Why did Cataclysm fail?

[Nelfie]

Did it? I really liked it. The areas were beautiful, loved the cutscenes. Amazing dungeons with different settings of nature.

Mists, I left the game within a month of pure boredom. May return in 5.3 though.

[QuizTIC]

why are you trying to present this as some kind of facts, it isn't.

Cataclysm was great IMO

[Well]

It did not fail at all.

[starlord]

not enough dailies.

[owbu]

cata was a neccesary learning expirience about what happens, when you have a really diverse playerbase and not a lot of difficulty levels.

First they tried to just throw hard stuff at casuals and make them learn stuff. That failed horribly. Most groups kick and flame each others in random enviroments, instead of helping each other to succeed.

Then they tried to tell them to just wait for the new content to come out, so that they could play through the nurfed content. That also failey Horribly. Players want to do the new stuff.

So now we have hard (and very hard) stuff without random finder tools and lfs/g/r, where you dont need coordination or teamplay as much.
And we dont have to live in fear, that we will wake up in the morning and have a "why everything was nurfed to the ground!" blog waiiting for us or that the next tier of content will not include any kind of content for us, because everything is tuned for the "hardcores".

It also made leveling in 1-60 fun again.
So thank you cata! You were a very good medicine. You tasted horrible, but now the game is healthy again

[Nobleshield]

I think Cata failed largely because they listened to the people crying how Wrath was too easy and how TBC was the "golden age" and made Cata heroics harder, only to realize too little too late that it was only the vocal minority that wanted hard content and the rest of us wanted some minro challenge without bashing our heads against the wall. T11 was too hard for the average people, leading up to guilds that could do ICC (with buff) breaking up after not being able to get past the first boss(es), same mistake happened in T14 though. Dragon Soul was tuned correctly IMO (barring things like heroic spine at launch) but sucked after it was out for many months, and again the vocal minority cried about it being too easy.

[Syran]

It didn't fail.
/endthread


yaay, can we lock this crap now?

If you're going to assume the arrogant /thread stance you should first define what failure in your term means and why Cata didn't fail under those terms.

The OP said compared to other expansions, so we know we're dealing at least with sub numbers, which were at all time low since Vanilla (objective failure), general population happiness (again, probably tied with sub numbers) and other well-known failures to which even Blizzard admitted.

So what's you're measure?

[Deleted]

Just a notice from reading the thread: People are acting as if subscriptions are lost or made according to how enjoyable the game is. People end their subscriptions to Warcraft for various reasons, yes, general contentedness with the game is one reason, another is the multitude of different games released (as someone said, both RIFT and The Old Republic stole subs) and even that doesn't have to be attributed to those games being better than WoW: they could either be considered "fresher" in the minds of some Subs than WoW, or their friends left for them and the subs had decided they preferred to keep playing with their friends. Also, financially, every expansion before Cataclysm was released before the start of recessions, so it's no wonder that subs started dropping after that hit.

Ironically, while I'm defending the sub loss, I will agree that Cataclysm was the worst expansion for me, personally (note: not a bad expansion, the worst of a great bunch is still relatively good). One thing I noticed is that Role Playing, which was strong during Wrath, died out mid-Cataclysm, each EU RP server (save Argent Dawn) is limited or dead. The levelling experience is fun only once, and the focus on story telling in the zones lead to a repeat of the same stories, with little to no wiggle room or minor things to appreciate. Classwise, as a Warlock, it was a mess for warlocks, between Improved Soul Fire, the lackluster Soul Shard system (that boiled down to "use for a free Soul Fire), and Demonology turning into the most conveluted and silly rotation in the game. I used to love Wintergrasp back in Wrath, but Tol Barad and it's awkward balance for attack/defense left me annoyed. Finally, I didn't raid myself so I can't talk about raiding, but LFR Dragon Soul was lackluster. Reuse locations, that's fine for me since I think it sorta worked (though honestly I think Wyrmrest was a wierd choice) but attacking Deathwing's spine and then curbstomping on his fingers didn't feel exciting. I felt more excitement when I tanked Arthas on my 85 paladin during a guild run for RP gear than I did in Cataclysm fighting Deathwing in LFR.

---------- Post added 2013-05-05 at 06:17 PM ----------

It also made leveling in 1-60 fun again.
So thank you cata! You were a very good medicine. You tasted horrible, but now the game is healthy again

This is actually probably the best quote about Cata. It was bitter to swallow, and during, but now that it's over it's legacy will at least be the foundation on which expansions will be based. It's basically Vanilla 2.0

[Magpai]

Blizzard continued to make a profit during the Cataclysm era. Therefore, Cataclysm did not fail.

[Yuuki Asuna]

You pretty much nailed everything head on from what I've seen or experienced in Cata! I think Blizzard ended up using Cata as an experiment in the end to test out new features for MoP. I wouldn't doubt it. With Transmog, void storage, raid finder, etc. It only makes sense.

[Syran]

I think you can only call it an "objective failure" if you can prove beyond doubt that any MMO only ever had growing numbers of players and thus it could have been expected from Cata and now MoP to continue to add subs.

In reality, every MMO out there has been shedding subs over its life time (just as every game eventually vanishes) - and much much earlier than WoW did. You could check out the graphs at mmodata.net.

WoW gained a lot of those subscriptions back with mists (or gained new subscribers entirely, also an option), so it's hard to look at the numbers and not think that Cataclysm did do something wrong. But, as I said, there are other options.

But, lets be honest. Maybe the decline was inevitable after Wrath, but the confused expansion like Cataclysm certainly didn't help things. From "dungeons are hard" blog to 4.3 "heroics", gutted features, and every other valid complaint, the general consesus really is that Cataclysm was probably the least good of all expansions.

[HeedmySpeed]

Assuming you're talking about "player contentedness" and more specifically "my contentedness" then yes Cata was a failure.

I was content in the first T11. Challenging Heroics (making blue upgrades mean something) and non facerolling raids (making epics epic).

It really wasn't until the sweeping nerfs to T11 when we began to see the overtake of the "casual." Firelands had it's moments but all in all it was pretty mediocre (not the worst but nothing good). Then came the shitstorm that was Dragon Soul and LFR (which was probably a direct cause of Dragon Souls failure in design).

And it just so happens the worst tier of the expansion was the longest.

Aside from that my only critics are:
-Deathwing had no presence unlike Arthas, lore was absent.
-Zones and instances were cut off from each other
-Not enough reason to venture the world

[RickJamesLich]

Totally agree with the OP, Cata in my opinion is either the second worst expansion or tied with Wotlk. Here's my 2 cents on it:

- The extreme nerfs to 5 mans were likely unwarranted, but also, it made it so easy to clear that if you weren't raiding, you'd have nothing to do not long after you got most of the pieces you needed (which was a week or so). Even if you were raiding, if you were capable of clearing all the content, you would have nothing to do afterwards.

- ZA/ZG were awesome the first week, when I realized that there was nothing else besides repeatedly running them, I thought I was going to lose my damn mind by the 4th week

- The Dragonsoul lore stuff came across and rushed and weak. Especially with the dungeons being so easy, between that and LFR, you could pretty much uncovered the whole story in a day with plenty of time to spare. The instances IMO did not feel very polished. Bringing Illidan back was sweet, but it felt like they could do something more epic with him.

- Boring dailies, minus Tol'barad, which I thought was good, but most servers have uneven horde/ally ratio's, this is a problem blizz needs to actually look into fixing

- LFR in general - why try when you can just afk and collect loot?

- The first raid tier was great IMO, but it fell apart quickly after that

- RBG's IMO, have not lived up to the hype. A controlled team game IMO works best for arena, the allure of BG's is the chaotic nature of them, stacking a bunch of healers and aoe'ing a flag that nobody can cap for 5 minutes doesn't come off as pvp for myself.

[Syran]

Failure is not succeeding in the goal or intent.
The goal of an expansion is to keep as much customers as possible tied to your game.
Cataclysm had a retention that is as good, if not better, than any third expansion. So it succeeded.
/thread?

Or maybe the OP tried to say that he didn't enjoy Cataclysm and that he quit.
In that case this thread should be locked by a moderator since that QQ is not allowed in here.

Wow, you really spinned that criteria. Compared to which expansions? You can't just arbitrarily compare expansions between different games (I assume that's what you did here).

Valid complaints are not QQ. If you didn't enjoy something and you complain about it, that's not QQ. That's a complaint. Man, sometimes I wish Blizzard operated like you here and locked all the threads, crying and complaining about dungeons being too hard, attunements, and all the other stuff that was erased from the game.
I mean they didn't enjoy it, so it's QQ right? Oh wait, ...

[Demitorn]

How about the good year of no content?

[Deleted]

I suspect it was undone by a very leading question.

[Syran]

It's the official definition of "failure": Not achieving what you were intended to achieve.

Why not? It's the only objective basis we have.
Or should I listen to people who think that Cataclysm "was supposed to bring them back to 12 million subs"? and therefore failed?

I have yet to read a valid complaint-thread on MMO-c where the OP doesn't attack people for disagreeing with him :')

Sure, go ahead. Make a thread.
I'll probably make the second post where I tell you that I disagree.
Then we get a third post where someone attacks and insults me for disagreeing.

Complaining is perfectly fine as long as the complainer accepts that it is nothing but his opinion.
Users like that are very rare on the internet.
What people love to do is think that their opinion consists out of nothing but facts.
And anyone that disagrees has to be attacked, insulted and trolled!


They do lock threads that aren't constructive.

I didn't mean failure, I meant your 3rd expac definition.
No, you shoudn't listen to those people. But losing 2 million subs to bring the subscription levels back to TBC is hardly a success of an expansion. The result would probably be the same if they hadn't even released the expansion and just continued with Wrath (or probably even better).

And if we actually go by that 3rd expansion criteria, Catacylsm isn't nowhere near the top. Everquest has been never seen a decline drop until after the 5th expansion, EVE not until after 2010 (after god knows how many expansions), ..

[Trassk]

another reason why I felt cataclysm failed, though this was more down to the developers in there choices which seemed a good idea at the time, was how it made the story in world of warcraft become extremely convoluted.

Lets go though wow from the early days of vanilla, right up to wrath of the lich king. Though these years, the story was progressive for all that was in the game. The timeline worked, because our characters started at what felt like the beginning of a vast story, in our starting zones, and progressing though the world around us. We eventually arrive in outland, which after all we did in vanilla, felt like it was a progressing story, we enter the dark portal and fight Illidan and the legion there.
Then, the story still progressing, we travel to northrend and fight the scourge and other stuff there. All this time it felt progressive and like we really were on this journey.

And then, cataclysm happened, and this is where things screw up, and it does bother me how this happened. Instead of our characters beginning at the start of wow's timeline and us going though this journey, all new characters begin after the shattering has occured, and we now level new characters though a changed azeroth from vanilla.
We then take our characters into outland, and this story is meant to be set 4 years ago? and after that we travel to northrend, where is was set two years ago?

So, because of cataclysm, the continuity of outland and northrend just feel they have no importance to the story anymore, where as even in wrath of the lich king era, the expansions felt they have a progressive story involving vanilla, outland and northrend.

I do dislike leveling characters now, not because of the starting zones, but because having to go though 20 levels of tbc and wrath, it feels almost a hollow experience now.

[Peacemoon]

I think Blizzard with Cata seemed like they had no overall vision for what they wanted the expansion to be about. The whole project was disjointed and they needed a better lead producer I think.

Half the expansion was about redoing the 1-60 experience. But because of all the ways to skip it, through heirlooms and dungeon spam, all that effort was largely wasted. Its a shame because they are actually pretty decent (apart from 1 or 2, like Redridge Mountains). So straight away you have a large part of the expansion aiming in the wrong direction.

Secondly they wanted to fill the blank spaces in Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor, but with the portals to the new zones from the capital city, it just made the 80-85 experience feel disconnected. The zones themselves had no overall theme. They didn't seem connected at all, it was like 5 mini adventures rather than one large one. The questing experience was shit, linear and horrible to repeat. Especially Uldum. And I am a big quest lover.

Blizzard ignored those of us with a bit of intelligence who said there were problems with the LFD system, and so they had to experience its colossal failure for themselves before they would act on our advice. Throw random anonymous people together and you get people trying to rush the dungeon, no teamwork and lots of abuse. The dungeon experience was DIRE and it was all Blizzards creation because they would not listen to feedback and were fixated on pushing cross-realm. Doesn't take a scientist to know how people on the internet are going to act, and why throwing hard heroics at them was not a good idea.

Where I disagree with the OP is 4.2. I really think the Molten Front content saved the expansion from otherwise being worse then it already was.

Lets try to forget how you could get better items from Hall of Origination then the 4.0 raids however.

Lets be thankful that Blizzard learned quickly and corrected a lot of mistakes for MoP.

[Blaupunkt]

Burning Crusade was the best expansion by far... Hard heroics which actually was fun to run, not like wotlk, cata and mop were you just pull like 2-4packs every time.. I know that this reply to this post has Nothing to do with it, just wanted to say what I have felt and experienced during My time in world of warcraft..

Kk thx