Cataclysm, not as bad as we remember?

[Arbs]

Cataclysm started off good than it went down hill after the nerfs to the Herioc Dungeons.

[Alexeht]

I don't get all that people which are saying Dragon Soul was horrible. I liked that raid, it was fun and also quite challenging on hc (oh that spine hc, which I did not killed). I think that some people just did not know when to stop playing (yes no one make you playing same raid 1 year - only you decide, so if you want to keep good memories about SoO stop playing after 6mths max).

[RaenavenBlacksun]

Ask for opinions on the internet? Get almost nothing but vitriol spewed at you. I didn't raid so I don't have Dragon Soul bogging down my memories.

[Raugnaut]

Dragon Soul, Terrible.

Interaction with Deathwing, almost none. A number of my guildies didnt really know WHO deathwing was while we were killing him.

Cata itself was full of promises from the first blizzcon. Path of the Titans, Abyssal Maw raid, multiple raid tiers (Instead of 1 7 boss tier and 1 8 boss tier), War of the Ancients raid, Azshara, ect. Under half of the blizzcon "promises" made it live.

Finally, removal/revamp of a bunch of stuff. ZA raid removed, replaced with a near-identical 85 dungeon, ZG removed, replaced with dungeon, DM replaced with a long-ass instance, with another "kill person" story, ect. 85-90 zones too big and spread out, ect.

Only good things were the 1-60 streamlining, T11, and Ragnaros. Everything else was aweful.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't get all that people which are saying Dragon Soul was horrible. I liked that raid, it was fun and also quite challenging on hc (oh that spine hc, which I did not killed). I think that some people just did not know when to stop playing (yes no one make you playing same raid 1 year - only you decide, so if you want to keep good memories about SoO stop playing after 6mths max).

Dragon Soul.. Challenging.. no, just no. Maybe if you were running it in 300 ilvl, but both T11 AND T12 were more challenging mechanically, and in some cases, numerically.

[Tyrgannus]

The revamping of the old zones was nice, specifically zone-specific quest achievements for lore master and a more logical difficulty progression in the old continents in general.

+1 for Cata

Admittedly their starting zones take longer than I would like, but as a whole Blizzard did a great job on the Worgen and Goblins. Until the new character models, they along with the Pandaren definitely look a level above the 10 older races.

+1 for Cata

There have always been balance issues, always are balance issues, and always will be balance issues. That being said, designated specializations may have been a controversial decision that people still lament due to the lack of possible hybrids, but I believe that the last 2 xpacs have been at least decent balance wise and I think designated spec may have helped

+1 for Cata

Only 5 new questing zones. Say quality over quantity all you want, but I definitely felt the lack of end game.

-1 for Cata

Starting with only 9 Heroics, and this is before Scenarios existed, AND dailies weren't as big a part of the game. It was easy to run out of things to do, ESPECIALLY if you didn't really do PvP

-1 for Cata

I'm not a big rehash snob and I generally enjoy the 5 mans that are re tooled to a more modern style, but fighting Nefarian and Ragnaros again, Onyxia AGAIN again, and taking 2 raids and changing them into 5 man dungeons that were the only viable casual PvE content for an entire patch grew tiresome for many if not most players.

-1 for Cata




Cataclysm had its ups and downs. It definitely was NOT my favorite expansion and some of the gripes against are entirely justified in my opinion, but it had its charms which are often glossed over.

[MitchMeister-]

Well... cata was the first time I actually unsub'd for more that a year. It also caused my whole guild to fall apart, and still hast recovered.

[Itisamuh]

If anything our memories of it are probably growing fuzzy and softening over time. In other words it was actually worse than you probably remember it now. Kind of how like people remember all the great stuff about vanilla and BC while forgetting all the bad shit.

That positive nostalgia tends to only happen when the present is worse than that past. I can say for certain that Cataclysm seemed bad to me at the time, besides some of the low level zones, because it was inferior to the previous expansions. But now it seems pretty decent in hindsight, because I think Mists is quite a bit worse.

[Switchshot]

I have done an edit and addition to the main post to be more opinion neutral and open to any direction of discussion.

Added point: 5) PvE content appears to have been inferior post-patch 4.0 raids were not very much enjoyed (apparently with the exception of Heroic Ragnaros). No unique art for bosses in Dragon soul felt bad. Further, the low raid boss count per raid made them feel limited.

[antelope591]

Cata's the only expansion that made me take a break from wow and go try other MMO's (which all ended up crappy but thats a diff story). So to me it definitely was that bad and by far the worst expansion. First the merging of 10/25 left a sour taste in my mouth, secondly there was literally zero content outside of raids and the raids themselves weren't that great. Third Dragon Soul....I think that one's been covered pretty well.

P.S. I dunno how the hell someone can say they hate MoP and at the same time gives props to Cata.....I can understand hating both but MoP was better in every shape or form that can be described or compared. Guess nostalgia really is a disease

[Anakso]

It made me quit the game! Just got so bored with raiding and then with WoW in general. In all honesty, it was 99% burn out and not cataclysm but I've always kind of blamed cata.

[Ethyrian]

Looking back, Cataclysm was not has bad as everyone claims it to be. Don't get me wrong, it was certainly not the best, but not bad.
I think what really pulled cataclysm down was Dragon Soul. What was it 11 months of that place? Boring bosses and a really awful end boss. Deathwing has such potential to be one of the most epic bosses and it missed the mark completely. Dragon Soul even started off bad by having a awful patch trailer. I think a fan made trailer was better just by adding Voice over to it. It just seemed Blizzard dropped the ball or didn't care. Just my thoughts...

Tier 11 was great, Tier 12 / Firelands was the best instance in Cataclysm, even though it was pretty short.

I remember a joke a GM said, "How do you clean up Deathwings Cataclysm? With a MoP." LOL

[mordale]

the update to the world was good, better then what was replaced in most cases.

leveling was overall good but with some serious dips in quality in some quest-lines.
out of raid level-cap content was dailies or afk in main city.
heroic dungeons were fun and challenging.

first tier raids, over all pretty good, a few rotten fish though.

the up-leveled ZA and rebooted ZG were fun and challenging for the first few weeks.
second tier raid, overall good, some very interesting fights, but very bare bones with only 7 encounters.

end time heroics were interesting if a bit easy.
dragonsoul is barely beaten out by ToC as the worst raid tier in WoW history, but in terms of disappointment it reigns supreme.

overall, there were problems with the expac due to the amount of resources poured into remaking azeroth, but the most damning things was the cutting of raid content in T12 and the absolute pile of shit that was dragonsoul.

[Last Starfighter]

Dragon Soul was good right up to the point where we stood on the Spine of Deathwing, From there on the instance just let it self down massively, and the final encounter considering it was the end boss, was a complete and utter let down, fight a claw! Could really have done with several more bosses and at least an encounter with DW in humanoid form.

as for the rest of the expansion, it was fucking awful.

Cata was amazing in T11. One of the best tiers yet. T12 was pretty cool, and T13 blew dog shit. It started off shittty. Morchok? Some dude on the path of the titans beating on wyrmrest? epic. Then the next 2 bosses were in the same exact room. dogshit. Oh, now you fly to the eye of eternity to fight malygos, I mean some shaman that was never talked about before.

DS didn't stop sucking balls until Warmaster. Spine was at least different. Same with madness. But all in all, DS was terrible.

[Zenotetsuken]

Yeah, it was as bad as people remember.

Dragon Soul was not only just a boring raid, it was also an anticlimactic end to an already boring expansion. But hey, it dragged on for a year!
Cata released with dungeons and raids that had a little bit of challenge to them, then typical Blizzard took a chainsaw to them because some people whined about not being able to go in and just AOE everything.
Extremely linear questing. It was the first expansion to not have alternate zones for almost every level, and instead only had 1 alternate zone which was a novelty underwater zone.
Boring zones, that were just filled with re-used models- Harpy, Ogre, Elementals(rock and Fire), Corehounds, Dwarves, Humans, Orcs, Trolls, Dragonkin, Doomguard, Pitlord, Molten Giant, Drakes, Flamewalker, Hippogryph,Aberrations, Ragnaros, and that is all JUST IN HYJAL

[Deleted]

> I had fun in Cata
> I don't have fun in MoP

It was no tbc/wotlk but it was fun to play. I still do play cata, alongside wotlk, on AT. Pandaland and all the deformations it brought to the game just blew it for me.

[melodramocracy]

Looking back, Cataclysm was not has bad as everyone claims it to be.

Upon further contemplation, I agree.

It was actually worse than that.

[Zenotetsuken]

P.S. I dunno how the hell someone can say they hate MoP and at the same time gives props to Cata.....I can understand hating both but MoP was better in every shape or form that can be described or compared. Guess nostalgia really is a disease

The only thing that I like about Cata more than MoP is that I got to fly while leveling. They are both pretty much equal for me other than that. Couldn't stand Cata, but at least I got to fly. Can't stand MoP, but Monk was kinda fun.

[snackfeat]

Cata was absolute ass

[Deleted]

There were some parts of Cataclysm that was good, some were bad. Same with Wrath and MoP, but Cata gets most of the bad rap. Why? Well maybe it was overall more bad than the preceding and succeeding stuff, but I have another theory:

Story is king. We may be led to believe that in a game, story doesn't matter so much. It's not a movie after all, is it? Well, when I look back, I share the negative sentiments of Cataclysm, and then I think what stands out is the complete lack of a coherent story, and a complete lack of effective storytelling of the incoherent stories that were slapped together. What was TBC and Wrath about? Easy, everyone knows. MoP also had a an overall story that was fairly easy to follow, the subplots never took over. For Cataclysm, I intellectually know what the story was supposed to be about (RAWR!), but then I think about what I was doing, and I don't remember much of my time spent on progressing towards killing DW. I remember a hundred little storylines slapped together across several continents, time travelling back and forth, Thrall having a midlife emo crisis and all sorts of things and somewhere in the middle we went to kill Ragnaros again. And in the end Deathwing died somehow. I think even people who care less about story than I do, and I know that is a lot, still share that feeling on some level: "What the F was it all about?".

[Deleted]

Cata was good to start with but got crap real quick, there was the neglect and then Dragon soul.