I don't think Cataclysm was as bad as we think.

[Holymoocow]

cata was worse, lets never really raider in cata till lfr first came due guild falling part in middle of it.. most derps back want insane itemlvls and the still do to make so don't have work..

[Deleted]

Everyone calls it the worst expansion for the most part. I used to think that, but looking back, Cata only had 2 major issues. 1 was not enough raid bosses after tier 11, and number 2 is Dragonsoul being terrible. If tier 12 would have had 3 more bosses, and Dragonsoul hadn't been rushed it may have been one of the best. I used to think MoP was better by leaps and bounds, but now I think I can rank them about equall with MoP having a very slight lead.

Imo, Wrath>MoP>Cata>TBC>Vanilla.

Cata would have been better than MOP is dragonsoul hadn't sucked so much.

Thoughts?

My issues with it: Dungeons where hard as nails in beta and launch, they made you WORK for your gear, then they got nerfed back to faceroll level, making you feel stupidly powerful even with bad gear, instead of you feeling like you where protecting the innocent from actual mighty, mighty foes that would crush THEM in a hearthbeat. Second issue: so many plotlines that where never finished, and fart of an ending to Deathwings storyline instead of a 25k voice "Two Steps from Hell"-choir of an ending. Third issue: How the new guild system, while a great innovation, pretty much killed the activity in world/zone/tradechat on medium/small servers, and made getting gear EVEN MORE tedious, as all guilds on my server who had the patience to learn raids never bothered reqruiting until they where at the point of "You need to have cleared this raid in its entirety once to be able to join us and get the gear from it that is required to clear it!". Fourth issue: how it felt fresh with the new talent systems, no more issue with conserving ammo and so on early in the xpac, then sudden realization mid-way through that this pretty much killed one of the more realistic and immersive systems of keeping a good supply of ammo with you at all times, and that the new talent system completely removed the chance from creating dumb, gimmicky, annoying but otherwise completely terrible character builds, or even Death Knight Dual-Wield Frost DPS in WotLK (when Frost was meant to be used for tanking, but had some fun stuff to make you deal ice-cold shatter-clattering DPS numbers, which felt REALLY good to do I might add) or a InstaPet Huntard. Was fun as hell to use a beast that had some CC, have it die, spawn another from the same category, and repeat. XD Not really possible anymore, sadly. :-/

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What really makes CATA so very bad, was the story was absolute shite. There was so much room to build deathwing as a real character (for starters not having the stupid name deathwing) and using his human name, count something or other. little interaction with the character throughout the whole thing.

The problem was, Cata was around the time the dark knight came out. I think. And that movie really sparked a "The villain makes the story" thing, Villains in movies and TV started to actually gain depth and reason, people wanted to understand the villain. Arthas, was a deep character.

Then we were given a Grrr, im a mad dragon who wants to destroy the world because reasons.

Hell, Garrosh still wasn't as good as he could have been, but at least it was better that Grr I'm a dragon with a name a 12 year old names his deathknight

Nelfarion gained the nickname Deathwing back in the Warcraft series of RTS's, and he found the name appropriate and to his liking (after the Old Gods made him insane) so he adopted it. Makes full sense. However, they had him so littely during the actual events of the expansion it was PAINFUL to try and accept it. Like, the Lich King atleast sat inside ICC for a reason waiting for us, Deathwing broke out and flew around the world for a year or more, but was barely ever seen, which is strange as his original size in the beta and RTS's was a big as about half of Stormwind (no, I am not joking!) and in anything, there should have been random thumps in the air from his giant wings just to show that he was flying around doing SOMETHING. Instead, he was not there for about 11 months, then suddenly, BOOM! DURGUN! KEEL YYT!

[Enfilade]

Cataclysm was leaps and bounds better than MoP, I agree with OP.

Wrath > Cata > TBC > MoP > Vanilla

[Paladin885]

The issue with DS was that it was basically ToC, but in 5 different "arena's."

- zone in, fight a boss
- take drake, fight a boss
- take another drake, fight a boss
- take final drake, fight a boss
- you get the idea by now...

[Defengar]

It got off to a bad start before it was even released. Remember the pre launch events? Yeah... How they sucked absolute balls compared to the wrath zombie event, and were a toned down affair because blizzard, by their own words, wanted to make it less disruptive (and thus completely lame and able to be ignored). However before they started, the blues hyped it up like it was the second coming, and Bashiok even said "it will blow your minds".

It was so pathetic I knew Cata was going to be lame from that point on.

Zones being all over the freaking place. Who the hell had that brilliant idea? The opening of Cata felt more like a giant content patch than an actual expansion.

Removal of separate raid lockouts killed pugging on most servers, and thus further destroyed server communities.

Introduction of yet more crap to the store. It was clear what road the devs were putting us on with the release of the sparkle pony in wrath. Cata finalized it.

LFR = final nail in the coffin for what was left of pugs and yet more server deterioration

Dragon Soul not only being a bad raid, but being the last raid of the expansion and also a bad raid was unforgivable. ESPECIALLY since it was only 9 bosses long and we still waited about a year for MoP (at least ICC was 12 bosses and was LOADS better in every way). DS was so pathetic an effort on the part of the devs and the writers it still hurts to think about. Maybe they would have at least had more original looking bosses if they hadn't had the art team working on the stores banana dragon and all those pets...

[Mooster]

sorry to say Cata was really that bad, and MOP was much better imho.

[Dormie]

Best thing to come out of Cata was Uldum.

[Osmeric]

Best thing to come out of Cata was Uldum.

Wow. Talk about damning with faint praise.

[Deleted]

I never felt Cata was horrible, but the story in particular (especially Deathwing himself) wasn't that great when compared to WotLK. The best thing about Cata I feel was the old world revamp.

[DeleteThisUser]

I enjoyed Cataclysm. The first tier was my favorite.

[Kantoro]

It was worse.

[cabyio]

I think it's really interesting on this forum are exactly the opposite of what blizzard had to act on to save the game.

There is widespread praise for T11 and t12 and the sub eviscerating cata 5 man HC's. DS and LFR are decried.

Yet, T11, T12 and the harder 5 man stuff saw millions of players quit and only DS and LFR stabilised the drop.

That is because players do not care about the overall health (read: profitability) of the game. They care about what they find fun. People that post on forums tend to be more toward the type of player that enjoys difficulty. So that is why they liked T11,T12 and the cata 5 mans. They were the right mix of hard and fun, at least for people with a decent level of skill.

For the record I loved T11,T12, and cata 5 mans. DS was kinda meh, and LFR should die a horrible death.

[Wilian]

Same. I really enjoyed the more difficult heroics and the need for CC and controlled, elegant pulls. Then Blizzard pulled a fucking 180 and Cata died to me.

They sort of had to, considering the fundamental flaw of having absolutely no end game content to do besides the 5 man-heroics and raids. Had they taken more sensible approach like in TBC where they had end game group quests that gave good items to progress, normal 5 man dungeons to gear up, proper reputations to grind to gear progress and then use the 5 man heroics as the proper small scale group content like how heroic raids are vs. lfr, normal.

They just fucked the whole design from ground up

[Daws]

Personally I enjoyed the first few weeks of Cata, then they dumbed everything down. Beyond that there was no real stand out moments for me especially when compared to the heights of prior expansions BC - killing Illidan and oh yea the first time you scraped up enough cash to get a flying mount, WotLK - the lore, Ulduar, Lick King, Ulduar, invading undercity, Ulduar and of course Ulduar. Cata never really raised the bar for anything, at least for me anyway.

[Notdev]

Personally I enjoyed the first few weeks of Cata, then they dumbed everything down. Beyond that there was no real stand out moments for me especially when compared to the heights of prior expansions BC - killing Illidan and oh yea the first time you scraped up enough cash to get a flying mount, WotLK - the lore, Ulduar, Lick King, Ulduar, invading undercity, Ulduar and of course Ulduar. Cata never really raised the bar for anything, at least for me anyway.

Even though the first few weeks of Cata were enjoyable for me as well, nothing fixes the fact they fused 10/25 lockouts and difficulty, destroyed pugging (which was a big source of entertainment throughout Wrath for me) and beginning the downfall of server communities.

[anaxie]

It was a great expansion, but several things happened.

1. No new continent - vast majority of zone resources was expended upon 1-60 areas rather than 80-85 areas, which disappointed people. Zones weren't connected, so the plot was at time confusing as to what exactly was transpiring in what order. Few people understood that Hyjal took place after Varshjr, etc.

2. Deathwing was EPIC, but most WoW players went "What the hell?" because they never played WC2. WotLK worked because everyone played WC3, and were like "OMG! It's him!" Blizzard did the exact same thing with Deathwing, but because most WoW playeres didn't play WC2, they went "How was I supposed that happened? Who is this guy? ...Okay..." That pretty much sums up the player reaction to the Cata plot.

I'd Dare say Vashjir, Hyjal, Deepholme, Highlands, and Uldum are FAR better then the bland Pandaran continent. Nevermind the massive 1-60 zone revamp that was utterly fantastic for adding flavor and a flowing story not just through the zone but throughout the continents leveling path.

[femur68]

To me, cata is bad due to blizzard just making wrong decisions within the first 6 months or so. When the 5 mans first started being played at launch, they were not tuned for LFG difficulty. This forced the casuals to leave. Then they nerfed them in the process to prevent any more from leaving. Well then a wave of players left because then the 5 mans felt too easy.

Then 4.1 hits, which was SUPPOSED to be firelands and the abyssal maw, but they weren't done yet so they gave us revamped troll raids into 5 mans. Then a few months later, 4.2 hits with ONLY firelands, no abyssal maw. Blizzard later on stated that the art and design of the raid (aka all under water) wasn't something that could compare to firelands in epicness and likeability from the playerbase, so they scrapped it (I still don't entirely believe this excuse, and that they're simply just saving the conclusion to that story for the eventual azshara expansion). Firelands ended up being too short of a raid, despite it being good. But that forced blizzards hand faster on the upcoming patches due to ppl burning through most of 4.2 rather quickly.

The next tier was supposed to be war of the ancients in a cot raid. But due to subscribers leaving in droves and the ones still left burning through current content, I believe blizzard at this point just wanted to get out of cata asap and into mop. So they scrapped that as well and used the zone they initially designed for it as the 5man well of eternity in 4.3.

And at last you have DS. It introduced lfr, which had good intentions, but didn't execute on them well. Flex is what lfr originally should have been. The boss fights in DS imo were either unimaginative or annoying. And death wing is easily the biggest letdown of a final boss so far in wow. Blizzard hyped up how he was the biggest dragon they ever put in the game. So of course as the last battle you fight tentacles. Now I know it fits with how we went about killing him with knocking off the plates and releasing the old god corruption inside him and whatnot, but I think blizzard should have gone a different direction with how we finished him off so we could actually fight him like a dragon.

[anaxie]

Because you know THousand needles, Feralas, Desolance, Darkshore, Ashenvale, AZSHARA, Barrens, SILVERPINE, redridge, searing gorge, burning steeps, BLASTED LANDS, badlands. didn't suddenly get 100X better in the revamps. I feel they did. Also the plaguelands. must not forget the plaguelands

[Bigbazz]

I generally say

WOTLK > TBC > MOP => Cata


I always considered myself a PVE'er but the days of my hardcore PVE raiding fizzled out in Cata, but for a brief time in DS, and again in Mogu'Shan vaults I've been a casual logging in to see the RP shite and beating people up in PVP. So maybe it's not surprising that I look back fondly on the times of epic raiding in TBC and WOTLK though.

But with that said, if you wasn't raiding in Cataclysm there was just nothing to do... In TBC/WOTLK you had stuff to do but Cataclysm had no depth, no variety... MOP on the other hand is throwing shit at you from all angles, a vast improvement outside of raiding. Aside from the introduction of RBG's PVP has never been as good as it was in WOTLK, and LFR is an abombination.

[anaxie]

To me, cata is bad due to blizzard just making wrong decisions within the first 6 months or so. When the 5 mans first started being played at launch, they were not tuned for LFG difficulty. This forced the casuals to leave. Then they nerfed them in the process to prevent any more from leaving. Well then a wave of players left because then the 5 mans felt too easy.

Then 4.1 hits, which was SUPPOSED to be firelands and the abyssal maw, but they weren't done yet so they gave us revamped troll raids into 5 mans. Then a few months later, 4.2 hits with ONLY firelands, no abyssal maw. Blizzard later on stated that the art and design of the raid (aka all under water) wasn't something that could compare to firelands in epicness and likeability from the playerbase, so they scrapped it (I still don't entirely believe this excuse, and that they're simply just saving the conclusion to that story for the eventual azshara expansion). Firelands ended up being too short of a raid, despite it being good. But that forced blizzards hand faster on the upcoming patches due to ppl burning through most of 4.2 rather quickly.

The next tier was supposed to be war of the ancients in a cot raid. But due to subscribers leaving in droves and the ones still left burning through current content, I believe blizzard at this point just wanted to get out of cata asap and into mop. So they scrapped that as well and used the zone they initially designed for it as the 5man well of eternity in 4.3.

And at last you have DS. It introduced lfr, which had good intentions, but didn't execute on them well. Flex is what lfr originally should have been. The boss fights in DS imo were either unimaginative or annoying. And death wing is easily the biggest letdown of a final boss so far in wow. Blizzard hyped up how he was the biggest dragon they ever put in the game. So of course as the last battle you fight tentacles. Now I know it fits with how we went about killing him with knocking off the plates and releasing the old god corruption inside him and whatnot, but I think blizzard should have gone a different direction with how we finished him off so we could actually fight him like a dragon.

If you even did STV you saw the ZG revamp coming so don't act all pathetic and hopeless. Also Firelands was fine for Heroic guilds despite the short boss count it still lasted as loong as it should had. The expansion fell flat with the abyssal maw and War of the Ancinet flops which while not a deal breaker. The SHORT Finale raid and Dull terrible extremely simple deathwing heroic fight left everyone in a foul mood.

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The only part of Cata that didn't make sense to me was that the main villain of the xpac, Deathwing, was far easier to kill than a resurrected firelord from Vanilla, Ragnaros.
Firelands was a good raid until Rag, who was too hard. Dragonsoul started out decent and went downhill with every boss encounter. The final Deathwing fight was disappointing, not to mention downright weird.

For me it goes like this:

Wrath>MoP>Cata>Vanilla>BC

BC started out great with Karazhan, which was the perfect difficulty and a lot of fun but gradually degraded into the huge mistake known as the Sunwell. Even Kael was too hard for too many people. It became far too exclusive towards the end.

Rag heroic too hard? No I think the word you are looking for is Perfect

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It got off to a bad start before it was even released. Remember the pre launch events? Yeah... How they sucked absolute balls compared to the wrath zombie event, and were a toned down affair because blizzard, by their own words, wanted to make it less disruptive (and thus completely lame and able to be ignored). However before they started, the blues hyped it up like it was the second coming, and Bashiok even said "it will blow your minds".

It was so pathetic I knew Cata was going to be lame from that point on.

Zones being all over the freaking place. Who the hell had that brilliant idea? The opening of Cata felt more like a giant content patch than an actual expansion.

Removal of separate raid lockouts killed pugging on most servers, and thus further destroyed server communities.

Introduction of yet more crap to the store. It was clear what road the devs were putting us on with the release of the sparkle pony in wrath. Cata finalized it.

LFR = final nail in the coffin for what was left of pugs and yet more server deterioration

Dragon Soul not only being a bad raid, but being the last raid of the expansion and also a bad raid was unforgivable. ESPECIALLY since it was only 9 bosses long and we still waited about a year for MoP (at least ICC was 12 bosses and was LOADS better in every way). DS was so pathetic an effort on the part of the devs and the writers it still hurts to think about. Maybe they would have at least had more original looking bosses if they hadn't had the art team working on the stores banana dragon and all those pets...

How dare Mount hyjal be on a mountain and the highlands and grim batol be where.... grim batol has been known to be for years. Also Deepholm? Why couldn't it of just been off the coast of southshore.