Why I think Cata was Great

[melodramocracy]

Here's what was good about Cata, IMO:

Badlands revamp.
Silverpine Forest revamp.
Deepholm.
Starter 5 man difficulty (but not the instances themselves)
Well of Eternity (I know, scripted, etc. I still enjoyed it)
A few Firelands bosses.

And uhhh... yep, that's about it. Everything else seemed like a handbook on how not to create an expansion. I spent most of the expansion unsubbed, and even that wasn't enough.

[Klingers]

I thought 4.0 was awesome, well thought out and there was plenty to do; But everything from then on everything with the exception of Firelands was anemic content, lazy corner cutting, shodily implemented back-up plans and bad organization.

[Goatfish]

I thought Cata had a lot going for it. It was arguably the weakest expansion but it was by no means bad. Pity it ended on a bad note with DS (which wasn't all bad either IMO), the earlier content was excellent. Launch heroics were divisive but personally I thought they were fantastic.

It's an assessment of quality, it is literally impossible for that not to be an opinion.

As someone who thoroughly enjoyed WoW until cataclysm came out, it was so garbage, and the devs took such a change on design philosophy and how they think of their players that I quit within 3 months. This is big, I enjoyed the game so much that I played an expansion I thought was god awful AS WELL AS THE BETA before that for 3 months before I finally lost hope and quit. I honestly get surprised that people don't even care when blizzard devs straight up insult their players or treat them like toddlers.

As far as an assessment of quality being an opinion and nothing else...



These eggs are burnt and practically inedible. They will not taste very good and will have a bad texture. This is not an opinion, the very few who disagree with these facts are not evidence of the previous being 'just an opinion'. They are outliers with no real value. I can argue that 2+2=4 is only an opinion because 2+2 may actually equal 22, but that doesn't make the whole system of mathematics an opinion, it makes me an asshole who can't accept known facts and processes and tries to force my ridiculous beliefs on others.

[straws]

Hahahahahahahahaha..
Glasses of nostalgia are indeed rosy.
In BC, vanilla was good, BC sucks.
In Wrath, BC was good , wrath sucks.
In Cata , omg Wrath was so awesome, cata sucks.
And Now in Mists, Cata was good.

Each expansion had good things and bad things, and you seem to remember good things. Since you have posted why it was good, I will list the reasons it was bad-

1) Old world revamp was much needed , but it costed us content, anyone remember 3 months of 4.1 patch, the Zul-again patch, the cut under sea raid that was hinted at in some builds of cata beta.
2)80-85 leveling zones were horribly disjointed, no real flow of story or sense to why we were hopping one zone to another.
3)Really bad balance at start, certain healer/dps/tank spec were utterly shit and it took them long time to fix them.
4)Dragon soul. Ugh, recycled zone, bland bosses, stupid mechanics.Quality of encounters was good in BoT and BWD, but the high point of raiding in cataclysm was firelands and compared to that DS was an utter disappointment.

[Deleted]

I loved Cataclysm.

For me, it was one of the best expansions, only WotLK and TBC were more fun to me. Cataclysm brought a balanced amount of Daily Quests. Had interesting 5 man dungeons (while most people did not like the challenge). Raids were fun to me.

And it had a lot of love for low level content, while the balance continued to get screwed thruout Cataclysm.

Compared to Cataclysm, WoD looks like a crime, and we players are the ones that get punished by removing flying, adding no new race or class, limiting raiding content even more, removing skills..

- - - Updated - - -

I can argue that 2+2=4 is only an opinion because 2+2 may actually equal 22, but that doesn't make the whole system of mathematics an opinion, it makes me an asshole who can't accept known facts and processes and tries to force my ridiculous beliefs on others.

Theres a difference between

"2+2=4"

and

"I dont like Cataclysm"

[Trickname]

"Dragon Soul didn't exactly meet expectations, and as the defining raid of the expansion; people judged Cata mostly off of it"

Not really;

Questing was way too linear and the leveling process felt really disjointed with the zones spread out (though Vashj'ir and Uldum were awesome zones bar pop-culture refs).

Heroics were nerfed after mere few weeks of whining.

Firelands had too few bosses to keep it interesting.

The new 5 mans were easier than the original 5 mans.

Only putting zone portals in SW and Org...yes you have choice as to where you want to hang out but have fun if it's not one of these cities.

I agree with the setting for the DS raid but it all just felt a bit anti-climatic killing the final villain by murdering adds.

I'd bring up daily questing but after MoP they weren't at all bad in Cata.

[Facerockker]

No...that's pretty much entirely your opinion, not fact.

Cataclysm was full blown mess that was nothing but overpromised and underdelivered. We were promised a smooth succession of raid tiers but instead we got some old content bumped up to our level and an entire dungeon that never made it into the game. We were told that Heroics would have a very definitive level of difficulty that required a decent amount of coordination with other players, but that philosophy evaporated mid-way through the expansion when Blizzard retracted this idea instead of allowing players to acclimate to the more challenging dungeons.

PvP was undeniably all over the place, with specs like Arms warriors and Frost mages soaring in power, various healers becoming practically unkillable, and an end-game raid that hinged on players completing PvP content that dropped both PvE and PvP gear - and even sometimes gear for only one class - which was confusing as not all players who raid PvP and vice versa. Sure you didn't have to PvP to do Tol Barad, but why raid it if you might get gear for a completely different side of the game? Why would players who predominantly play PvP want to coordinate a raid when they can just get the equipment on their own? A good idea on paper, but unnecessary.

Deathwing's presence was nearly non-existent, especially when compared to the likes of Arthas. We saw bits and pieces of Deathwing, where he spent his time and where he came from, but he wasn't there. He didn't interact with the players or the story in any way which left us wandering the world with no real purpose. Okay, some things are messed up, and there are some quest chains to complete, but then what? There was no driving factor, no end goal. Wrath of the Lich King had Naxxramas, and then Ulduar, and then ToC to look forward to as far as a general story goes. We didn't hate Deathwing like we hated the Lich King or hated Illidan. He was just a pissed off dragon who only showed up at the very end of the expansion. Some storylines were caused or influenced by him, sure, like Deepholm, but there was nothing to tie it together.

The zones were odd and disjointed, and none of them felt connected they way say Northrend came together. One minute you're underwater and the next you're in the middle of the earth itself. From the moment you stepped foot onto Pandaria, you felt the full implications of the sha in an instant. That just didn't happen when you got to Uldum or Hyjal. Uldum's storyline was moderately influenced by Deathwing, but he didn't really interact with the zone at all. You had to dig deep and really look for the influence that Deathwing had; despite the "cataclysm" he made, you were hard pressed to feel the main antagonist's presence in the world you were in.

But hey, that's just my opinion, right?

[Stacie]

Things i did not enjoy with cata:
Long instances (but soon into expan could forget about these)
Quests (Boring but again soon didn't have to worry about these)
Rep grind (Never enjoy them but again not a problem after first tier anyway)

Loved most the raid tiers and tier sets also, oh and we could fly like in MOP and Wrath and BC... I think WoD is going to be a disappointment it seams to be bringing back the worst of cata long with no flying atm. Hope the raid tiers are good to keep me subbed.

[bigrichard]

Cataclysm was the only WoW era in which my subscription never expired. I guess I really liked it.

[Knough]

I didn't like inability to get into raids. So I made lots of alts.
It was lovely QoL for alts.

[Ohmygonzo]

Cataclysm was bad. It's not an opinion, it's just an unfortunate fact. The revamped 1-60 zones aren't particularly interesting, leveling is an absolutely joke so the new old world content doesn't matter anyway, Worgen starting zone was an absolute snorefest while Goblin's was much more exciting, the hard content so many people worked at was stripped away because Blizzard catered to the most casual side of their player base and sucked all the fun out of Heroics, Hyjal's story was disjointed and was overpopulated at launch while Vashj'ir was just overly arduous and not that fun, Tol Barad had not only no flying but an end level raid that required players to do PvP and dropped PvP gear, Firelands was pushed back a patch and an entire dungeon was just completely cut altogether, ZG and ZA were just filler content, Frost death knight became massively overpowered mid expansion... Need I go on?

But, but Firelands was awesome? ... <3
Other than that, that was the expansion when I lost the feeling of wow, and hoping i get it back with WoD.

[Lochton]

I found cataclysms problem to be that of horrible execution.

Loved the zones added, many of the quests and changes. And this is where many sometimes hate me but Vashj'ir was awesome an a PvP enabled server, it was basicly a dome of battle around the Alliance and Hordes. You could attack from above, below and the sides, think they should rethink and bring something like so for a BG.

But don't think it was executed right, wasn't brought out as a good feeling.

But all in all, you cannot claim fact on it being bad, it is your own opinions vs. other opinions.

[Deleted]

Your thoughts?

They had some good ideas and good intentions, but the execution was catastrophic.

[Deleted]

Wasn't the best but wasn't that bad. The early 5 mans and raids (BOT,BWD,TOFW,FL) were really good and were just right in difficulty balance I thought. What let it down for me was Tol Barad, DS, some butchering of old content, and a lot of crappy looking tier and armour sets and wasted goblin and worgen cities.

EDIT: Oh and Well of Eternity was amazing they should of made the end tier out of that.

[Zka]

It was bad. Some issues:
- redoing the old world: okay, it looks good and the quests are better, but you outlevel them quickly no matter what you do, then the whole thing becomes annoying/pointless. It took me ~3 years to finally have ONE character leveling 1-50 purely on quests. Then I outleveled and gave up. I ONLY had the guild XP bonus, nothing else. With looms, I would have bailed around ~15. So much resources wasted on this broken experience.

- harder 5mans were good on the first week with the guild. Later on they were a curse with or without an organized team. I mean anyone who ever did heroic Deadmines in a random group... Sometimes it lasted 1.5h+, total pain in the ass. Even with a guild it was 30-45 mins. Who the hell wants to run so much for almost worthless rewards?

- raids: some 10man heroic raids encounters were much harder than 25m, some of them impossible in the beginning. These blatant tuning issues were ignored for ~2 months. T11 wasn't bad (some things like 1sec interrupt at Maloriak HC were idiotic) but FL was mediocre and DS was an abomination.

- daily quest galore. This is my most hated content type therefore I'm not happy when they add dailies. If I need rewards then I'm suffering from doing them. If I don't need rewards then it's just wasted "content" for me. Either way it's bad.

- LFR: I never liked doing LFR and I think it furthered the destruction of casual guilds and communities, which leads to losing subs.

[Deleted]

Cata was great for us alt-o-holics. You could earn full valor with 4 dungeons and then convert them to conquest so I could actually play all my 6 alts.


Mop sure went downhill quite badly after that :-/

[McNeil]

Another Cata thread? I already made a wall of text in the previous thread why I think Cata sucked.. don't feel like finding it back now.

Oh well in short:

Boring raids and dungeons, awful PvP and battlegrounds, bad lore, lul Deathwing going herp derp, zones disconnected, linear questing, Dragon Soul sucks, new races were okay though.

[Raikh]

T11 + heroic dungeons were one of the most amazing tiers so far and I greatly enjoyed it.

Firelands + new hyjal stuff was also pretty good, what it lacked was quantity, 8 Bosses weren't really enough, especially as it had only raggi being brutal. The rest wâs not necessarily easy, but we had not a step up slowly leading towards the end like ToT and SoO for example and so it got boring relatively fast, had they actually managed to bring abyssal maw on it would've been really amazing, assuming the maw would atleast feature 4 additional bosses.

Dragon soul was the thing that was bad. Lore and game play wise. Number of bosses lacked, design was a bit plain, zone felt unappropiate, dungeons were beyond easy and deathwing which was supposed to be the climax, the final battle wasn't too epic, as spine was just incredibly ugly as a boss, it was just unenjoyable and a laughable road block.
Madness didn't live up to anything, incredibly repititive, no really interesting mechanic besides kill that thing in x seconds or boom. It only had atmosphere at all because the location was the maelstrom any battle there would've a somewhat epic atmosphere, but the fight itself was incredibly bad.

Dragon Soul smashed catas rating down considerably. Cata also lacked at some points due to the revamp, but for that it was still pretty good in the first half.

[Schalde]

Cata wasnt bad. The first tier of raiding was very awesome. and the revamp of the old azeroth was remarkable done. but there were too much recycling and DS was not a good raid. ill give it 7/10

[XeroD]

Boring raids and dungeons, awful PvP and battlegrounds, bad lore, lul Deathwing going herp derp, zones disconnected, linear questing, Dragon Soul sucks, new races were okay though.

This, Cata was the worst WoW Expansion to date.