Cataclysm, not as bad as we remember?

[ThrashMetalFtw]

It was still better than WotLK.

[Deleted]

the only thing i enjoyed about cata was the 5 mans, everything else was terrible.

although i have to say, i do enjoy running firelands at 90

[slime]

That is one thing Cata had over MoP that I forgot about actually, the 5mans were far more enjoyable.

My favorite dungeon boss to demonstrate the "difficulty" of cata dungeons was like the second boss or something of the fiery caverns one, where people had to move into lazers until there buff was in the 80s or so and then step out to avoid creating a huge add. Such a simple mechanic to execute, and yet it caused endless wipes at the start of the expansion due to the lowest common denominator player-type that is the majority of wow players.

[Trickname]

Screw nostalgia on this one, Firelands and dragsoul were so dull and then there is the complete lack of endgame fun bar these short raids. Some of the zones were nice (loved Vashir however its spelt) shame about the lack of fluidity between zone transitions is all.

[Caelia]

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.

Not everyone feel the same way, for me WotLK was the most boring expansion of all, however I can't judge on all content because I quit WotLK long before all of it was released since the expansion had nothing to attract me, could be because I never cared much about Arthas to begin with.

[Deleted]

I totally loved the 5 man heroics early on, and the first two raid tiers were pretty nifty. Wasn't too keen on the story or most everything else.

[Hainiryuun]

*shrug* I personally don't think it was bad, but to each their own. I didn't start playing WOW until a little bit after Cata came out, mostly starting because it was something I could do at 3AM, with working the night shift. I learned to heal in those "hard" 5 man dungeons and had a blast. I remember joining my first pug ever to raid Firelands and enjoyed the hell out of it. Being a Holy Paladin, I loved Dragon Soul. It was fun just queueing for LFR to do Ultraxion and see just how much healing I could do. DS was also the first time I joined a raiding guild and I really enjoyed clearing my first tier on heroic.

[Kelimbror]

Nope...it's just as terrible as I remember. The only good thing to come from it was the revamped zones, which I can put away my nostalgia and admit they are much better now. Otherwise:

1) Disconnected from the world via World of Portalcraft.

2) Raids were subpar on the whole, capped off by one of the worst raids we've ever seen and the worst final boss fights. Dragon Soul was just the epitome of how to ruin a raid.

3) Nothing to do outside of leveling alts and grinding dungeons, then LFR for a terrible raid. And this is the really, really big one. For people playing so long, Cata provided almost no 'new' content.

My time with WoW almost didn't survive how awful Cata was and I will never think it was good. If MoP didn't completely turn around everything I saw wrong with the game I would've been gone.

[liam78]

Cataclysm was very bad. But MOP exceeded Cata with its pandas, china, pokemon, Farmville, and jumping rats. Cata was a bad WoW expansion, MOP was childish and silly and not Warcraft. I enjoyed leveling, quests, 5-mans and first tier of cata. In MOP, I enjoyed only saving my $15/month when I unsubbed.

[Drewzee]

Cataclysm wasn't the very best expansion in my opinion, but it honestly wasn't bad. I actually enjoyed it, and found the raids to be challenging and fun. That said, I was a little on the fence about the whole flying mounts thing, and the effect it would have on questing and raiding, but all in all, it was decent expansion. I'm not sure why everyone loves to hate on it so much. Maybe their trolling? Maybe their over cynical? Maybe their little kids?

[Eats Compost]

I found it thoroughly awful. The content was delivered slowly for such small amounts, the 5-mans got old INCREDIBLY quickly, the Firelands daily zone holds the game's standing achievement for "biggest snoozefest" and the raids were sorely lacking in content compared to the WoW norm. 4.0 was okay, but it still suffered from the daily model having worn thin and a general lack of things to do other than dailies and raids. Oh, and Tol Barad was awful. Can't forget that.

Honestly, looking back, the only good part was the revamped zones, because they're here for the long haul and were a practical improvement. It's just a shame that it came at the expense of the max level content being awful.

[Mukki]

That's the wonderful thing about opinions: they aren't facts. I liked Cataclysm more than Mists in almost every way.

Hey that's cool man, sometimes I prefer ripping off my fingernails to getting a massage. It's my opinion.

[Zeddicious]

Firelands was awesome, and heroic Rag was awesome.

[Deleted]

Deathwing sucks as a villian.
The raids after T11 sucked (ok FL was ok for a throw away raid, but not a proper teir).
The instances after T11 sucked

The story sucked
The zones sucked and were far too linear

The T11 instances and Raids were actually pretty good. And to be fair so were the troll hcs (though they were for too long the only vp hcs) but overall the expansion was just piss poor.
MoP has not been much better, and in fact started worse. but while Mop started bad, it got marginally better, Cata started OK and then nosedived into a steaming pile of crap.

[Obtuse]

T-11 and 12 were excellent, some of the most enjoyable fights came from those two tiers. The old world redo while generally frowned upon has made old world levelling enjoyable once again. Vash'jir is probably the best zone the design team has ever come up with. The introduction of LFR while hated is the foundation for what they have been able to accomplish in mists. In fact, a lot of underlying systems (t-mog being one of them) were rolled out and tuned up over the course of cata and we are only now beginning to see the fruits of their labour.

Dragon Soul and the 4.3 dungeons (aside from the Warmaster fight) were appalling and can't hold a candle to anything else released in Cata. Deathwing failed to captivate as the final villain and the spread out zones made for an unimmersive environment.

Over all though you could take the cata content out of the game and few would miss it and even less would even realize it was gone. Not as bad as is remembered but not any better then you remember either.

[Kerath]

I actually liked the first tier of Cata quite a bit. I liked the return to more difficult heroic dungeons and liked being able to explore two different raids - and I liked the boss fights in those raids. Some fun and engaging encounters. I also enjoyed leveling up to 85, the high levels zones were well done, I thought, if a bit too linear for my liking (Deepholm is one of my favourite zones). Things went steadily down hill from there, unfortunately. Redoing ZG and ZA into 5 mans was not a good move in my opinion - maybe that's connected to my nostalgia for those places when I raided them as current content, so biased opinion is probably biased. Firelands did not grab me. I know a lot of people liked it but the environment gave me molten core flashbacks.
I think Dragon Soul is the worse end of expansion raid - and second only to ToC in the race for 'worst raid ever', for me. I was very disappointed by the re-used environments, the fact that we just portalled from random placed to random place instead of exploring and conquering an enemy stronghold, it just felt terribly uninspired. I enjoyed the Spine fight but then Madness was just.... what? We're fighting Deathwing's... tentacles? And then we had that for months on end. *Shudder*

Edit: Oh and transmog. I can't completely hate the expansion that brought us transmog

[brutallord]

cata: I was doing dungeons, raids, arena, bgs
mop: I am doing raids, arena, bgs

cata wins

[BEYR]

It was pretty bad. Not just because of the poor choices in content and patch times, but they completely abandoned the idea of a cohesive story. Scattered, unconnected zones and marginally connected villains with no driving force other than general "doom." It was actually pretty close to vanilla in the sense that each zone and story arc had nothing to do with each other. The difference being that vanilla had much better story arcs.

[Ballack]

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

[Deleted]

Cata was not that bad in my opinion, at least the initial content was pretty good. The Level 1-60 revamp was necessary but with the downside of less endgame content.
I also liked the Firelands patch.
But 4.3 Patch: I think the only good thing were the 3 Dungeons and i guess transmog. The Dragonsoul raid was just bad (too few bosses for an end-of-expansion raid, horrible endboss, faceroll nerfs for months,...).