (awful)

    MoP - Launch (pretty good), middle (awesome), ending (pretty good)

    I'm reluctant to even list the ending as pretty good for MoP because I think it's personally awesome. As a raid I like it more than ToT, but I liked the story progression and the Isle of Thunder far more. Timeless Isle will ultimately probably have a purpose in the grand scheme of things, but it is seemingly random.

    Most of my criteria for what I consider good is based on dungeon/raid content. WoTLK zones, story and overall theme for launch were really nice. It had a lot of dungeons too. My problem and what made WoTLK one of the worst launches for me is that the difficulty and sense of accomplishment was non-existent. I got an instance that I personally did nearly the entirety of as rehashed watered down content, and basically had nothing challenging to do aside from arena for 6 months.

    So while it may appear based on my above analysis that I think WoTLK is the worst, it really isn't. Cataclysm still holds number one for worst expansion for me. MoP/TBC are very close as far as best goes, and most of my love for TBC stems from a time when the majority of my friends were still playing and the content was still challenging (compared to say WoTLK launch).

    I do tire of the Asian themes in MoP though. It was a really nice breath of fresh air for the first several months, but it's lasting appeal just isn't as fun as past expansions. Obviously it's still dark and deep story wise (which I love), I am more or less alluding to the continent itself.
    Last edited by Tojara; 2013-11-30 at 06:14 AM.

  16. #236
    Quote Originally Posted by Kangodo View Post
    How is that nostalgia? It's realism.
    Nostalgia would be if this thread was about "the good old days" in Cataclysm, but it isn't. It's that Cataclysm wasn't as bad as people are pretending it to be.
    It isn't that Cata wasn't as bad as people remember its that in many ways it was worse and a lot worse at that. It is the expansion that cut the amount of things we had to do in half by combining 10 man and 25 man. It is the expansion that gave us 2 tiers of a combined bosses (a pathetic number) and of those 15 only one is fondly remembered and many of them (hi spine and riolyth) are remembered as terrible. So there was next to nothing to do outside of raiding and the raiding was bad so thus the expansion was bad its really that simple.

  17. #237
    Cats was terrible, but MOP is just as terrible, perhaps making Cata look ok to some people.

  18. #238
    VANILLA>BC>WOTLK>CATA>MOP

    see a pattern?

  19. #239
    Quote Originally Posted by sheffield View Post
    VANILLA>BC>WOTLK>CATA>MOP

    see a pattern?
    Yes, you have a serious case of nostalgia

  20. #240
    Saying Cata is bad is incredibly subjective. And I say Cata is just as subjectively bad as I ever remember it.

    I had a job where I simply could not maintain the playtimes of a hardcore guild. So I had to find guilds with less raid days and looser attendance requirements. This resulted in me being in mostly social guilds. And they were bad. I actually found one guild where they could progress but their behavior was unacceptable. So because Blizzard had chose to raise the difficulty level of raiding I was basically locked out the first two teirs because I couldn't find a guild that was good enough or worked for me. Firelands was more of the same, and there was no fun to be had running the overnerfed previous teir that anyone could faceroll through. I ended up unsubbing a week into Firelands patch.

    There was a massive lack of end game content. There was a single max level zone and Twilight highlands was quite boring, it literally had nothing but the dragon maw and wildhammer quests which had zero variety. Redoing the old world was a massive waste of development time.

    Cata introduced the hyper linear zone questlines we've suffered through since.

    I could rant on and on, like how bad Uldum is, but the fact of the matter is I hated cata. With a passion. Blizzard put nothing in the game for me, and unless they make another disaster Cata will always be the worst expansion on my list when I rank them.

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