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

[fredsterr]

Good to know you know what we think. plus your order goes from worst to best right. Otherwise it doesn't make sense.

no one is going to agree on worst to best...I do think Wrath is right up there with TBC for best...Vanilla shouldn't be in there I feel because it was the base game.. more or less the ground work to build on for any MMO.

[mysticx]

No, Cataclysm was that bad...

Vash'ir had good quests (The battlemaiden questline), but the WoW engine isn't built for 3D combat, the 1-60 revamp took up too much development time and mostly consisted of wrecking pretty places and the "Suddenly: horde all over the place"-routine (Yeah, i play Alliance), the 5-mans were aggravating, Deathwing as a character was butchered and a lot of Alliance questing was scrapped (Entering twilight highlands lifting along with a webcomic character? REALLY?) or plain stupid (The much-maligned dwarven wedding)

All in all, Cataclysm deserves the hate it gets...

[Solidsteel]

If you want to look at subs alone then it wasn't near as bad as MoP has been, especially with 4 or 5 more months of the same old shit still to come.

[Lothaeryn]

Amazing Start, that was all Cataclysm had going for it.

Once you reached level cap and started raiding, there was literally nothing else to do at level cap unless you were achievement farming or trying to level up professions and Archaeology. Everything else was trivial dailies that almost rewarded you with nothing worth the effort of grinding.

They had mountains of potential for that expansion and decided to cop out and not put forth the effort of completing it. If you ask me, Cataclysm is the expansion that never ended, as half of it is in the game and almost anything put in afterwards was a half assed attempt at producing content. Also, a good portion of design decisions that negatively impact the game still persist after MoP.

[Deleted]

I can't tell if the OP means that they thinks Wrath is the best using > as greater than, or if they are using it as arrows and saying that they think that Vanilla is the best, either way to say that Cata was better than either is blasphemy.

[Dormie]

It's not that I necessarily disliked Cata content. It's that the whole expansion dragged on with not much to do. Nothing exciting after you did it a couple times. It had amazing potential, the bliz chickened out after the first patch.

[Chrispotter]

Cataclysm was an amazing expansion, until Dragon Soul. Dragon soul really ruined it.

[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.

The most significant effect of MoP is that it makes Cata feel tolerable in comparison. Just as Cata made Outland feel less annoying. Before it was "oh crap, not this shit again, let's grind through it ASAP to get to Northrend..." After Cata it became "no rush, anything that pushes Cata (& MoP) a little further away is only positive..."

[Deleted]

The only GOOD things to come from Cataclysm were:

1) Worgen
2) Goblins
3) Flight in Azeroth

------------------------------------
Thinks that sucked:

1) Zones too far apart
2) Underwater zone was horrible
3) Dungeons were hardly inspired, except maybe for Vortex Pinnacle or Halls of Origination
4) Bastion of Twilight, and other lackluster raids
5) Destruction of the Barrens, and Stormwind
6) Unlocking Race/Class combos and still fucking the Gnomes out of a Hunter class
7) Molten Front dailies
8) Tol Barad
9) Archaeology

and the list just keeps going.

TB was great. Gnome hunter doesn't make sense. BoT was great, on both difficulties, and Sinestra was a tough boss. The dungeons were amazing IMO.

[Spotnick]

Biggest issue for me with Cataclysm was merging 10 and 25 difficulties and lockouts in raiding. By doing that, they cut half of the content many people were doing, which I still don't understand.

It completely killed 25 man raiding, and that got to the biggest decline in WOW history.

It was a ton of fun to do heroic 10 man achievements on off-nights while working on 25 man in your main raid, that completely killed it. People had to play alts now to do the same, and it was a harder.

Then Cata hit, all 10 man alt runs went to the sewers because the difficulty was harder, it took them 3 years to figure it out and introduce flex.

The other biggest problem was the ramp up of difficulty in Firelands, the difficulty between everything else and Ragnaros (in heroic) was insane, and killed many MANY guilds.. I personally gave up 25 man raiding due to wiping for too long on Ragnaros and losing people due to that.. and came back to do Dragon Soul in 10 man later.

As for Dragon Soul.. it was ok, but nothing close to the usual end of expansion raids. Way too short for the duration obviously, and icing on the cake was introducing nerfs WAY TOO SOON, like 1 month after release.

But there was ton of stuff people didn't see in Cata, the quest revamp is pretty nice, the goblin starting zone is just pure awesomeness, I was not a fan of having quest zones in many different places, but that's another story.. with phasing now they managed to make Barrens a daily zone last tier, so maybe we'll see more of that in the future.

[raviadso]

I don't think it was nearly as bad as people said, but most of the work that Blizz did was on non-end-game content, which most people haven't even experienced. Going back and levelling 9,000%+ better, but the end game was the weakest of any expac to date including MoP

[TJ]

I think I actually preferred Cata to MoP.. MoP is horrible in so many ways, at least in Cata it was easier to gear/have alts and PvP was a BIT better balanced. There was a lot of horrible things about it, though. For me, MoP and Cata are very close. Wrath shits on both unlimited times, though.

[Deleted]

I think it's mostly because of the main theme of the expansion, which is odd and doesn't fit in with the Warcraft universe. From battling fearsome demons, defeating the king of the damned and the Aspect of Death to cuddling with chubby panda bears :-)


inb4 'but hey taft, there was one silly side comic relief quest in Warcraft 3, this totally justifies building an entire expansion around it!'

Yeah we should totally keep reliving the past, & basing the current plot off of old lore, instead of actually creating new lore & moving the story forward ...

Oh wait, you've got your wish : WoD awaits you ...

;P

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Cataclysm had some epic prologue. Unfortunately the bumps made it rough.

[Resentful]

Cata was fine until the fucking disaster of Dragon soul like that shit was so fucking horrible it made me wanna quit the game which I did mind you. The only good things about cata are the following in my opinion anyway.

1) T11
2) Heroic Raganaros
3) Pureblood firehawk :O
4) Lol rogues in pvp

[Deviant]

It's not that I necessarily disliked Cata content. It's that the whole expansion dragged on with not much to do. Nothing exciting after you did it a couple times. It had amazing potential, the bliz chickened out after the first patch.

"Nothing exciting after you did it a couple times" Can't the same be said about everything.... in wow. Chickened out how... heroic za and zg dungeons were still hard at launch and fire lands wasn't a walk in the park either. Dragons soul is where they fucked up if u ask me.

- - - Updated - - -

I think it's mostly because of the main theme of the expansion, which is odd and doesn't fit in with the Warcraft universe. From battling fearsome demons, defeating the king of the damned and the Aspect of Death to cuddling with chubby panda bears :-)


inb4 'but hey taft, there was one silly side comic relief quest in Warcraft 3, this totally justifies building an entire expansion around it!'

NOOOOOOPE or should I say mope?

Wotlk > Bc > Vanilla > MoP > Cataclysm

If it hadn't been for Failclysm and Mists this game would still have 11 million + subscribers

We aren't cuddling with pandas. We took our problems to panda land and our now trying to fix the mistakes we made before they become a problem for Azeroth. Once again the whole point of the expansion is to unite both the horde and alliance not sure if it worked but eh.

[Jaymega]

I hated Cata because as a new player my expectations were high and Blizz let me down.

1: I never cared about WoW until friends started talking about Wrath of the Lich King. I recall a conversation with a friend where I asked what a Lich was. All the same, people loved Wrath but I was too busy with life to remember to even google Warcraft.

2: When i was leaving the Army, I finally had time enough to get into something since the unit was still deployed. I looked into WoW and got blown away by Cata. This was 1 week before launch.

3: I started playing Cata. It was fun, scary at times (heroics) but generally it drew me in.

-----Here is where it went downhill for me------

4: I began to wonder about this "deathwing fellow". I rarely saw him and he was barely mentioned. Even when I saw him torch a zone it was "meh" since I got an achieve for it. I quickly lost interest in the guy.

5: I went back into Northrend and found that I was really digging the whole theme. I looked into things and began talking to people and I learned about the lore of Arthas. Watched some patch cinematics and actually had feels over the Wrath Gate. I found myself wishing I started playing when Wrath launched rather than Cata.

6: I looked up lore on Deathwing since someone got upset that I considered him just some stupid dragon not even deserving of a name. When i researched, I saw why this person was mad. Deathwing has a good deal of lore. He is a cool character. The problem was that in the context of the game he may as well be a friggin Murloc with higher HP. Seriously, Blizz fucked Deathwing.


So for me, I started the game really into everything from the story, to gameplay. But Cata actually conditioned me to not giving a shit about some silly dragon and only care about epic gear. Cho'Gall would have made a better end boss since Cho'Gall actually killed my team and scared the piss out of me during that quest. Hell, I still have a vendetta against Nefarian too since he kept talking shit during BWD and rubbed it in when we wiped. Fuck that guy!!! But Deathwing? Who cares. He is nothing.

I like RPG's. I don't care on what medium. I just like good stories that draw me in and make me want to kill a bad guy. That is what keeps me trying over and over again to win. Wow is an MMO but it is also an RPG (in name at least). In my opinion, Wrath was a beautiful RPG while cata was just shit.

- - - Updated - - -

Once again the whole point of the expansion is to unite both the horde and alliance not sure if it worked but eh.

All well and good but Blizz said at Blizzcon they were bringing teh war back in warcraft and led peopel to beleive that the Horde and Alliance conflict would ramp up.

They said nothing or even implied that we would join together. So saying that it was the entire point of Mists does not really make me feel better about it.

[Notdev]

- snip -

Yeah, WoTLK did a great job with having LK/Arthas show up in almost every questing zone. IIRC Deathwing showed up in like two quests and flew around for the entire expac.

[Mihalik]

Cata started good.

But overall it was a massive fail for a variety of reasons, beyond Dragon Soul.

1, The New World is boring and not re-playable. At all. Thus the leveling experience is piss poor.

2, Many of the new zones were conceptually great but utterly poorly implemented, see Vashj'ir and Deepholm, or the dumb fuckery that they managed to do to Uldum.

3, PvP was broke as fuck. End of expansion Rogues (especially with Legendary Daggers) and casters with the Legendary Staff that was effectively farmable.

4, The Dungeons started out great, but too hard for LFD. They were a breeze for organised groups, with simple skills such as interrupting, but neigh impossible for the LFD crowd.

5, The Troll Dungeons were great, but the Dragon Soul ones were terribad.

6, Dragon Soul was a horrible raid. Lame as all fuck. It could have been tolerated as a in between raid, but not as an end of expansion raid.

7, AND THIS WAS THE BIGGEST SIN OF IT ALL. It lacked the feel factor other expansions had. (Feel factor I mean, theme, lore and environment, at this WotLK was the absolute uncontested champ) Even MoP does a better job with the feel factor, tho MoP also suffers from a trillion problems, but with the exception of the early dailies burn out and the worst Legendary quest line ever, all the other problems were inherited from Cata. The stupid 5 mans, the broken pvp, LFR etc.

[dashflash890]

Cataclysm was decent to me. MOP was ehhhh imo. Playable but doesnt get me to log in to the game.