Why bash Cata?

[Pachycrocuta]

Why bash Cata? Because there was nothing good about the expansion, except for Transmogrification, which came out at the end. The 1-60 revamp destroyed the questing experience, and made me hate making a new character. Being forced to go through Gilneas or Kezan/Lost Isles in order to have a worgen or goblin is stupid (also doesn't help doing the same with a new panda, though the Wandering Isle isn't nearly as bad, though I still hate those damn tree sprites). Increasing the difficulty of 5-mans was the worst idea they made in that expansion. Don't get me wrong, they were good for premades/guild groups, but a full randomly put together group of strangers from completely different realms made it a nightmare, thus the mistake. Removing 2 decent raids (Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub) and changing them into shitty 5-mans that were the only way to efficiently cap valor was another big mistake.

Cataclysm was just an expansion of mistakes. Revamping the old world was a mistake as it sucked up time typically spent on the new experience above the previous level cap. Increasing 5-man difficulty was a mistake solely because of the existance of the Random Dungeon Finder. Redoing ZA/ZG and making them give more valor than the release dungeons was a mistake. Having Dragon Soul last nearly 1 year was a mistake. Abandoning the Abyssal Maw storyline was a bad move.

For me, there was just absolutely nothing about the expansion that I liked, except for the introduction of transmog. Also, listening to the dumbasses who complained about the worgen models was another mistake. Especially when it came to the female worgen. Male worgen look like Splinter the Rat from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon from 1987, and female worgen look like a cracked-out chihuahua.

[Deleted]

Started playing during Cata so I have nothing but good memories of it <3

People are just nitpicking

[Scabior]

I loved all of the release content, they did an amazing job. Firelands felt really shallow, especially considering they cancelled Abyssal Maw. Dragon Soul... I think they put more effort into End Time and Well of Eternity than that raid.

[Deleted]

For me it was the fact that you could do almost all content from the main city. Also, I don't know about you, but I leveled up archaeology with only 1-3 fragment per dig and a much more tight survey range. Can't say that was the most fun.

Also Dragon Soul.

[Deleted]

Cataclysm wasn't a bad expansion, just the worst of all we had to this day.

Its like the devs said themselves, they focused too much on recreating old content, while not giving out enough new features and alternative things to play with, apart from raids.
Of course there were really nice things and highlights, but the overall impression and the progression through the content patches wasn't satisfying at all.
The possibly epic storyline could have been presented in so many better ways. For example the story from 80 to 85 was such a clusterf***. The zones were really good, the quests and action not bad, just so... linear and unconnected. Or Deathwing... he didn't really feel like a force to be reckoned with, more like a huge derp dragon running amok. He lacked any kind of intelligence, cunning and most of all: presence. He just wasnt there, until we killed him finally! <,<

[thorvath]

Lame 1-note bad guy "Raar I am a crazy dragon!" who showed up about as often as Illidan did in BC.
Reused 4 old dungeons and called them "new." Heroic Dungeon design that amusingly thought people still spammed trade chat for groups before queueing.
Only 5 new levels and 5 new zones that were scattered all over the place.
Instead of some cool Emerald Nightmare stuff for Mount Hyjal we got an HD version of Molten Core and the Emerald Nightmare stuff got resolved in a BOOK.
Instead of more content patches they gave away Diablo 3 and a mount.

[Herecius]

Dragon Soul was crap, content outside of raiding was minimal to nonexistant, most of Firelands other than Ragnaros was pretty much crap as well. Tier 11 was pretty solid, but one redeeming raid tier an expansion does not make.

It just wasn't a very good expansion, and after Wrath, it felt... insubstantial. It felt absolutely half-assed by comparison.

[sykke]

I loved Cata, still the best time I've ever had in WoW.

[Dormie]

It had a lot of potential but it was mostly all wasted.

[Seefer]

Dragon Soul was trash
Leveling Zones other than Hyjal sucked
Deathwing (you know the main bad guy?) felt like an after thought
The dungeons were shit
Spent too much time revamping old leveling zones that you out leveled fast and hardly anyone saw/cared about
Firelands was garbage
They dropped the ball on Uldum

I could go on but you get my drift.

[Pharim]

Cataclysm was a really good expansion to begin with.

But it lacked content - and the content that WAS in the game, was easy as fuck once they nerf QQ train got their will.

So basicly Cataclysm ended up with having Firelands as a pretty decent raid, a year of Shit Soul and that was kind of all I remember it for. I LOVE the revamped Azeroth, new races and FINALLY MORE CLASS COMBOS, that the expansion brought. WoW was a truly terrific game in the first patch of Cata.

[Dispirit]

I've played through all of the expansions and Cata is by far my favorite...MoP was the worst.

[loppy88]

The rewamped zones felt like they run out of ideas most of the time. Most of them had themes of pop culture in them, and in some cases major plot chars were references themselves. Not to mention nonlinear questlines.

[Aerofluff]

I see a lot of people blaming Dragon Soul, but as somebody who only raids occasionally and doesn't give two hoots whether or not a raid is "good" since I'm only there for the rewards at the end and don't consider the struggle to get there to be "fun", I don't blame a whole expansion due to one raid.

I heard a lot of people complain about Vash'jir, but what exactly is it that people don't like? What, you can't navigate with a Z axis, or you couldn't speedlevel through the content as quickly as you wanted to? (Is that really a great way to judge how "good" a zone is, btw?) I thought it was a beautiful zone, albeit a bit colorful, but tropical reefs tend to be.
I also hear people complain about Uldum and too much Indiana Jones, but again, it really just sounds like generic whining to me. I didn't think it was spectacular, but nor did it offend me or bother me enough to care one way or another. And while it's a minor thing, I still think that the art in Vortex Pinnacle/Throne of the Four Winds is some of the most gorgeous stuff in WoW ever made.

I do agree that I got sick of all the ZA/ZG Zandalari crap, but truth be told, they're still doing it with all the Zandalari in ToT, which indicates to me that there's some Blizz dev who's just in love with Zandalari and refuses to stop, it's not an isolated Cata problem.

Deathwing definitely could've been more engaging and personable as a villain... and back tentacles was just a retarded idea for the raid, I'll admit... but again, I don't rate an entire expansion on one raid. I liked the premise of the End Time dungeon with its vision of the apocalypse already over, Deathwing had nothing left to destroy and so impaled himself upon Wyrmrest... very grim, in my opinion.
And out of all the expansion cinematics, the Cata one was the most impressive, to me. I loved seeing the tidal wave coming over the Janeiro Point statue at Booty Bay.

If I had to rank all the expansions, yes, Cata would probably be near the bottom (vying with MoP for worst, because as much as I love the graphical improvements, I'm really sick of the constant, overwhelming asian theme, mogumogumogu and silly fat pandas everywhere) But that doesn't mean Cata was "so terrible!"
Just means WotLK/BC were that much better, to me.

[Novx]

Tier 11 was great, tier 12 and 13 killed the expansion.

[Deleted]

stoped after t11... i liked cata *very* much. cc in dungeos was nice. my guild was great. i liked it, but i did not like firelands and the crap after that.

[Xalzel]

Started off great (hard heroics were the shit) but ultimatly they released as much content over the DS patches as was released with SoO (not even joking)

[MasterHamster]

Patch 4.3

4.0 was fine.

[Megalithic]

Overall I thought the quality of content was good (other than Dragon Soul), it was the lack of quantity that I disliked. And the lack of varying difficulties of content left many people with nothing to do (all of my alts sat on the shelf most of Cata, and MoP too, unfortunately). And the story was kind of meh, they didn't really play Deathwing up enough.

[Iseeyou]

In all threads about new expansion I see lots of pll bashing Cata. Many pll say it was worst expansion ever. I did play since May 2005 and I strongly believe it's second BEST expansion after BC. Why? Everything about Cata was PERFECT. I'll explain now why.

1. Leveling, core of the start = amazing fun because you COULD fly. Wanna not start level in one zone? Choose another. Leveing in Hijal is amazing, I still have a lot of fun lvling there on my alts. Uldum, nice storyline and fun quests. And that quest when you kill 1000 gnomes... PRICELESS . Not only that. They revamped old zones so nicely that it became fun to lvl new toons :P. And they added so many "EPIC FUN" quests. Like Sylvana's one. Or the one in badlands. Without Cata we would still grind old boring quests.
Now to people who say, flying mounts=no pvp. I had tons, TONS of fun world pvp in Vashj'ir and TB. In fact I killed so many people in world pvp during Cata I didn't kill since vanilla.
2. Dailies. Never, never felt like something you HAD to do. And esp those in Hijal were amazingly fun, there were even dailies which were easier to do as healer.
3. Lore. Involving Thrall, one of the main lore characters. Even though I didn't enjoy much doing "Thrall specific quest" on many alts, doing it first time was very inspiring.
4. Raiding. Actually Cata was first time when I started raiding very seriously. Because content was worth it. Remember emotions when you had to jump to lava on Nefarian hc.
5. EPICNESS. Yes. It came to unreal level in Cata. Do I need to explain why?
6. Dungeons. DUNGEONS WERE FUN. You needed some afford to complete stuff and when you finally completed them, you felt so good.

My point is, I see no reason why people hate that expansion.

Dont worry OP.

Wait for Q4sub loss and Q1 2014 sub loss and everybody ll bash MOP.