Cataclysm, not as bad as we remember?

[StrayFox]

Its where Raid Finder was introduced, it when questing started becoming a snooze fest, and worst of all, DRAGON SOUL.

Also, the 8 month period of no content... uggh.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

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.

I disagree. Cata was as bad as we all said it was. It started off too hard, ended too easy. Then the devs started a circular firing squad to explain the cratering sub numbers.

Claiming "Well it wasn't really that bad compared to MoP and WoD" is forgetting what went wrong in Cata. Soon enough we'll totally forget what was bad in Cata and hoist it back up into the hall of "best expansion ever."

[Velerios]

Cataclysm started good; the problem was that every level and patch it got worse. The overhaul of most zones was good (with some exeptions), and Vashj'ir was one of the best zones ever, hyjal was also very good (except an phasing-horror for farmers), but then it got downward. Deepholm was good to quest, but not an eyecandy. Everything was simply black with some exceptions. Ulduar is beautiful, but the quests are a horror. Twilight Highlands did feel a little bit unfinished. The ending there was pretty rushed, at least on alliance-side.
And let's forget about Tol'barad; no i didn't mispelled it: i really want to forget about tol'barad. It was bad, very bad, VERY VERY BAD! The Pve-Zone were only kill/gather-quests. The only escort-quest was removed because it was so bugged that they needed to remove it with an hotfix. The PvP-Zone was good in the idea because you gained an reward when you won the zone for your faction. But the PvP-Zone was compared to Wintergrasp so bad, so very bad, let's simply forget bout it.

And it was simply too small. All zones are too small for an expansion. But this weren't the problems. The problems was that after this it got worse: 2 Raids that were introduced were simply removed. Abyssal Maw (Part of the elemental raids; wind throne, fire firelands, earth deathwing) was scrapped. War of the Ancients was even worse: It wasn't only scrapped no, it was reduced to an 5 man dungeon; even worse than getting scrapped; because if something get scrapped it has a chance to come back as a raid in the next expansion; so it doesn't even had this chance. The instance was not bad, but it would be so much better if it was a raid, SO MUCH BETTER.

Endtime and Hour of the Twilight was also not so bad, especially endtime was a good dungeon. But Hour of the Twilight: The first two bosses were good, but then Benedictus: Yes he was the Twilight Father: BUT WE NEVER KNEW WHAT HAPPENED INGAME. Because Blizzard had such an brilliant idea: When people want lore, they should buy our books; lore ingame? LOL. The Story behind him was so big and good; but instead of making us experience it ingame we should read a book: NO THANKS. And the last raid: It wasn't very inuitive, especially for the last raid. Recycled content must not be bad for an raid. but the problem was that this was the last raid. And the last raid cannot be something that we saw hundreds of time in the last expansion. The only interresting fight was Spine; but then Madness was the worst fight that blizzard ever introduced.

[Deleted]

The only good things i remember about Cataclysm is that lots of my friends still played back then and generally WoW seemed much more "healthier".
This was mainly because WoW was at its peak in Wotlk and only lost the players slowly in Cata, but in the end it led to the dead servers of MoP.

[Grizlus90]

I liked cata for the most part, came back in halfway through firelands or so. LFR really caused problems in my guild though with set pieces. I loved the instances that were released with Dragon Soul and sad that they didn't do the same with SoO.

[Larynx]

Tier 11 and Tier 12 were fantastic. The only issue was how little content and how infrequent the content was, and Dragon Soul. The actual quality of the raids until DS was fantastic, but there was just NOTHING to do.

I think they cut something like THREE raids from Cataclysm. We were originally supposed to have the Abyssal Maw, which was completely removed, the War of the Ancients which was turned into a shitty lore-eradicating 5m heroic, and Grim Batol which was turned into a nice looking 5m. There was so much that expansion could have been, but it was all cut.

[Draenox]

T11 was good, Firelands was also good until they nerfed all the bosses while Ragnaros still remained a brickwall on heroic difficulty (yet it still stands out as my favorite encounter of the expansion). The troll dungeons were challenging at first but became old very fast due to both of them being recycled content, Zul'aman in a much higher degree than Zul'gurub though.

Dragon Soul was what ruined it for me, heroic progression was fun the first 2-3 months/until you hit spine and madness. Those encounters were really poor and didn't do Deathwing the justice he deserved from a lore standpoint. Then the nerfs came along with the tier being out for twice as long as it had content for - it just really adds up in bad memories in the long run.

[Ovacor]

Nope, sorry no nostalgia here. Cataclysm fucking sucked! I'm fairly comfortable in saying that Dragon Soul was perhaps the biggest disappointment World of Warcraft has ever produced.

[BenBos]

I had 2 problems with CATA:

1. The leveling was beautifully changed in quests with great phasing, BUT the experience was complete out of synch due to ridiculous EXP gains through all mechanics (dungeons, quests, gathering professions, etc...)

This lead to a complete out of whack leveling system where NO one could even complete the quests without bordering on insanity by ease of play. Of course you could use (as veteran players) the technique of shutting down EXP in PVE, but when players themselves have to "invent" things to make it work that is simply bad game design...

Also: at the same time they changed the quest "accepting" to only 2 levels above your own level. Before CATA that was 5 to 6 levels above yours.

That was even MORE frustrating. As I liked to level with a challenge: I Always sought the hardest content 5 - 6 levels above my avatars (rogues were perfect for that), and it was great fun.

In CATA that was no longer possible as you only saw the quests 2 levels above your current level. Boring ...

2. The second huge mistake was to make new zones spread out over all of Azeroth. The expansion lacked consistency AND the dreadful portals were used everywhere. Add the flying everywhere, even in brand new zones and the expansion was doomed in both leveling content as in world design.

I think Raids/ Dungeons were quite good, it was simply the world concept and leveling that were wrongly executed.

[Rockmanzero]

What they tried was make it go back to the good old days without realizing a lot of casuals entered the game during WotLK which caused all the whining on forums that dungeons were too hard thanks to simply using a brain for once.

In which turn the devs tuned down dungeons to a laughing thing which kept on for the whole durage of Cataclysm pretty much.

They made portals to all the new zones which meant, no flying but just portal and almost there which made it boring to make an effort for things.

Outside of doing raids and dungeons there was practically nothing that was enjoyable to do at max level (pvp'ers could pvp but don't really know how that all went)

The things they did wrong was, transition from WotLK to Cata was big big big upwards in using the brain which should just have been a step time by time but they didn't do this good so eventually they undertuned everything and kept it today.

Patches didn't add a lot and they already said a lot of times there really was no reason to go outside of the capitals.

Oh and Dragon Soul that is all I have to say about Cata.

[Williee]

T11 and T12 was pretty awesome, especially the Ragnaros fight. But T13 lacked a lot of stuff, imo the only fight that was really interesting was Warmaster Gunship fight minus all the buggy fire and such. Deathwing fight split into 2 boss fight was pretty lackluster overall due to the repeated mechanics especially Deathwing himself. 4 platforms repeated but minus one buff each time. Coming from Ragnaros fight which had pretty complicated boss mechanics and a lot of things happening, it was dissapointing. I think because of this, people might remember the negative aspect of the whole expansion.

[Aleksej89]

I don't think Cata was bad - but it was worse than any other WoW expansion.

My main issue with Cata was the cancelled Abyssal Maw major content patch (including a raid).

Secondary issue would be the lackluster explanation of certain events, like why did Al'Akir join up with Ragnaros who slew his "son/prince"?

[lokinrond713]

No. Cata, was bad, bad writing from messiah Thr-Go'el, Malfurion making his big come back to immediately do nothing, Neptulon story dropping off the map, killing an elemental lord w/ virtualy no build up, Uldum being half pop culture references and no plot. Painfully linear questing, Everyone talking up Garrosh such as in the twilight highlands intro, Vash being painfully long w/ painfully linear questing being extremely prominent, the Neptulon story amounting to nothing, anti climax after anti climax. Theres more but at this point you agree or disagree.

[Peso]

95% of the time in Cataclysm I was sitting in SW waiting for ques. 2% of the time I wandered off to do something. 3% of the time I raided.

[Zaqwert]

Cata was every bit as terrible as its reputation, if not worse.

[Deleted]

1. Deathwing, which had more story prior to WoW then Illidan, which appeared more in the outdoor areas then Illidan (which appeared in a quest alone at the end of the Netherwing chain), was more disliked the Illidan. You know why? It's not because he had less depth, it's because he had NO depth at all! He was the most 1-dimensional character I have ever seen and was nothing like the Deathwing you saw in books and stories. His personality was treated so badly he just seemed like a regular "rawr, dragon, burn all" character. Deathwing was a pure failure of a villan.

2. Yes, and thus the world was made smaller. Which is bad. So... we agree on this?

3. Which made it feel like you don't need to go out in the world, and since you don't need to go out in the world and all you do is queue for stuff, you run out of stuff to queue, which, again, makes it for a bad design decision, which, again, makes Cataclysm bad.

4. It's not that the world was remade, it's that the experience that was put in place as new was extremely linear and the players of one faction felt wronged story-wise. Also, there were a bunch of bad stereotypes and pop-refferences. While in previous expansions pop-refferences existed, there were usually about a quest, a character, maybe some sign in the world... not entire zones! Redridge, over half of Uldum, the whole entry for Alliance in Twilight Highlands and the dwarf wedding, those were just bad to an extreme. But yes, very slow content rate.

5. Yes, agreed. The Firelands questing area was nice though.

I would like to add some things too:
6. Story wise, one faction's players got the shaft. Really, the worgen story was left hanging, you had to play the other side, the Nordrassil story was left hanging for Thrall's wedding, the Alliance gets to Twilight Highlands in a plane and sees some walls and half damaged buildings while Horde gets in a fleet, sees tents and builds a giant fortress, lots of losses for the player while playing Alliance and removing of the original feeling of the Horde trying to become more honorable and less murderous for the people playing Horde. Thrall was everywhere, enough said with this. Bad pop-refferences everywhere to an extreme.

7. Bad PR from Blizzard, they first stated that they want a thing that way, but after enough people whined they immediately changed it and said they wanted the other way. They also imposed some not so popular ideas, the whole capital thing was one, but also stuff like LFR in its early incarnations and the whole "yea, this expansion will last 1 year" which ended with the expansion lasting 2 and having 6 months gaps between tiny raids.

[3stats]

I liked the dungeons and leveling zones and even BoT. DS and FL were not real raids though. It was also a bad idea to reuse Rag, just shows lack of imagination and creativity.

[Deleted]

I'm a cata baby, and I loved cataclysm.

[Santoryu]

First 6 months of Cataclysm were great but then Blizzard caved in again.

[Deleted]

I never disliked Cataclysm to begin with. It wasn't the best I've ever seen, granted, but I never thought it was bad.