We're almost 2 months into Mists, and I have a question for all of you!

[Sapphire35]

Nope, Cata was pretty good up until DS. My guild was thriving and doing HMs in 25s until DS. Though admittedly we saw a decline in interest with Firelands. Then Dragon Soul hit with it's almost completely recycled content and boring fights. People lost interest pretty darn quick. People stopped showing up and our core guild which had been raiding strong since Ulduar just dissolved.

I honestly lost faith in Blizzard because of Dragon Soul. I didn't think they were capable of producing such terrible content. Now MoP is here and its a terrific start to an expansion but it's too late. We tried gathering the core but alot just moved on. I want to forgive Blizzard because Mists is really good but they destroyed my guild by releasing content well below their standards.

[Deleted]

I didn't like cata mostly because of the story ( shocking right? ) .
I didn't play in vanilla but it did have some lich king stuff in it . Then it was TBC which i liked because i knew about illidan, kael'thas , burning legion etc , then it was Wotlk which i liked the most , and then cata comes along with a dragon i've never heard before ( i think i read that he was in warcraft 2? didn't play that). MoP....i couldn't care less about the panadaren lore but the story about alliance vs horde is interesting for me. However IF the next expansion is about burning legion again , i can say from now that it will surpass MoP for me ( if done well) and cataclysm will remain forever as the last in the list.
Also i didn't like TB from cataclysm , i do apreciate that they changed almost all of azeroth for low levels.

[Deleted]

T11 was one of the best tiers of raiding in WoW history.

I loved the whole 1-60 revamp a lot.

T13 for 10 months was unfortunately one of the worst.

So imo the only bad thing about cata was T13 and I did not mind it as a raid I minded a lot that we had 8 bosses for 10 months.

[Mawnix]

it's funny. 2 months ago we had people yelling out at how bad cata was. Now we have people questioning if it really was bad. In another 2 months, people will think back on cata and call it "glory-days" jsut like they did with wotlk. The true nature of nostalgia

I never thought it was horrible but I keep seeing people claim "Cata was so fucking awful".

I love Mists.

I liked Cata.

Just curious if, with all these facts, people can really call Cata such a god awful expansion.

[Madruga]

Cataclysm was indeed bad.

The revamp of the world in the 1-60 zones was much needed, but it is clear to see that it took too much resources from the 80-85 zones and the raids. Also, they streamlined the questing too much. Questing once in the new world is a great experience. Leveling the next alts... not so much. Fortunately, leveling is so fast nowadays that you don't feel the questing on rails so much, so all in all, the 1-60 revamp was successfull.

However, the 80-85 zones feel very disjointed. The lore is good, but each zone feel really disconnected from the others. After having quested in Pandaria, I can feel this problem in Cata zones much more. In Pandaria you feel there is some continuity in the stories. Not so with Cata zones.

The dungeons were very problematic. They came from the very easy and laid back dungeons from Wrath to very unforgiven dungeons in Cata. I'll admit it was fun running them with guildies, it was a challenge we could tackle. But running the dungeons with a PUG was a nightmare. 2 hours long, lots of wipes, and probably the group would break midway. I am so glad they changed the difficulty back. Dungeons should be easy and quick. I say that Challenge moes is where you should go if you want a, well, challenge. I'd say Challenge modes in Mists are close to what those 4.0 dungeons were... Fun to go with an organized group, a nightmare with pugs.

Also the idea of making ZA and ZG a separate dungeon "tier" with better Valor rewards was... stupid. ZA and ZG were fantastic, but for the next months until Dragon Soul, we were all running ONLY THEM BOTH repeatedly to cap Valor. Of course they got tiring after a while. Also, it was not a guaranteed run... People were wiping on Jin'do months after ZG was out. So ZA and ZG became very ill-spoken and also made people quit.

And the raids were too challenging as well. Specially for 10 man groups. If you didn't have a strict group composition, you were toast. This made many players simply quit the game. As much beautifull and fun the Tier 11 raids were, it was tiring and stressfull running them, even in Normal mode.

After all that, came another issue... I am PRETTY SURE Blizzard jumped the shark on Cataclysm. They decided to let go of the expansion and focus on the future, namely Mists and probably the next expansion. They shoved Abyssal Maw, turned War of the Ancientes into a dungeon, cut the number of bosses in Firelands and Dragon Soul by half what we had in Tier 11. I am also SURE Zonnoz and Yorshaj were to be bosses in Abyssal Maw, but were rehashed to fit Dragon Soul instead.

I am sure Blizzard wanted Cataclysm to just end. As much as I liked Firelands, and Ragnaros Heroic, we have to admit that both tier 12 and 13 were a bit lackluster.

[TJ]

Same thing happened in Wrath unfortunately.

Wrath gave us a good raid though, I really enjoyed ICC and too many people hated DS.

[Lightfist]

I liked the start of Cataclysm, for the most part. Questing felt a little disjointed, and the old world revamp left something to be desired for Alliance players.

Then Blizzard saw people were leaving, and panicked. They spun their design philosophy on their head and spent the next year and a half whoring themselves out in a vain attempt to stem the tide. Despite the millions of dollars worth of free merchandise they gave away, Cataclysm was still a disaster for their subs. The issue was never difficulty, it was content.

In the beginning, there wasn't enough content for 'casual' players. Towards the end, there wasn't any content for anyone. We got shafted our Neptulon raid, and our only compensation was a couple of revamped heroic dungeons (Troll dungeons, at that. Who the fuck was itching to fight more Trolls? No one? Yeah, thought so). Firelands came out and brought with it a bunch of dailies, which seemed to help some. Then Dragon Soul came out, and killed any chance Cataclysm had of breaking even.

And then Blizzard left its playerbase with a lazily done pile of shit for almost a year. All the while, PVP was fucked in one way or another (not that that's something new, I guess). Blizzard had turned its once proud world into a queue for a single lackluster raid.

I wanted to like Cataclysm. I really, really did. But I couldn't, and I still don't. It was horseshit to me, and it almost made me quit for good.

Bonus hate: Go'el.

[coocoo]

mvallas: while I can understand many of the points you bring up about crz (ugh, not a fan myself)... as an avid fisherman (server first Salty way back then, and had 3 Salty chars before 5.0 hit), you're really missing out on some truly awesome locales in the Pandaria zones where you can fish all by yourself, the neato little fishing related toys, have a good time travelling around doing archaeology (yes, I'm a bit of a nutter with that as well) and in general, drinking in the sights of the world, and hunting rare treasures & other little nuggets.
And more importantly, you should do it now before they mess it up with crz
(and then you can drop out again....) Funny thing is, I've been itching to play Skyrim a bit again too after playing MoP so much, just because... there are bits here & there which remind me of exploring & travelling around in Skyrim which just make me want to go & dive in there again.

[Matson]

This very forum was filled to the brim with complaints on how bad WotLK was, when we were still in WotLK. Then at around midpoint Cata, it was suddenly regarded as the best time WoW has ever had.

People who say how good WotLK was really don't remember how boring and soulless the expansion felt besides the first month+Ulduar. Where every week it felt like you had to do the same old boring raid 4 times a week, just to stay competitive or feel like you were maximizing your character.

I kind of disagree. I haven't seen anyone saying Cata being really good expansion, but atleast being more honest with it. Because Cata really wasn't overall that bad, there were just some things that ruined it later on.

I myself hated WotLK during its time, and I still hate it. I actually hated it so much that instead of playing the game I was one of them who spent more of their time discussing on forums about the game (=whining). At cata start I was enjoying the game more and spent more time playing.
And I think this happens to loads of players. When they like the game they shut up and play. When they don't they move on to forums. This ends up the forums being full of hate post about the current expansion usually.
MoP seems to be the only exception. Haven't seen as many positive posts about the current expansion since.. ever?

[TJ]

I liked the start of Cataclysm, for the most part. Questing felt a little disjointed, and the old world revamp left something to be desired for Alliance players.

Then Blizzard saw people were leaving, and panicked. They spun their design philosophy on their head and spent the next year and a half whoring themselves out in a vain attempt to stem the tide. Despite the millions of dollars worth of free merchandise they gave away, Cataclysm was still a disaster for their subs. The issue was never difficulty, it was content.

In the beginning, there wasn't enough content for 'casual' players. Towards the end, there wasn't any content for anyone. We got shafted our Neptulon raid, and our only compensation was a couple of revamped heroic dungeons (Troll dungeons, at that. Who the fuck was itching to fight more Trolls? No one? Yeah, thought so). Firelands came out and brought with it a bunch of dailies, which seemed to help some. Then Dragon Soul came out, and killed any chance Cataclysm had of breaking even.

And then Blizzard left its playerbase with a lazily done pile of shit for almost a year. All the while, PVP was fucked in one way or another (not that that's something new, I guess). Blizzard had turned its once proud world into a queue for a single lackluster raid.

I wanted to like Cataclysm. I really, really did. But I couldn't, and I still don't. It was horseshit to me, and it almost made me quit for good.

Bonus hate: Go'el.

Sums up my thoughts pretty much, it just didn't deliver and failed miserably.

[TrapTripper]

I liked cata... it followed the main storylines


mists is just WTF?? crap story split story

[Lightfist]

I liked cata... it followed the main storylines


mists is just WTF?? crap story split story

What main story? The story of cheesy, bad writing?

"Oh, yeah, Thrall. We were totally just empowered by the Titans to stop Deathwing (who didn't blow up Azeroth until he was 5 minutes from death because lol). We're just gonna give up our powers now so you mortals can handle yourselves. Peace."

"It's Go'el now."

"Shut the fuck up, Aggra. No one likes you, you cunt."

[TrapTripper]

What main story? The story of cheesy, bad writing?

"Oh, yeah, Thrall. We were totally just empowered by the Titans to stop Deathwing (who didn't blow up Azeroth until he was 5 minutes from death because lol). We're just gonna give up our powers now so you mortals can handle yourselves. Peace."

"It's Go'el now."

"Shut the fuck up, Aggra. No one likes you, you cunt."

I've just spent all day reading the burning legion, titans, old gods, medivh.. Khadgar and kel'thuzad, well of eternity, maelstrom Lady Vash.... Ner'zhul Guldan and mannoroth ..... and now up to dragonflights

where do pandas story fit with the main antagonists.... nowhere thats where

[Osmeric]

But, can you guys tell me why Cata was so bad?

Because they overtuned the endgame for most players until the latter part of the last tier.

And they have repeated this in MoP.

[TJ]

I've just spent all day reading the burning legion, titans, old gods, medivh.. Khadgar and kel'thuzad, well of eternity, maelstrom Lady Vash.... Ner'zhul Guldan and mannoroth ..... and now up to dragonflights

where do pandas story fit with the main antagonists.... nowhere thats where

How are pandas antagonists?..

[Lightfist]

I've just spent all day reading the burning legion, titans, old gods, medivh.. Khadgar and kel'thuzad, well of eternity, maelstrom Lady Vash.... Ner'zhul Guldan and mannoroth ..... and now up to dragonflights

where do pandas story fit with the main antagonists.... nowhere thats where

And I've spent the last 6 years reading up on WoW lore.

Pandaren have a very small place in Warcraft lore, and that's fine by me. You can introduce new story elements.

What isn't fine with me is butchering lore that made sense and replacing it with nonsense.

---------- Post added 2012-11-20 at 10:23 AM ----------

Because they overtuned the endgame for most players until the latter part of the last tier.

And they have repeated this in MoP.

...I sincerely doubt raiding or heroics being 'too hard' (Dragon Soul wasn't really that hard to begin with, as far as I remember) was even a factor after the first tier. Raids were easier to get into than ever by the end of Cataclysm, and yet people were still leaving in droves.

[Yalingo]

Cataclysm started off with such promise. 85 Heroics were awesome, T11 was the best tier in WoW.

Unfortunately that's where it ended. Unfulfilled promises with an underwater raid, Dragon Soul being the worst raid in WoW's history, firelands closely behind... slow content release... The only time I've unsubbed from wow.

[Osmeric]

...I sincerely doubt raiding or heroics being 'too hard' (Dragon Soul wasn't really that hard to begin with, as far as I remember) was even a factor after the first tier. Raids were easier to get into than ever by the end of Cataclysm, and yet people were still leaving in droves.

By the end of Cataclysm, yes. But completion stats dropped precipitously going into T11 and then into T12. The number of people going through the raid content had fallen too much, which is why they gave up with the massive FL nerf, with LFR, and the downtuning/progressive nerf of DS. The loss of subs plateaued for a long time after the nerfs, before the final dip, which I think we can blame on boredom more than anything else.

Raid completion stats in T14 normal mode (never mind heroic) are very low right now.

[TrapTripper]

Pandaren have a very small place in Warcraft lore, and that's fine by me. You can introduce new story elements.

the troggs murlocs and naga are more in the story than pandas.... seriously

[Mawnix]

By the end of Cataclysm, yes. But completion stats dropped precipitously going into T11 and then into T12. The number of people going through the raid content had fallen too much, which is why they gave up with the massive FL nerf, with LFR, and the downtuning/progressive nerf of DS. The loss of subs plateaued for a long time after the nerfs, before the final dip, which I think we can blame on boredom more than anything else.

Raid completion stats in T14 normal mode (never mind heroic) are very low right now.

Not a lot of people raid, surprisingly.