Why people hate Cataclysm - a thought.

[Yalingo]

Levelling was linear and stale. Though some of the zones were aesthetically nice.
Hard dungeons were fine for me, but pissed off the casual crowd.
T11 was fun for me, semi hardcore raiding. Horrible for casual crowd.
T12 was garbage except Ragnaros.
T13 was literally the single worst content patch in the history of MMOs and the most horrible end to an expansion ever that lasted for around a year....

[Thorngrove]

Reasons I didn't like cata:

1: It was rushed. I can go down the list of where it was rushed, but for the most part, my biggest complaints stem from this. never have I wanted to actually commit violence on a dev, until Fargo.
2: The overall Blahness of the Alliance side... anything in Cata. Yes, I'm one of those bitter people.
3: The art/tier/stuff wasn't engaging. There's normally at least ONE tier I could look at and go "Okay, I can wear this without transmogging it." Not so much for Cata.
4: Vashijir. I don't even hate the quest lines that much, but good lord.. Vahijir dragged. And it all started looking the same after a while. one of those "I liked the quests, but I will NEVER COME HERE AGAIN."
5. The length of time dragon soul raid was forced on us, hurt an otherwise neat and interesting raid. It proved the "you'll even get tired of steak if you eat it every day."
6. Thrall's "Neutrality"
7. Malfurian's ACTUAL neutrality.
8. Did I mention the horde favoritism? This was where it started. You could shrug off parts of the Wrath storyline, because it was more balanced. But Cata was the first time actual *game content* for alliance got cut for "time" while nothing was cut from horde versions. Twilight Highlands and Worgen starting areas being the biggest, and most glaring offenders.
9. Deathwing going out like a rampaging slavering monster rather then a sneaky, brilliant bastard he should have been.
10. All of the homages. Again, it was thicker and far more annoying alliance side. Rambo, Rambo 2, ect. Not to mention the whole Goblin Hitler thing.

[Paula Deen]

Except with cata, the very few ppl even daring to mention it was good gets quickly drowned out by the "majority" stating that it was horrid. Sure, it MAY have had a few good points to it, but overall, it was the worst of the lot, and hopefully will remain the worst of the lot.

This pretty much sums up my thoughts.

What I liked about Cataclysm
1. Difficult Heroics/Raids
2. Mixed Ways to Complete Reputations
3. Firelands and the Hub that came with it (Which spawned Isle of Thunder, and eventually Timeless Isle)
4. Deathwing at Launch
5. Quest Pacing and the Zones (This includes the Revamped Leveling Experience and Vashjr.)

What I disliked about Cataclysm
1. Nerfing everything based on a Vocal Minority
2. 4.1 Rehashes
3. Exclusion of the Abyssal Maw Raid in 4.2
4. 4.3 CoT Raid being remade as Dungeons
5. Design of Dragon Soul being based around LFR
6. LFR being released well before it was meant to be released (It should have been released for WoD with the Flex Technology)
7. Deathwing's Story Line by the end of 4.3
8. Obvious Abandonment by the Developers by Blizzcon
9. General Content Pacing Overall (Patch Cycles)
10. Annual Pass

[Alvito]

Vash'ir was horrible. DS wouldn't have been as bad if it didn't last so long or had more too it. The two Deathwing fights were not much fun to do over and over, Ultraxion was pretty horrible also. Besides that the rest was pretty solid imo, the only other thing I would have changed was the Fireland dailies.

[Dawnshadow]

There was also the problem where there was no casual endgame. There were three normal 5-mans. The 5 man heroics were overtuned for anything but a guild group and some mechanics were impractical with a random group comp or with even moderate latency. (Here, interrupt this HALF SECOND cast timer on a 200ms latency. Here, have a group with no CC and heal through the damage in blue gear! Here, have a boss that uses curses that must be dispelled even though no one in this group can dispel curses!) Healers were nerfed down a little too far on top of that, and as a result one mediocre player-- not even a bad player, just one that wasn't good enough-- could make a run impossible. The result of this was that everyone got horrendously grouchy and kicked on the drop of a pin, and pugging anything became absolutely miserable-- one mistake and you were requeuing. And the introduction of Zul'again made this worse-- I had swapped to a tank. I hate speed runs. Every ZA group wanted to attempt the bear run, no matter what their actual skill or gear levels.

That said, I think there is a place for that level of difficulty, because it is fun if your group is good and friendly (aside from a handful of absolutely stupid mechanics, like the latency-sensitive jump with the correct timing or die bit in VP or the boss where you had to either dispel curses or interrupt half second cast timers-- I would have been fine with this if the DoT was magical so all healers could clear it.) I would welcome mythic 5-mans. But random heroics with no real alternatives aren't the place for it, though.

[Vaelorian]

Cataclysm was very good pre-5man heroic nerfs.
Cataclysm was very good from a raid perspective. Sure we did not get the Abyssal Maw but I loved Tier 11 content so much. I loved "going back" to an MC like instance for a tier when Firelands came.

Where Cataclysm failed imo is that they nerfed the 5 mans. I don't care some people could not complete or wanted to complete it due to difficulty. I loved it. Thats whats important to me. From a company's perspective they nerfed it too much. They should have nerfed it just a little.
They never should have such long periods between expansions when DS came out. It was too long, far too long.
And I did not like LFR at all. Stupid loot system, stupid people in LFR. Then again during Cata I was still a heroic raider, so my perspective was different

[obeygiant559]

For those that say DS was just out to long before the release of the next expansion just don't look at the numbers. it was 8months between 2.4 to Wrath release, 1 year from 3.3- cata release, and 8 months from 4.3 to Mop release. So the long time we had DS with multiple modes of running was just as long as the last raid of the much beloved BC, and Shorter then the also loved Wrath. Every other reason people hate Cata is all on them, and i wont say they are wrong, it's opinion. However using time as an issue.

[Deleted]

Too much efford put in the level 1-60 experience, none put for max level

[Strafir]

I'm growing more and more suspicious of what the drive behind people posting threads here is. Every time one of the lore personalities on youtube release a video addressing their opinion on something, five new threads here get created with the same exact opinion. An even larger shitstorm appears every time the number of quarterly subscribers gets released. It seems that the only way an average user is able to form an opinion about something is if they have some popular personality or numbers to fall back on, instead of defending their point of view with something original.

If it gets accepted on a wide enough scale that something is too hard, the average bear won't bother even trying the game and instead just joins the chanting. Cataclysm definitely wasn't a bad expansion, and it's a shame that it is "cool" to have a negative opinion about it. Thank god the official MVP forums were put in motion so expendable drones don't have any kind of voice anymore.

[Zka]

I like Deepholm and Uldum pretty well, Hyjal and Highlands are okay, but Blizzard would have to pay ME a sub fee to even get me to consider going back Vash'jr. I mean, I'd rather do a fucking marathon quest of the entire Eastern Kingdoms than have to go through even the first part of that shitty zone again.

Vashjir was bad at first, but when I did it the second time (on druid with instant swim form ) it was awesome. Release day bugs were gone and I finally knew my way around, these helped a great deal.

[Paula Deen]

I'm growing more and more suspicious of what the drive behind people posting threads here is. Every time one of the lore personalities on youtube release a video addressing their opinion on something, five new threads here get created with the same exact opinion. An even larger shitstorm appears every time the number of quarterly subscribers gets released. It seems that the only way an average user is able to form an opinion about something is if they have some popular personality or numbers to fall back on, instead of defending their point of view with something original.

If it gets accepted on a wide enough scale that something is too hard, the average bear won't bother even trying the game and instead just joins the chanting. Cataclysm definitely wasn't a bad expansion, and it's a shame that it is "cool" to have a negative opinion about it.

Who released a video? I am trying my hardest to defend my points, I am not sure about others, but i am trying here.

[Deleted]

I dont even know wtf you're talking about. I dont care about youtube videos or popular opinions.

I created this thread because, like I said (if you even read it), i recently leveled an alt through Cata content and wanted to share my thoughts on this expansion.

If it bothers you that I care about Cataclysm, then tough luck... leave the thread and go troll your mother.

On topic: loved some replies... most of you have some very valid points (wether i agree or not with them).

Keep them coming.

[Deleted]

I'm growing more and more suspicious of what the drive behind people posting threads here is. Every time one of the lore personalities on youtube release a video addressing their opinion on something, five new threads here get created with the same exact opinion. An even larger shitstorm appears every time the number of quarterly subscribers gets released. It seems that the only way an average user is able to form an opinion about something is if they have some popular personality or numbers to fall back on, instead of defending their point of view with something original.

Yeah, welcome to the Internet.
That's the way it works, just look at the amount of threads people started in the WoD forums around the lvl90 free boost. Everyone wants to be a special snowflake - but none of them have any original content past some skewed opinion and a poll with slightly different wording.

And to be on topic:

I liked Cata a lot - the only "thorn" I remember was the release of those 3 catch-up 5-mans that were tuned way too easy and dropped way too much loot. Alt boosting was just spamming through those.. over and over again. It got quite tedious. But overall Cata was quite good.

[Gharld]

For me it was:

Likes:
-T11 and T12 from a semi-hardcore standpoint (and just looooove me some Firelands bosses)
-1-85 zones (and Vashj'ir still is my favorite zone)
-Firelands dailys which to this day remain my favorite. Quick and most had little mechanics to break it up a bit
-Being able to revisit ZG/ZA as "current content". Whole patch worty? Maybe not. But I dont hear people bitching at the other scaled up heroics.
-Atleast unlike LK who in every other zone pulled a "Ehhh I could kill you buuuuuut *poof*" Deathwing actually WOULD kill you
-Launch 5 mans brought back the vanilla/BC feeling for 5 mans to me. Maybe its just because WotLK heroics were the most faceroll thing ever, but having to CC and mark never felt so good.
Dislikes:
-While I generally had fun with T13, from a lore point the whole dungeon was "ehhhhhhh why?" in some places (more so than the usual WoW lore moments) and Deathwing...ehh well he just died a puppet and yet no puppet-master was revealed.
-Abyssmal Maw not happening kind of sucks, but Azshara is still alive so it can still happen somewhere down the line.
-As much as I loved the 80-85 zones on their own, the disconected feel of them hurt for sure. Granted to be fair one should look at even the 1-60 zones for the full picture of Cataclysm, but as leveling content it felt broken apart too much.
-Touching on my last good point, I understand WHY they nerfed the 5 mans, but I still wish there was a middle ground where 5 mans could be exciting and challenging, so you are progressing by doing them instead of just trying to spam out enough to get your valor/justice/badges/rep/etc. And before anybody brings it up, even after doing Challenge Modes and getting all gold or w/e, you may as well be done for good with em then. Quite frankly Cata pushed it too much to the easy side thus resulting in MoP 5 mans (which you could argue is also because of Challenge Modes and Scenarios, but they are still weak as hell).

[Ikkarus]

Hmm, let's see

Hyjal, Vash'jir and Twilight Highlands was very interesting areas and I really like the idea of making Heroic Dungeons more harder but in my opinion, put dozen packs of mobs in a dungeon that needed to be CC in every pull isn't hard, it's just annoying, Boss fights should be hard, not the trash..The good thing is that they changed this in future patchs, I really like the Zul'gurub Dungeon, it had the perfect difficulty level.

Talking about raids, Im not a fan of linear raids so my favorite was Blackwing Decent and Firelands, in fact, Rage of the Firelands was a good patch, but it bring nothing new to the game, just more dailys.

I love the lore of the game and I must say, the entire story around the expansion was terrible, Cho'gall, Ala'kir, Neptulon, characters that had a lot of potential did absolutly nothing interesting, and Deathwing, oh God Deathwing, the most wasted character of all WoW, not to mention the end, travel back in time to take the Dragon Soul and bring the arctifact to the present? Yeah, cause doing something like this wouldn't bring any consequences in the flux of time right? And of course, Deathwing, the Dragon that could cause the end of the world would just flying around while the aspects empower the Dragon Soul at the top of Wyrmrest Temple (Why he was attacking the templo anyway?).

All this plus the terrible raid design and boss fights of DS, plus the LFR tool that took all the epicness of the end game...

yeah, sorry, Cataclysm is, by far the worst expasion of WoW...

[MoanaLisa]

Because the last patch (dragon soul) is one of the worst content ever in this game (if not THE worst) and we got stuck with it for a whole year, and that's what people will forever hold from the expansion.

Cataclysm was generally disliked a long time before T13 came out. That might have something to do with it. Despite T11 being one of the better raid tiers ever people abandoned the game wholesale long before the last patch. Since Raid Finder didn't exist for most of 4.X and the verifiable fact that at that point most people didn't raided it doesn't seem likely that all of this happened because of the final raid. I'm not defending T13 which didn't work for a lot of people as a raid but if you want to get to something more like a truth about why Cataclysm was and is so disliked you'll have to dig a little deeper.

[KeirAdish]

Because the last patch (dragon soul) is one of the worst content ever in this game (if not THE worst) and we got stuck with it for a whole year, and that's what people will forever hold from the expansion.

Opinions... :/

I really liked Dragon Soul for the most part personally, and enjoyed almost all of cataclysm aside from Vashjir and Uldum...

I started in mid to late wrath, enjoyed myself a lot, did a lot of PvP with IRL friends, when Cata came around I raided and PvP'ed...
I can't really say between Cata and Pandaria(only two I've experienced in full current) is my favorite, as I have things I like about both, and things I dislike about both.

[Rafoel]

Am I strange because I consider Vashjr the most beautiful zone in the game?

[inboundpaper]

I actually didn't mind Dragon Soul, but Cata was pretty disjointed as a whole.

[darkwarrior42]

This has been mentioned many times, and I'll share my thoughts again.

-Too few zones
-Leveling was too short (not just because it was five levels, it took far less time invested to get to max level)
-Quest flow was far less enjoyable (I dislike the complete linearity of questing introduced by Cata)
-Intro tier had good difficulty, but intro heroic dungeons did not work well (mostly because of idiots in LFG, particularly with healing being made much more difficult relative to WotLK)
-Tiers 12 and 13 were both horrible (Firelands had an interesting design from a boss perspective, but aside from disliking the aesthetics there were far too few bosses in both tiers).
-The story of Tier 13 and Dragon Soul was laughable, to the point, where I cannot take any other lore seriously because of what they made cannon (if we're seriously going to defeat one of the biggest threats ever through time travel deus ex machina that, aside from more retcons, also relied on an NPC to be all-powerful while we swatted at Deathwing's claws... yeah, we didn't do anything, we were just passengers there.)
-Old World revamp, while necessary in many ways, brought the same boring linear questing style to all of Azeroth, making alts infinitely less enjoyable
-.... and the removal of group content combined with streamlined questing combined with the existing systems of resource and mob tagging to make meeting players in the world actively detrimental in almost every circumstance, unless you actively enjoy socializing with strangers (which, I know some people do, but I cannot fathom).
-Deathwing. The travesty of deathwing. The fights were interesting from a mechanics standpoint, but a complete letdown for being Deathwing fights; combine that with the fact that his plan didn't even aspire to the level of Saturday morning cartoon villain (at least the Lich King made it to that level, complete with multiple "I'll get you next time, Gadget!" style departures), and he might as well not have existed. He wasn't a villain; he was an excuse for the old world revamp, who they threw into a few quests and a raid just for the sake of tying the storyline up.

It had a few good points, and a few good ideas that have been carried forward... but no, the reason I dislike Cataclysm is not simply because of Dragon Soul. (Deathwing's story and interaction was already pretty bad before DS came out, simply because we hadn't really seen any advancement of his plans despite his obvious power, DS was just the final straw.)

- - - Updated - - -

Opinions... :/

I really liked Dragon Soul for the most part personally, and enjoyed almost all of cataclysm aside from Vashjir and Uldum...

I started in mid to late wrath, enjoyed myself a lot, did a lot of PvP with IRL friends, when Cata came around I raided and PvP'ed...
I can't really say between Cata and Pandaria(only two I've experienced in full current) is my favorite, as I have things I like about both, and things I dislike about both.

They're all opinions, and I will not tell you that you're wrong even if I disagree with you.

What makes me post in threads like these are people like the OP theorizing the final patch is the only reason Cataclysm has a poor legacy; that may well be the case for some people, but it is not true for everyone.