So I guess Cataclysm is suddenly good?

[Tomana]

If you're implying that making dungeons require competence to complete was a "mistake," I call bullshit on this claim. Heroic dungeons were no where near "beyond PuG difficulty."

You're free to call bullshit on whatever you want, that won't remove the fact that ramping up dungeon difficulty once the LFD was introducted was idiotic and led to the biggest loss of subs of all wow history. Especially after the level of heroics in Wotlk.

I'm no one man army, and I NEVER had a problem with Cataclysm heroics. Not even ZA/ZG. I just didn't take every opportunity to pick a fight with people while running dungeons.

Good for you (and neither did I), but a lot of people simply chain wiped in a lot of heroics, especially stuff like Deadmines. You can't expect random people to plow through Cata-level heroics, especially with remarks like "stop doing content if it's too hard for you". And they massively showed their displeasure. Blizzard reacted but the harm was done.

Blizzard should have stuck to their guns on this one. People that found heroics too difficult could always just do normal max level dungeons (or at least, they could in the past, but they removed them.) Frankly, if you want the gear, you put in the damn effort.

You freaking can't expect a random LFD group to "put in the damn effort". BC heroics required that, but they required a manually picked group.

If blizzard regrets that decision, I worry for the future difficulty of this game. I'm not worried that gear will be "handed out," I'm worried that no challenging content will exist anymore.

That's what Challenge Modes and heroic raids are there for. Not level 90 5-mans.

---------- Post added 2013-02-15 at 09:42 PM ----------

I remember back in the burning crusade people crying for vanilla servers and hating tbc as casual and giving out free epics.

Indeed, the QQ was memorable. I guess those people went back playing Lineage or whatever extra-hardcore stuff they did before wow.

[Thatwsntmilk]

That's what Challenge Modes and heroic raids are there for. Not level 90 5-mans.

Personally I never liked the idea of killing a boss with red flames around him, then blue, then green etc. and Blizzard (and the uber fanbois) calling it separate content.

[YouAreAllWrong]

Cataclysm will be "BEST XPAC EVA!!!1" in the next expansion. Because that's how the trend goes.
WotLK - Vanilla was the best.
Cata -TBC was awesome!, Vanilla sucked.
MoP -WotLK was superawesome, everything before it sucked!
WoWx5 - Cata BEST XPAC EVA!!!1, everything before it sucked!

[Deleted]

Nostalgia in a nutshell.

I remember quite large parts of both vanilla and TBC (and for that matter certain parts of later expansions) sucking major ass too.

[Pann]

Cataclysm will be "BEST XPAC EVA!!!1" in the next expansion. Because that's how the trend goes.
WotLK - Vanilla was the best.
Cata -TBC was awesome!, Vanilla sucked.
MoP -WotLK was superawesome, everything before it sucked!
WoWx5 - Cata BEST XPAC EVA!!!1, everything before it sucked!

I think you might just be the first person to say that in this thread.

[velde046]

Anyone else noticing the gradual nostalgia that's growing on these forums lately? I'm seeing a lot of "Pandaria is boring, at least Cata had XYZ" popping up, and if you look at their posts from last year near the end of Cata they were ripping it a new one in their comments.

I think we all knew this was going to happen, I just find it funny that it's happening so early this time around.

Not really, I do see several posts from people saying M<oP is boring them, but there aren't that many posts where people mention they preferred Cata on any level....
unless you think a handful is a lot I think I must disagree.

[Velshin]

Cataclysm wasn´t great, and had plenty flaws. But Mop is worse in most regards. I still like Cata better for adding new instances for each patch even though it was reused.

They want people out into the world - fine, but they still have all quests within the same zone and there really is no reason to go to other areas than the Shado-pan quartermaster since there is one who has all the vp items anyway. So besides the story it feels forced (lure people out - don´t just tell them) and sort of like band aid solutions.

Sorry but I disagree with you...there are so many reasons to go out in pandaria world other than dailies and shado pan valor quartermaster. Such as farming rare mobs, farming treasures vanity items scattered in the world...and much more. Just because you don't like these stuff doesn't mean you are forced to do them it's just optional vanity stuff.

[Deleted]

Everyone has their view on what was good and what wasn't. I myself really enjoyed Wotlk but cata did take a while to properly lift off.

[Deleted]

True TS. Its annoying. And its REALLY annoying with people like "i played in vanilla it was way better than", yeah, right. Swollow your "proudness" of being a vanillaplayer and face the fact. It was a new game, a new, big, good one. If you cant see the difference between a new game and a 8 year old one...

TBH, i think MoP is good. Its way better than Cataclysm. But again, thats MY opinion. I liked Wotlk alot, yes, i did, but MoP aint far behind.

[Deleted]

Everyone has their view on what was good and what wasn't. I myself really enjoyed Wotlk but cata did take a while to properly lift off.

True enough. I had more fun in Wotlk and Cata than I had in vanilla and tbc, even though I did mostly the same thing in all four, so to speak.

And for a game of WoW's size and variety, my level of fun is what I'll rate it's quality on. So Wotlk and Cata was pretty good.

[Tomana]

Personally I never liked the idea of killing a boss with red flames around him, then blue, then green etc. and Blizzard (and the uber fanbois) calling it separate content.

You may not like it (and in itself it is perfectly understandable), but nowadays, the only economically defensible way to push content is to extend the use of the said content to the maximum available playerbase. Simply put: you cannot afford developing something that will only be seen by a small fringe of the wow population and leave the others out in the cold. Consequently, developing a BC-style raid system is no longer doable - there cannot be a second Sunwell. Too much money to sink in and too much stuff at stake. Hence the tiered raid system which was put together through Cata and the dungeon tiered system we see in MOP.

[Nilinor]

Cataclysm still sucked, MoP is better, Cataclysm will never be good, WoTLK was fun, BC was good, but annoying, Vanilla is rose-tinted glasses so no comment.

[Deleted]

The problem with Cataclysm, apart from lack of content, is it didn't really do anything new, except raid finder which is a bit of a disaster. TBC set the template for what an expansion should be, and WotLK overhauled/dumbed down many of the game's mechanics to make the encounters more like an action game (a divisive issue) as well as adding a whole new form of casual end-game. Cataclysm did nothing. It started with an extended Vanilla nostalgia trip which was the equivalent of a decrepit Paul McCartney playing Hey Jude for the Queen. Then we got some tentacles for a year and recycled dragonblight and that was it.

As for the Panda legacy, it's too early to say until the next expansion. At least they have a goal this time (reforming the non-raid side of the end-game). It's too focused on dailies at the moment but they have time to get it right in 5.3 etc.

[Seezer]

No, Cata sucked. The problem is, MoP isn't any better.

That just isn't possible. Cata will forever be known as WoW's period of shit.

---------- Post added 2013-02-15 at 11:10 PM ----------

And everyone knew this time would come. 2 years ago with all the Cata hate, people were saying that next expac Cata would be good. That's just the way it goes.

[Kaleredar]

You're free to call bullshit on whatever you want, that won't remove the fact that ramping up dungeon difficulty once the LFD was introducted was idiotic and led to the biggest loss of subs of all wow history. Especially after the level of heroics in Wotlk.

Some people posit that the sub loss was due to people running out of things to do. Some people posit it was a combination.

People rarely quit "for one reason." And as for "after Wrath dungeons being so easy," that's another fallible point. LFD was only instated during 3.5, when Blizzard actually put in heroics that required effort to complete. The standard PuG group couldn't ignore the boss strategies in H Forge of Souls, you'd die in soul vortex or end up getting your healer killed in well of souls. You couldn't chain pull trash mobs in H Pit of Saron; they'd quickly overwhelm and wipe you. And H halls of reflection... well, that one speaks for itself. They weren't mind-bendingly hard heroics, they just required perseverance.

Good for you (and neither did I), but a lot of people simply chain wiped in a lot of heroics, especially stuff like Deadmines. You can't expect random people to plow through Cata-level heroics, especially with remarks like "stop doing content if it's too hard for you". And they massively showed their displeasure. Blizzard reacted but the harm was done.

Except one could easily learn how to do said content. It was a learning experience at times for some, sure, but learning experiences are necessary.

And if the harm were "indeed done," that's even more of a reason to stick to their guns. If all the people that supposedly quit because heroics were "too difficult" had indeed done so, do you think they would have been lured back by raid patches? Also note that a LOT of people got tired of Dragon Soul very quickly... Three piss-easy dungeons certainly didn't help keep it any more interesting any longer.

You freaking can't expect a random LFD group to "put in the damn effort". BC heroics required that, but they required a manually picked group.

Except more times than not (many, many, MANY more times than not) they managed to.

That's what Challenge Modes and heroic raids are there for. Not level 90 5-mans.

Challenge modes require a raiding guild to ensure you have the necessary number of geared/competent people (and if there are pugs for challenge modes, I've never, ever seen them.) And raiding guilds require a time investment that not all people can meet or find their way in to. My issue is that they dissolved a branch of content that existed, and left no substitutes.

And moreover, I ask, if five man heroic dungeons aren't supposed to be difficult, then what IS supposed to act as the skill median between leveling and raids? Gear doesn't grant you competency, only testing your skill over and over again does. Outside of raids and challenge modes (and PvP, but that's seperate,) that sort of thing doesn't exist. If someone doesn't want their skill tested, that's fine, and they had ways of "not having their skill tested" while still running content. In essence, Blizzard has removed the "log on at your own leisure and drop into some thought involving PvE content" aspect from the game. Which is what I take issue with.

[ati87]

The problem with Cataclysm, apart from lack of content, is it didn't really do anything new, except raid finder which is a bit of a disaster. TBC set the template for what an expansion should be, and WotLK overhauled/dumbed down many of the game's mechanics to make the encounters more like an action game (a divisive issue) as well as adding a whole new form of casual end-game. Cataclysm did nothing. It started with an extended Vanilla nostalgia trip which was the equivalent of a decrepit Paul McCartney playing Hey Jude for the Queen. Then we got some tentacles for a year and recycled dragonblight and that was it.

As for the Panda legacy, it's too early to say until the next expansion. At least they have a goal this time (reforming the non-raid side of the end-game). It's too focused on dailies at the moment but they have time to get it right in 5.3 etc.

Dude can you even mention the so called ''template for what an expansion should be'' and the awsome features TBC brought because according to you Cata didn't bring anything........

And with the exception of Naxx and OS 0 drakes In WOTLK the bosses in the first tier raids where allot harder then most of the stuff you could find in BT (Hyjal was mostly a joke with the exception of Archimonde). Most of the bosses in TBC where at best 2 phase fights where the 2e phase was mostly kill adds or do A for XXX seconds. The only reason why TBC bosses where hard was because people used bad gear (a large portion of people used pvp gear), they had crappy specs, didn't know tactics and didn't know their rotation.

What made Cata bad was that people could mostly log on for raids and ignore the rest of the game, unlike TBC and MoP you didn't have to spend hours farming rep. You may not like the current Dailycraft model (who does) but you can't deny that it has forced most people to log on every day so they can collect coins and have a chance to get extra loot.

[Prokne]

You may not like it (and in itself it is perfectly understandable), but nowadays, the only economically defensible way to push content is to extend the use of the said content to the maximum available playerbase. Simply put: you cannot afford developing something that will only be seen by a small fringe of the wow population and leave the others out in the cold. Consequently, developing a BC-style raid system is no longer doable - there cannot be a second Sunwell. Too much money to sink in and too much stuff at stake. Hence the tiered raid system which was put together through Cata and the dungeon tiered system we see in MOP.

Cata was a pretty lazy expansion in terms of raid content. In Wrath you had 3 tiers with more than 10 bosses(sure Naxx was recycled but most people never saw Naxx60) and 4 total tiers. The first 2 had triggered hardmodes for a number of bosses and the last 2 had normal and heroic levels. The heroics in ICC werent that different than Cata heroic raids where you basically add 1 more ability and more boss health and damage.

So compared to Cata which had only 3 tiers, only 1 with more than 10 bosses and lasted the same amount of time, there really isnt a great explanation besides they didnt want to make large raids(using heroic level as an excuse when the real reason was partly because of 1-60 leveling content). Firelands took extra time to be released and its sister raid(Abyssal Maw) was cut and it still only had 7 bosses, or if you prefer 14 but compared to 24 in ICC it looks even worse.

The size of the raid doesnt have anything to do with how accessible it is either.

Oh and the money they may have saved by doing small raids in Cata didnt mean more non-raid content for the masses. 4.1 was 2 recycled raid/dungeons, you got a small daily quest area, and in 4.3 you got 3 dungeons which you also got in the ICC patch with a larger raid that didnt make extensive use of old Northrend areas. Basically content in Cata was pretty sparse at max level.

[reef]

The only things I like about MoP are monks and adorable pandas.

[-Skye]

I loved cata reps, the dungeon grind, and the speed valor was gained. BUT HELL NO. I liked T11 and T12, but T13 can go sick a dick tbf.

[Claymore]

It's because Cata had no big structural problem. It just lacked content. MoP so far has been both a massive pain in the ass with the non-raid side of its character progression. Which wouldn't be so bad except it's a massive amount of pain in the ass for a substantial yet temporary boost for raiders eventually pushing past MSV. Or people that like to play alts and raid casually with them. Or people who actually want to progress in the game's overarching gear treadmill in general.

MoP has a lot more "stuff to do" but it's either materially unrewarding (i.e. scenarios, pet battles and challenge modes) or it's trivial tedium tied to the best rewards (dailies). It seems that at least some people would rather do nothing than be forced to do the same stupid, trivial shit over and over for weeks at a time.

Exactly! I didn't like the themes of Cataclysm or its story, but in terms of "the way you play", it really did everything right. Because I neither enjoy dailies, nor can I dedicate the time to do them most days, I'm stuck essentially playing as a third-string quality player, instead of progress being more tied to skill.

It's an interesting phenomenon, because I've always despised PvP. Yet, because the PvE game have been changed to such a massive time-sink, it's really the only option for me to continue playing. Ironically, I actually think Pandaria has some of the most beautiful locations in the entire game, and feels the most similar to Vanilla in terms of tone, which I love. But in the end, Gameplay is King, and MoP has definitely make some mistakes in regards to how it gates mandatory content from PvE raiders.