Is Cata uneventful when compared to Wrath, lore-wise?

[Aedeus]

N'zoth, to me, doesn't count. He was invented into the lore, although the concept of "Old gods" has been around since AQ.
At least they didn't rehash C'thun and Yogg, though.

I wonder what his model is going to look like..

HMMMM..

[Dariela]

Afaik, Cho'gall was the last real lore figure from the original RTS games, everything else in this xpack has either been invented (Al'akir/Neptulon) or shamelessly rehashed because there's no real lore figures left (Onyxia 3.0 Nefarion 2.0 Ragnaros 2.0).

That's the reason WoW has lost it's luster for me tbh, I started playing WoW with the goals of killing Illidan and Arthas. I had no idea what a "Deathwing" was, and still don't care. I just couldn't see myself paying (playing) for 2 years to kill a big bad guy that I don't know or care about, and his legion of zombie raid bosses I've killed years ago.

**That only applies to raiding, the quest lore in cata was satisfying enough, but I don't play for the quests.**

Well, for me, the first tier of Wrath raiding wasn't very compelling from a lore perspective, either.

Ulduar was very good, but it was just some icing. The arthas story stood quite well with just the questing content and ICC.

[Drefanator]

A lot of the zones, particularly Zul'drak, Storm Peaks and Icecrown really made me want to finish the quests until the end of the zone. Not so much in cata. I could care less about the story in Uldum, Twilight highlands draws on, Hyjal kind of feels manditory, vash'jir is super long, Deepholme is alright.

I just kind of wish we saw Deathwing doing something epic in a raid or dungeon or something. I know they're trying to save it for the last patch (or if blizz has it's way never) for us to face deathwing. We havent seen Deathwing do anything since the questline in TH. What is he doing? just flying around turning the sky red and blowing fire? Why isn't he doing that to Org/Stormwind. Why doesn't he make an appearence when we kill Cho'gall/Nef. Just some sort of "You may have killed so and so, but they're just a peon in my plan" and then disappears. It just feels that he's been far to quiet, and he doesn't seem to do anything next patch. At least with LK he was around, might have been a tad cheesy at times but he was there. And with ToC being in Icecrown you always felt like you were on the verge of breaking into his backdoor. Right now I don't really feel like the Horde/Alliance have made any progress into killing Deathwing. Just ragnaros, and that's about it.

[Aeriyo]

Sorry my point was that it's not allowed to post those kinds of replies according to the rules

Never mind, just noticed your name - not sure I want to bother talking to you.

Oh god.. not that again. It's not what you think, not going to get into it LOL.
And sorry, I didn't know that.

[Dariela]

Sorry my point was that it's not allowed to post those kinds of replies according to the rules

Never mind, just noticed your name - not sure I want to bother talking to you.

I may be mistaken, but I don't think tagging a quote and a "this" at the end of another post is quite the same thing.

"This" posts are typically spammish, where his post was a real post, with a short but sweet PS.

[Aeriyo]

Oh why thank you Dariela.

[smashzu]

Well, for me, the first tier of Wrath raiding wasn't very compelling from a lore perspective, either.

Ulduar was very good, but it was just some icing. The arthas story stood quite well with just the questing content and ICC.

Oh, wrath was garbage too. Naxx was a complete rehash, Maly was written into the lore. ToC... Well, I don't even want to go there. Ulduar was cool because it explained what Brann was doing when he was searching for Muradin, and ICC was cool because of Arthas.

BC was really the pinnacle of lore. Vashj, KT, KJ, illidan, Magtheridon, some story about Medivh (even though we never actually saw him, just his house.) The battle for Hyjal, Vol'Jin (The only real piece of lore from Zul'aman, now completely gone from the instance). All great bits of lore from the original RTS games. It will never get better than that.

[Nordal]

N'zoth, to me, doesn't count. He was invented into the lore, although the concept of "Old gods" has been around since AQ.
At least they didn't rehash C'thun and Yogg, though.

Since WC3, you, you...

[Aeriyo]

I made this a pole... tell me if the question is off or not.

[smashzu]

Since WC3, you, you...

Whoops! Sorry!

Also, you should expand the poll to vanilla and BC as well, OP.

[Angarin]

From a lore perspective I liked wrath. The iron dwarve story line I just loved. The zombie thing in icecrown was eh cool, definitely new & exicting after making love to blood elves in black temple & showing my epeen to illidan, but the new enviorment in wrath just felt so much more close to warcraft RTS version than TBC. I just didnt play wc2 & 1 so much that it meant nothing to me. I played wc3 & expansion so northrend meant alot to see in-game, but the iron dwarves & titans just struck me. Black temple & ulduar are my favorite of all time raids ever, with molten core close behind. Both are just original, the story line has nothing else attached to it. Ever see everquest with titans with iron dwarves? Or maybe a demon with a bunch of concubines and a blood elf council at its feet? No, because blizzard came up with it all, nobody to copy that off. Dragons are meh, so original there.


From a gameplay perspective I think cataclysm became so simple that if you do the wrong thing blizzard will point & laugh at you themself. In wrath for example if you were a holy paladin if you had mp5 you were viewed as a FoL paladin, not the most preferred style of hpally healing but still important in a way. While if you took crit/haste with no mp5 you were viewed as a holy light paladin. In cata theres 1 style of hpally healing and its just stale. I hate it...gets old fast. I remember in wrath/bc if I felt I wasnt doing enough tank healing which happened often pre tier 6 I'd switch to FoL style and help out raid healing while throwing tank heals when needed. While in cata you cant do that, hpallys can still raid heal but not as well as holy priest, druid, or shaman.


Cataclysm just became to simple for its own good, I dont like it

[smashzu]

From a gameplay perspective I think cataclysm became so simple that if you do the wrong thing blizzard will point & laugh at you themself. In wrath for example if you were a holy paladin if you had mp5 you were viewed as a FoL paladin, not the most preferred style of hpally healing but still important in a way. While if you took crit/haste with no mp5 you were viewed as a holy light paladin. In cata theres 1 style of hpally healing and its just stale. I hate it...gets old fast
...
Cataclysm just became to simple for its own good, I dont like it

Let's stick to lore.
WoW lore makes me nostalgic and gives me the warm and fuzzies.
WoW gameplay makes me want to play other games.

But yeah, I agree, A/B really messed the game up by dumbing everything down and making everything so cookie-cutter. Especially locking us into talent trees.
I'd sell my soul to see cool things like Prot healers and Shockadins come back, that's what gave the game flavor.
Cata's gameplay is just bland...

[Dariela]

Oh, wrath was garbage too. Naxx was a complete rehash, Maly was written into the lore. ToC... Well, I don't even want to go there. Ulduar was cool because it explained what Brann was doing when he was searching for Muradin, and ICC was cool because of Arthas.

BC was really the pinnacle of lore. Vashj, KT, KJ, illidan, Magtheridon, some story about Medivh (even though we never actually saw him, just his house.) The battle for Hyjal, Vol'Jin (The only real piece of lore from Zul'aman, now completely gone from the instance). All great bits of lore from the original RTS games. It will never get better than that.

BC might have had some nice lore, but it didn't tell the story nearly as well as Wrath did.

I spent most of my time trying to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do next in TBC. I'm in Hellfire, now I'm in a forest, thats next to a mushroom swamp, on the edge of a mountain range...

[Aeriyo]

It really is; I also just recently flew around Northrend and heard all the music/ sounds again and it feels different, Cata seems to be missing that feel, with the enviornment/ sounds as well. I think being in Vortex Pinnacle/ Throne of the Four Winds are the only places that have that feel to it.

[smashzu]

BC might have had some nice lore, but it didn't tell the story nearly as well as Wrath did.

I spent most of my time trying to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do next in TBC. I'm in Hellfire, now I'm in a forest, thats next to a mushroom swamp, on the edge of a mountain range...

As I said in an earlier post, my comments all focus around raiding, not questing. I have always maintained the position the questing is a boring waste of time and that the level flows in WoW have never made sense.

Let's look at some of the famous zone flow fuck-ups....
Lush Swamp --> Barren Desert
Lush tropical forest --> Desolate frozen wastes
Corrupt desert --> Dense mushroom jungle
Dense Mushroom Jungle --> Spiky mountains

I could go on with that forever. It's been going on for the entire life cycle on the game, cata definitely didn't fix it.

[Dariela]

As I said in an earlier post, my comments all focus around raiding, not questing. I have always maintained the position the questing is a boring waste of time and that the level flows in WoW have never made sense.

Let's look at some of the famous zone flow fuck-ups....
Lush Swamp --> Barren Desert
Lush tropical forest --> Desolate frozen wastes
Corrupt desert --> Dense mushroom jungle
Dense Mushroom Jungle --> Spiky mountains

I could go on with that forever. It's been going on for the entire life cycle on the game, cata definitely didn't fix it.

There are some geographic hiccups thru the game yes, but Shalozar has a perfectly valid lore reason to exist, and the rest of the continent is very well put together, IMO. Vanilla has a handful of places that don't make perfect sense, true, but Blizzard is a game company, not a bunch of geologist.

TBC is just a random mess.

Still, beyond the geography, TBC didn't do nearly as well a job of making you care about what you were doing. To me it was just another place to level and get loot most of the time. Yes, there was lore there, but the way it was presented was lacking.

Wrath was like an epic saga that was beautifully narrated.

Also, I don't think you can separate the questing content from the lore just because you don't enjoy questing.

[Deleted]

Gotta go with Cata.
Compared to 3.0. where we had mainly Naxx and a lot of the background lore was from TfT, there's quite a lot of quests where you're involved in things because of Deathwing in Cata.
If you consider Ulduar and stuff it's a lot for WotLK, but we still have to wait till the end of the expansion to compare those two imho.

[4KhazModan]

There is a ton more lore in cata than wrath. Its just not all concerning deathwing. Each and every new zone has new lore, new storylines. If you count cata as 1-60, it beats out wrath by a long shot.

[Flaks]

Cata: Clear out this corruption. Oh deathwing. Oh black dragonflight. Oh twilight's hammer. Oh Cho'gall. Oh nvm they're all corrupted by one thing and we just go around killing them. Oh look war between horde and alliance, let's go kill that horde npc that performs scripted action but let's let that real horde player live cause we're too damn lazy.

WotLK: war between horde and alliance? pish posh look there's a real hordie to go kill. Holy crap look at Wintergrasp its a place I CAN ACTUALLY FLY TO AND DONT NEED TO BE PORTED INTO TO ACCESS IT. People questing? Let's actually try to kill them. Omg arthas' undead are everywhere how will we push them back? But wait, there's trolls that are fighting the corruption but they're doing it all the wrong way. And then there's more trolls that have given into the undead curse but both of them are overzealous and need to be put down. And oh look there's the very foundation titan origination right next to the lich king's doorstep. But wait...its getting corrupted...by something...

The problem with cata is everything is so insanely linear. Every time I level an alt I enjoy the wrath leveling zones a lot more. I've leveled 3 alts and I've yet to do even 90% of the quests there. Whereas I've done all of hyjal, part of vash'jir all of deepholm and all of twilight highlands just getting to 85 on one toon.

[smashzu]

Also, I don't think you can separate the questing content from the lore just because you don't enjoy questing.

The major quest chains have always built up to raids and dungeons, and the biggest pieces of lore always end up in the raids - in the form of bosses.