Why bash Cata?

[Giscoicus]

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.

1-60 fixed many imbalances. Making 5 mans hard was good, because not all casual players are shitters. They changed ZA/ZG because they were dated and rarely touched aside from mounts.

Without the old world revamp it would be terrible to level, just as it was before.

- - - Updated - - -

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.

Id say there was a diverse amount of difficulty for the most part, of course they cannot encompass anybody, and they choose to cut out the shitters. Oops wait no I mean they cut out the casual players that dont suck (most casuals tbh) with massive nerfing.

[Deleted]

The worst thing about Cata?

The dip in subscriptions.

Why?

Because everyone and their brother claimed that the sub loss was caused by something they didn't like personally, so you got (and still get) all kinds of dumb arguments with people using the "Cata Sub Drop" as supporting evidence for their position.

Couldn't agree more.

I'd also like to point a few things out:
1. During WotLK many people complained that "heroics" were way too easy and could be facerolled with no effort.
Cataclysm made heroics challenging (unless you count farming them in end-game gear). For example, Grim Batol and Ozruk (was that his name? He would scream "break yourselves upon my bodyy!" a lot) were a real nightmare for most pick up groups. Even ZG and ZA were something you couldn't get through without knowing exactly what to do. And I recall a lot of CC skills being in use.
2. During WotLK many people complained that "epic" gear had no "epic feeling". Cataclysm heroics yielded mostly rare gear, even honor PvP gear was blue. I know it's just a change of font color though.
3. Dalaran. Even though it's got faction-specific zones, people were not really fine with hanging out there (due to lags, performance etc) and wanted their own cities to have a purpose other than AH for non-engineers. Cataclysm made everyone use Stormwind and Orgrimmar. Due to portals, of course, but still they got their wish fulfilled.
4. Battlegrounds: Strand of the Ancients, Wintergrasp, Isle of Conquest. I recall a flood of whining due to vehicle-based combat being "horrible". So Blizzard made Twin Peaks (WSG v.2), Battle for Gilneas (AB with 3 control points) and Tol Barad (also known as LOL Barad due to being stupid - but still it had no vehicles).
5. World PvP was alive in the Tol Barad daily quest zone. On PvP servers, at least. In WotLK there was no such thing. Unless you count swooping down on your flying mount and one-shotting a poor undergeared guy with Divine Storm.

I'm not defending cata, but it sickens me when some people blame it for everything bad that has happened to this game while seeing absolutely nothing wrong with f.e. WotLK (as it always rules in the polls). While I still like TBC and WotLK the most, I still appreciate Cataclysm.

[Bonsaii]

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.

It was a good expansion. It just had no staying power and Blizzard abandoned it.
Tier 11 was incredible, Firelands was awesome. DS was a snooze.
They left us sitting with the worst raid of the X-pac.

[wych]

The content added post launch was nothing short of embarrassing.

Entire raids scrapped, 5 mans delayed, the smallest tier ever. In 2 years all Blizzard added was
-2 rehashed 5 mans
-smallest raid tier ever with a daily hub
-2 more 5 mans and arguably the worst tier ever

[Hitei]

The content added post launch was nothing short of embarrassing.

Entire raids scrapped, 5 mans delayed, the smallest tier ever. In 2 years all Blizzard added was
-2 rehashed 5 mans
-smallest raid tier ever with a daily hub
-3 more 5 mans and arguably the worst tier ever

Guess you missed 3.2 eh?

[Deleted]

I played till April 2011(ZG/ZA 4.1 I think). I liked it!

[Last Starfighter]

But I won't lie, Tier 11 was some of the best times I've had in raiding.

T11 was high quality raiding.

[Deleted]

just as so many others have said.

Cata started really strong (especially raiding wise with t11), but then it just got worse and worse.
dragon soul while not terrible, was so flavorless compared too ICC in wrath and Firelands had only 1 really good boss Ragnaros and the other 6 being rather boring also didnt help that tier.

[Megalithic]

Oh, another thing I really disliked about Cata was the introduction of shared 10/25 raid lockouts.

[Osmeric]

The great thing about Cataclysm was I could unsub from WoW to play Rift for most of 2011, and feel no regret whatsoever.

[Kyux]

I agree, I loved Cata too. Not THAT much but I enjoyed it a lot. A question though to the commenters, why was Dragon Soul so bad? Apart from it being out there for so long.

[Deleted]

Started off well, after several terrible patches it was horrible.

[Pachycrocuta]

1-60 fixed many imbalances. Making 5 mans hard was good, because not all casual players are shitters. They changed ZA/ZG because they were dated and rarely touched aside from mounts.

Without the old world revamp it would be terrible to level, just as it was before.

I would have to disagree. The old world revamp made it extremely terrible to level. Yes, there were some bad times with the old 1-60, but they were few. There is nothing but bad times with the new 1-60.

And so what if ZA/ZG were dated and rarely touched? Why not redo MC? Or AQ40? Or Sunwell? And I agreed about it being good making the 5-mans harder. But, it was also a mistake. And that reason is because of the Dungeon Finder tool. If that was never implemented, the 5-mans would have been just fine. Honestly, I think there should be another difficulty, similar to what they have with raids: LFD (stupid easy), Heroic (tough, like TBC and early Cata), and Challenge Mode.

[roboscorcher]

Mostly, the lack of content killed it. But the fact that all the endgame zones were broken up did not help either. And the story was...lackluster. They should have explained Deathwing's history better; 5.4 attempted this but one dungeon was not enough. The raid was OK for the few times I did LFR, I really enjoyed the Deathwing fights. It felt like I was really on a giant dragon. However, the final cinematic was completely illogical (why drop your draconic powers out of nowhere??) and I was not looking forward to a whole expansion of Pandaland.

[Deleted]

Really?

1. Leveling - flying mounts ruined it. It made leveling dull and effortless. 1-60 zones revamp was great idea, but linear questing and hand holding everywhere ruined it as well.

2. I agree with that, dailies were ok.

3. Lore - horrible. Big bad dragon sometimes showing up in zones torching place and disappearing again. Thrall lore didn't make any sense at all.

4. Raiding - disaster. By creating shared lockout they ruined casual raiding and 25 man raiding guilds. Used to do 10 man casual raids for friends/alts in off days for fun, but in Cata 10 man raids weren't easy so there goes casual aspect. Shared lockout also made it impossible to run main and friends raid on same character. It ruined 25 man raiding because in almost every guild few people left to create 10 man because they actually do prefer 10 man raids -> not enough people for 25 man raid -> more left for 10 man because they'd rather do 10 man than nothing -> guild disbands -> friends quit. Game still haven't recovered from that.

5. What epicness????

6. Dungeons - nothing special. Start was good, but then came zul'rehash and tentacles as last expansion boss.

[NMX-]

Dragonsoul felt very... rushed and undone. revisiting old environments, going into the belly of old god tenticle monsters. The skyship, spine, and the final battle was .. ok. everything else felt like copy/paste, insert these npcs, insert these sound files, there, a raid.

and vashjir. ive done that zone once. never again. underwater zones just aren't for me.

[ro9ue]

I liked Cata and Dragon Soul. I'd actually rank DS above ToES and MSV.

[Polarthief]

So, basically, cata was LOST(series) for many players?

(*Hasn't seen LOST*) More like Dexter, with the finale episode being the Dragon Soul raid/LFR launching.

OT List of why Cata sucked ass:

- Dragon Soul/Overall raiding experience past T11
-- Rushed out 4 months after Firelands release, leaving very little time for any 10N guild to get their Caster legendary (Fun fact: A friend of mine started the thread that got them to fix the bullshit behind Normal drops)
-- Was globally nerfed SO quickly and Ragnaros had to be nerfed multiple times. PS: These nerfs were HUGE, so yeah, so much for 'testing'.
-- There were fights in Cata that required Burst DPS due to mechanics, and therefore favored class stacking. From what I can remember: Spine of Deathwing (Burning Tendons; worst offender) and Ragnaros (Transition phases/Adds in P2), but I'm sure I'm missing plenty of others.

- LFR launching and (continuing) to be a toxic experience for most players.
-- Loot wasn't individual and a premade group of 24 could all roll need on the piece you wanted and give it to their friends. This is what started Need Before Greed being used in LFD to avoid the same problem (sadly, it doesn't work)

- Extremely little content outside of raiding through the patches, with ZA/ZG revamps, 3 NEW dungeons, and one daily hub in Firelands (but it was a decent hub, unlike the MoP ones; there were quite a few achievements and Hunter pets to collect)

- PvP balancing was among the worst its been. Base Resilience was 0.

- Worst iteration of the classic talent trees we grew up with, with them forcing you into the entire main spec tree until you hit the bottom, then allowing you to spec into another tree, but only a few points. Imagine a butchered version of today's Specialization mixed with a bad version of the old talent trees.

- Archaeology. Remember how epic it was going to be and how shit it turned out to be?

Plenty of other reasons, but I'll leave this here for now.

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I liked Cata and Dragon Soul. I'd actually rank DS above ToES and MSV.

I mean, y'know, if you enjoyed THE most broken raid in the game, by all means.

DS has more (bad/gamebreaking) bugs than any other raid and they didn't even fix them. Zon'ozz's ball bouncing, Thrall refusing to jump you across platforms on Madness of Deathwing, Morchok's crystal being finicky, and let's not forget a cutscene in the middle of the Spine fight, I mean who the fuck puts a cutscene in at the start of a fight?

While I agree enjoying things is definitely subjective, it's well known that Dragon Soul was THE worst raid of all time, and that's not just me.

[Deleted]

I'd also like to point a few things out:
1. During WotLK many people complained that "heroics" were way too easy and could be facerolled with no effort.
Cataclysm made heroics challenging (unless you count farming them in end-game gear). For example, Grim Batol and Ozruk (was that his name? He would scream "break yourselves upon my bodyy!" a lot) were a real nightmare for most pick up groups. Even ZG and ZA were something you couldn't get through without knowing exactly what to do. And I recall a lot of CC skills being in use.

I don't know why people keep bringing that up. Heroics in WoTLK were challenging at start, just like heroics in Cataclysm. People complained about it at the end of expansion. Well... duh... end of expansion, where ilevel 232 catch up gear dropped in heroics and was available for badges, so everyone had at least 232 gear and they complained about instances that dropped ilevel 200 gear.

ICC patch also introduced LFD and new hard heroics. Do you remember how hated were hard new heroics in ICC patch? Tanks instantly quit as soon as they zoned in last dungeon of ICC dungeons set (don't remember its name - the one with waves of mobs). It was obvious from those heroics that LFD and hard content don't go well together. Yet Blizzard ignored it and introduced hard heroics at start of Cataclysm and then in Zul'Rehash patch.

Problem was not hard heroics. Problem was LFD. You can't expect any coordination when putting random players together in one group.

[Vorality]

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.


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.

LOL! You just completely contradicted what you said. Vashj'ir and TB were the two places you COULDN'T fly in. That's why there was a lot of World PvP. Not to mention TB was completely used for a PvP event anyway. I'm so glad there won't be flying until 100. People didn't complain about no flying until 90 in MoP, but I think that was mainly because it wasn't put out there like they did with WoD. They let the no flying in MoP kind of just....happen.