Why people hate Cataclysm - a thought.

[Vulcanasm]

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.

Recently I leveled another alt and for the first time going back to that content since MoP came out. Vashj'ir, Deepholm and Uldum are, in my opinion, some of the best zones ever. Hyjal is ok and Twilight Highlands is a bit boring (and the last, so, like before, not good to keep good memories alive), but the rest of the Azeroth overhaul is superb.

That, launch raids (Bastion and Blackwing), Firelands (the whole patch, not only the raid) and the whole streamline of gameplay was some of the best things Blizz made for this game. Also, Cataclysm is my favorite WoW soundtrack so far.

Besides, the whole apocalyptic-fiery-violent and chaotic feeling to it just seemed right at the time (after the alien TBC and the Dark WotLK).

This is just a rambling on a underrated content, spoiled by the major failure that was 4.4.

Hope WoD will come soon enough so we dont get burned out by SoO aswell (i dont think that will hapen, though... we were stuck with ICC for a whole year aswell but it was awesome, instead).

Well, you're wrong. We hated every single thing about Cataclysm.

• The zones sucked. They were endless rail riders, all of them. They took too long, they changed too little, and there was only one path through.
• The dungeons sucked. They were tuned for good players. The moment you ran an alt through LFG, you saw why this was a terrible, terrible idea. No matter how good you were, one derp was one too much to carry.
• The old world sucked. The revamp made everything into linear shit. Leveling alts went from a scavenger hunt for quests you missed to a tedious, soul-sucking chore.
• The raids sucked. They drowned in mastrubatory self-tributes and the entire pallete was "road pizza red". Everything looked the same, everything acted the same. They felt like a Nintendo game.
• The casual content sucked. If you didn't want to raid, your choices were dailies or more dailies.
• The PVP sucked. Frost mages were so ridiculously overtuned that every meaningful voice from ArenaJunkies quit the fucking game. It took them until MoP to nerf them because Kalgan played one.
• The world PVP sucked. It was just people standing on stuff. They finally found some more colors than "road pizza red", and it turned out to be "industrial waste". Why do I want to go to this zone? It feels like I'm in a Sisters of Mercy video.

I cannot name one single thing about Cataclysm that I thought was worthwhile, much less good, and I quit the last weekend before 4.1 came out. Never saw Dragon Soul before a friend and I went mount farming in 5.4.

[Zka]

It took them until MoP to nerf them because Kalgan played one.

This makes it hard to take your post seriously.

[worstpvperus]

Well, you're wrong. We hated every single thing about Cataclysm.

• The zones sucked. They were endless rail riders, all of them. They took too long, they changed too little, and there was only one path through.
• The dungeons sucked. They were tuned for good players. The moment you ran an alt through LFG, you saw why this was a terrible, terrible idea. No matter how good you were, one derp was one too much to carry.
• The old world sucked. The revamp made everything into linear shit. Leveling alts went from a scavenger hunt for quests you missed to a tedious, soul-sucking chore.
• The raids sucked. They drowned in mastrubatory self-tributes and the entire pallete was "road pizza red". Everything looked the same, everything acted the same. They felt like a Nintendo game.
• The casual content sucked. If you didn't want to raid, your choices were dailies or more dailies.
• The PVP sucked. Frost mages were so ridiculously overtuned that every meaningful voice from ArenaJunkies quit the fucking game. It took them until MoP to nerf them because Kalgan played one.
• The world PVP sucked. It was just people standing on stuff. They finally found some more colors than "road pizza red", and it turned out to be "industrial waste". Why do I want to go to this zone? It feels like I'm in a Sisters of Mercy video.

I cannot name one single thing about Cataclysm that I thought was worthwhile, much less good, and I quit the last weekend before 4.1 came out. Never saw Dragon Soul before a friend and I went mount farming in 5.4.

1.I liked cata leveling outside of deepholm.
2.I carried lfders that pulled 4k dps through every heroic it was doable.
3.This is your opinion, I love the revamped. Its the only reason I managed to get another toon to max level.
4.Bwl and bot looked totally different same with the uldum raid.
5.Dailies, Pvp, leveling Alts so basically the same thing as every other expansion before it.
6.Pvp was better then Bc with random resist talents, and mace stuns. Damage was better then wotlk because it took legendaries to trololol people and not random crit streaks.

[Strafir]

I cannot name one single thing about Cataclysm that I thought was worthwhile, much less good, and I quit the last weekend before 4.1 came out. Never saw Dragon Soul before a friend and I went mount farming in 5.4.

Excuse my french, but how the FUCK can you think that you have an opinion worth mentioning when you haven't even played the god damn expansion? People like you need to be shot into the stratosphere.

[Constraint]

I dislike(d) Cataclysm for numerous reasons - I HATE, HATE, HATE what they did to the old zones. I absolutely DETEST "quests-on-rails", no matter how much more of the zone is "used" by said system. I loatheeeee the system of, "grab one quest. do it. grab 2 quests. do them. grab 2 quests. do them. everything else is locked until you do them!" It's literally the most atrociously awful system I can possibly imagine.

Besides that, T11 was amazing. Besides the resurrecting of old bosses, that is. Amazing environments, interesting encounters, quality work. T12, tiny tier, quite disliked every encounter besides H.Rag. Dragon Soul... Awful, awful raid. Also, beginning of LFR, which, for so many reasons, I detest.

Dungeons at first were actually quite fun. Far too few, but they were tuned enough to be interesting. Of course, nerfed for poor players fairly quickly.

Cata was where I lost interest in PvP for the first time since Vanilla - homogenization that began in WotLK got out of control. Every class has to have interrupts, instant ccs, immunities etc etc etc, all in the name of "balance". Preferred the rock-paper-scissors approach, despite its downsides.

Leveling zones were a mixed bag. Vashj'r was fucking beautiful, but I hated questing there. Hyjal was ugly (imo) but I always quested there, because it was easier/faster. Loved Deepholm. Detested Indiana Jones-Uldum, and Twilight Highlands did next to nothing for me. Tol Barad the same, just free honor.

.

On a completely different, yet more important note, I think what Blizzard needs to remember is this: If something's easier, or provides better rewards per hour spent, people will FLOCK to it, REGARDLESS of whether or not they enjoy it. Some many enjoy it, many may not, but it WILL be popular.

For some unknown reason, it seems that, to Blizzard, this means that people want more of it, and that it's a resounding success. This a dangerous path to tread. They need to ensure that the path of least resistance, the path almost everyone will tread, is the path that's fun AS WELL as rewarding. This is sadly lacking in the game at present, in my opinion. Heroic Scenario spam the best way to gain valor? Really..? Spamming dungeons and completely ignoring every quest in the game is the fastest way to level 1-90? Really..? LFR the easiest way to get gear..? Really..?

[Aus Nate]

I dislike Cata for so many reason, they nerfed so much when they shouldn't have ie dungeons cause people couldn't complete them.
But after coming from wrath, it was a disappointment, having 1 main city dalaran was win. it was always packed it was the center of everything.
Cata could been alot better, they wasted so much art work ie gilneas city (the best looking area imo)
Deathwing wasn't a real endboss imo
He was just a giant dragon who every now and then killed me when I was afk in uldum.
Hell even mop's hatred of garrosh is better than deathwing (who I started hating during cata).

This is sadly lacking in the game at present, in my opinion. Heroic Scenario spam the best way to gain valor? Really..? Spamming dungeons and completely ignoring every quest in the game is the fastest way to level 1-90? Really..? LFR the easiest way to get gear..? Really..?

Funny enough, I never cap via HScens, I refuse scenarios, I do a normal once a day for rep on my alts that's it.
Also, spamming dungeons isnt the quickest way to 90, its just the lazy way, I've always only ever done 1 dungeon for the quests, then I go back to questing till the next set of quests are available, I have leveled quicker than other people who spam dungeons.
Though I do agree with LFR easy way to get gear, IMO thats what I really dislike, its worse than the cereal box gear wrath gave us.

[Trix]

Cata started off very strong, but with each patch, got weaker and weaker.

It had a cancelled raid, then farming two 5 man dungeons in it's place for ages, Firelands was too small, Dragonsoul was terrible and I didn't like the 5 mans that came with it either.

T11 was great and I loved the 5 mans at first, was fun doing them with the guild, in LFG, not so much.

I liked the levelling zones at first, I get sick of any zone after a couple of alts.

[WarTV]

it has nothing to do with the last patch.
firelands was very good. my best kill experience was rag hc pre nerf.

however the xpac as a whole since the start was crappy and lacked much meaning. it was a boring dull / slow / dead with not much to do expansion. this (cata) xpac actually introduced to me to the "Afk in org" life

[Kisho]

Cata is a lot better than people give it credit. It's the second best expansion so far, with MoP being best.

It gave us a lot of necessary updates that have really improved our quality of life. I feel the problem is that these updates are easy to not attribute to Cataclysm itself, so the good stuff doesn't get associated with the expansion while the bad stuff does. For example, 1-60 is 'vanilla', even though all that work was done for Cataclysm. There's also system updates and new features, e.g. transmogging and void storage, that really improved our quality of life but Cataclysm doesn't really get praised for.

The 80-85 levelling content was mixed. Vashj'ir is amazing, but because it's underwater it's very polarising. You either really love it or REALLY hate it. The other zones are alright, but because we're able to fly in them we got bored with them very quickly, adding to the feeling of having nothing to do.

The raids were, for whatever reason, too small. There were also some bad design decisions in them, and even though the fights were almost entirely new people loved to claim 'LOL REHASH' just because some of them used the same characters.

It all adds up to make it seem as though Cataclysm was awful, even when it provided a ton of necessary and applauded updates to the game. They just don't get attributed to Cataclysm's success.

EDIT: On a final note, I notice a lot of people bringing up the 'afking in stormwind/orgrimmar' idea. Personally, I did the majority of my afking during TBC. I also consider TBC to be the worst expansion (while still being very enjoyable).

[moremana]

Cata DS was not that bad. It was alot better than MoP.

[Horrid Crow]

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.

Always makes me sad, the hate towards Vashj'ir. It's one of the best zones in the game in terms of story, atmosphere, music, scenery etc.
Always looking forward to playing it again when I decide to level an alt.

[worstpvperus]

I dislike(d) Cataclysm for numerous reasons - I HATE, HATE, HATE what they did to the old zones. I absolutely DETEST "quests-on-rails", no matter how much more of the zone is "used" by said system. I loatheeeee the system of, "grab one quest. do it. grab 2 quests. do them. grab 2 quests. do them. everything else is locked until you do them!" It's literally the most atrociously awful system I can possibly imagine.

Besides that, T11 was amazing. Besides the resurrecting of old bosses, that is. Amazing environments, interesting encounters, quality work. T12, tiny tier, quite disliked every encounter besides H.Rag. Dragon Soul... Awful, awful raid. Also, beginning of LFR, which, for so many reasons, I detest.

Dungeons at first were actually quite fun. Far too few, but they were tuned enough to be interesting. Of course, nerfed for poor players fairly quickly.

Cata was where I lost interest in PvP for the first time since Vanilla - homogenization that began in WotLK got out of control. Every class has to have interrupts, instant ccs, immunities etc etc etc, all in the name of "balance". Preferred the rock-paper-scissors approach, despite its downsides.

Leveling zones were a mixed bag. Vashj'r was fucking beautiful, but I hated questing there. Hyjal was ugly (imo) but I always quested there, because it was easier/faster. Loved Deepholm. Detested Indiana Jones-Uldum, and Twilight Highlands did next to nothing for me. Tol Barad the same, just free honor.

.

On a completely different, yet more important note, I think what Blizzard needs to remember is this: If something's easier, or provides better rewards per hour spent, people will FLOCK to it, REGARDLESS of whether or not they enjoy it. Some many enjoy it, many may not, but it WILL be popular.

For some unknown reason, it seems that, to Blizzard, this means that people want more of it, and that it's a resounding success. This a dangerous path to tread. They need to ensure that the path of least resistance, the path almost everyone will tread, is the path that's fun AS WELL as rewarding. This is sadly lacking in the game at present, in my opinion. Heroic Scenario spam the best way to gain valor? Really..? Spamming dungeons and completely ignoring every quest in the game is the fastest way to level 1-90? Really..? LFR the easiest way to get gear..? Really..?

The fastest way to 90 is doing dungeons when there are quest(otherwise questing is faster) and questing. Dungeon spamming can be really slow, you can have a group that falls apart or wipes.

What is wrong with having options outside of questing be viable ways of leveling that sounds like a good thing.

[Deleted]

Nonsense. Subscribers in this game are actually bound for up to six months. On top of this time span, which it takes from the moment they cancel their subscriptions till they actually are no longer counted, it's several more weeks till Blizzard publishes the numbers.

People didn't start quitting with Dragon Soul, they quit as soon as they hit max level, some even earlier. Cata was utter garbage from day ONE.

[Uoyredrum]

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.

Recently I leveled another alt and for the first time going back to that content since MoP came out. Vashj'ir, Deepholm and Uldum are, in my opinion, some of the best zones ever. Hyjal is ok and Twilight Highlands is a bit boring (and the last, so, like before, not good to keep good memories alive), but the rest of the Azeroth overhaul is superb.

That, launch raids (Bastion and Blackwing), Firelands (the whole patch, not only the raid) and the whole streamline of gameplay was some of the best things Blizz made for this game. Also, Cataclysm is my favorite WoW soundtrack so far.

Besides, the whole apocalyptic-fiery-violent and chaotic feeling to it just seemed right at the time (after the alien TBC and the Dark WotLK).

This is just a rambling on a underrated content, spoiled by the major failure that was 4.4.

Hope WoD will come soon enough so we dont get burned out by SoO aswell (i dont think that will hapen, though... we were stuck with ICC for a whole year aswell but it was awesome, instead).

While what you said didn't help, as a pvper I hated it long before Dragon Soul. It wasn't just DS, it was a bad expansion in every way.

[Osmeric]

Nonsense. Subscribers in this game are actually bound for up to six months. On top of this time span, which it takes from the moment they cancel their subscriptions till they actually are no longer counted, it's several more weeks till Blizzard publishes the numbers.

People didn't start quitting with Dragon Soul, they quit as soon as they hit max level, some even earlier. Cata was utter garbage from day ONE.

Yup. And the majority of the net sub loss in Cataclysm was before 4.3 released.

[Bumbasta]

I think it's mainly because people don't include the huge revamp Blizzard did on the 1-60 content, which I think was great. I don't see cata as the worst expansion, for me that is still TBC.

[logintime]

Other people have listed the many problems with Cata - the on-rails questing, the ridiculous story that made no sense, the awfulness that was Dragon Soul, bad/cancelled raids, unimpressive new zones - but the one thing no one's mentioned that bugged me while leveling through the old world was the contained-ness of each zone. In vanilla, the stories bled into surounding zones and built on each other. For example, the Defias plot started in Elwynn, factored into Redridge, came to a climax in Westfall and deadmines, and also impacted Duskwood and the long missing diplomat quest line. It was a great way of making the world feel like it was interconnected and had depth.

But that got removed in the revamp, as they decided to keep each zone contained by plot. To use the example again, the Defias plot in the revamp became limited only to Westfall. Duskwood had no relation to it, nor Elwynn, nor Redridge. These zones might as well exist in separate universes, because nothing seemed able to cross their borders. And it was like that everywhere, for everything. Even the worgen/forsaken war only really takes place in Silverpine- the moment you level out of there and go to Hillsbrad that fight is abruptly over. The only two things that appeared regularly were the horde-alliance war zones (ala swamp of sorrows or south barrens) and the twilight's hammer. And neither was that interesting or well developed.

[Stormcall]

For the record, I didn't hate Cata, but I considered it disappointing compared to Wrath(still my fave xpac) and TBC. Love it compared to MoP, though.

I am not fond of the quests on rails. I liked SOME parts of the zone revamps, but not others. And being totally unable to get any quests in a town because you skipped or missed the previous quest hub is just plain stupid. There were some great quests added, though. Hated Vash'jr too, underwater zone=worst zone idea ever. I never played through the zone I hated it so much just doing the first few quests. I got my sea horse and then swam around for the exploration achievement, and never went back, and never will. I also disliked the comparatively few new zones. You hit 85, and it's either Hyjal/Vash->Deepholm->Uldum->Twilight Highlands. I preferred Wrath's levelling, where at any given level range you had a couple different options(Fjord or Borean, DBlight or Grizzly Hills, etc).

[Joey Ray III]

cata was a boring world of queuecraft but that's gone now. in retrospective, my biggest beef with it is the 1-60 revamp.

i do honestly hate what they did with it. ok some streamlining was needed but everything just feels so silly. all those over-the-top pop culture references, stupid stories i don't care about and other childish shit like pacifist ogres riding spiders and their belly. the fuck is that? and what's with the fucking companions i can't get rid off? god i hate those.

i'm leveling a hunter atm and i really wanted to do some questing but i can't stand it. i was doing burning steppes just yesterday and it was actually not bad but then I saw some guy running around with J.J Keeshan. i was like 'are you fucking kidding me?' -> hearthstone and queue for dungeon.

80-85 zones are great tho, i don't understand why so many people bitch about those.

[Warlord Booty]

Essentially, people are mad that they wanted to fight another big dragon, but since he was so big and badass, we actually had to fight on him vs a face to face, that's basically it?

I thought Cata was pretty good, while Wrath was weak. I mean, the lich king is right there.... the whole time, just go get him. Naxx was rather pointless, but only less pointless than the pointlessness of Ulduar, ToC was actually really good, considering what it was suppose to be in regards to the story. The IC raid itself was decent. Cata attempted to bring back harder dungeons etc, cuz face it, all the wrath dungeons were faceroll. the only challenge were the new ones added at the end of the expansion, but those were really only tough the first time or two and then those were faceroll as well.