The only reason why people hat Cata and love woltk is because of the release order

[zebreck]

No, Cata crashed and burned because of Heroic dungeon tuning. We know this is the case, Blizz knows this is the case, have stated it is the case, and have never in any subsequent expansion released anything like Cata tuned heroics. Heroics were THE casual content in WoW at the time, and tuning them the way they were at launch was a significant error. Ghostcrawler writing his blog about how hard they were was a worse error. They effectively cut the majority of the player base off from the one activity enjoyed by the majority of the player base, and then told those players in no uncertain terms "tough shit." Hell, you could struggle to get through Grim Batol on normal during the first week or so if you didn't have a guild group. Good fucking luck running heroic deadmines in a pug pre nerf. Why am I going on about this? Because WoW does well when casuals have content that feels rewarding, and the second that went from being true to being not true, WoW's numbers went off a cliff. It wouldn't have mattered what order the expansions came out in, WoTLK would have been loved for giving people puggable heroics and raids.

[Eskendereya]

Cata was an amazing expansion, for the first half or first 3/5s of it. The questing was amazing, I enjoyed every new quest zone. I loved my class spec (Marks Hunter) and think it was never better than it was in Cata (could argue was even better in wotlk). The heroic dungeons were very hard and required coordination to cc certain packs, wasn't no tank and spank. The boss fights in heroic dungeons were also very challenging, it was common to wipe but when you competed those heroic dungeons it felt really good and it was also a lot of fun getting the gear you were aiming for.

Tol Barad was a lot of fun, the quests were fun but more importantly the world PVP on that island was a lot of fun. The zone itself was really cool as well. It was fun battling for Tol Barad so you could unlock the mini raid and hopefully get some good gear. The first two raids were amazing, Blackwing Descent and Bastion of Twilight. I had so much fun at the start.

Then... Blizzard start nerfing everything. They nerfed heroic dungeons, nerfed raids and started doing things to make the game cater more to casuals. I kinda lost the fun after that, I didn't like Firelands. But still, overall I loved Cata. Woltk>Cata/Legion for me.

[ArenaDk]

No, Cata crashed and burned because of Heroic dungeon tuning. We know this is the case, Blizz knows this is the case, have stated it is the case, and have never in any subsequent expansion released anything like Cata tuned heroics. Heroics were THE casual content in WoW at the time, and tuning them the way they were at launch was a significant error. Ghostcrawler writing his blog about how hard they were was a worse error. They effectively cut the majority of the player base off from the one activity enjoyed by the majority of the player base, and then told those players in no uncertain terms "tough shit." Hell, you could struggle to get through Grim Batol on normal during the first week or so if you didn't have a guild group. Good fucking luck running heroic deadmines in a pug pre nerf. Why am I going on about this? Because WoW does well when casuals have content that feels rewarding, and the second that went from being true to being not true, WoW's numbers went off a cliff. It wouldn't have mattered what order the expansions came out in, WoTLK would have been loved for giving people puggable heroics and raids.

The biggest problem is, when causals have content, people on the forums will cry how bad the game turned and will even point fingers at how great wrath was, even so it was the casual expansion.

I would say if we scale casual unfriendly from hardest to lowest we would have : Cata > BC > classic > mop >Bfa > Wod > woltk.

[McFuu]

Cata had great dungeons and raids, except for the final Deathwing encounter. But class design was trash tier for the best classes. I get it was the first stepping stone for the new style class design that was great for Mop and WoD but jesus it sucked in Cata.

Leveling also wasn't great either, but the zones were nice, except for Mario world 3-1. Underwater zones always have been and will continue to be awful and I really don't understand why the dev team ever includes them. It's truly the pinnacle of "you know how I know the devs don't play the game."

[Staboteur]

Cata was great till Dragon Soul, imo.

This, I wouldn't say great but T11/12 were good raids, but DS was one of the worst raids ever and since it lasted for over half the expansion it ruined it.

[Khaza-R]

Sorry but not true at all.

Cataclysm scorned a lot of players right of the bat with "hard heroics". Especially when people were used to easily accessible epics gear in WotLK. But that was fixed over the course of the expansion. The primary reason people disliked Cata was because of the Dragon Soul patch which was rushed and lasted way, way too long.

[ArenaDk]

Sorry but not true at all.

Cataclysm scorned a lot of players right of the bat with "hard heroics". Especially when people were used to easily accessible epics gear in WotLK. But that was fixed over the course of the expansion. The primary reason people disliked Cata was because of the Dragon Soul patch which was rushed and lasted way, way too long.

So was the crusader raid and Naxx. Rushed and badly scaled

[Craaazyyy]

Except pvp gear was trash for pve, so I guess, grats on getting pvp gear without pvping to pvp?

in TBC pvp gear was actually really good for PVE, especially early on

- - - Updated - - -

Sorry but not true at all.

Cataclysm scorned a lot of players right of the bat with "hard heroics". Especially when people were used to easily accessible epics gear in WotLK. But that was fixed over the course of the expansion. The primary reason people disliked Cata was because of the Dragon Soul patch which was rushed and lasted way, way too long.

hard heroics were good.. and blizzard shouldnt have nerfed them.. they should've stuck with them being hard and that would've worked out in the end

[melodramocracy]

If we compare cata woltk tbc and classic with each other, one doesn’t fit. Yes Woltk. Woltk brought most of the systems which fans of classic and tbc flame everyday. Free epics , lfd, reused raids, time gating and more.
Cata than tried to go back to making dungeons and raids hard, gave people a whole new world to explore ( which never got appreciate because it removed a nostalgic factor, while the quest are still great today ), but all the players from wrath hated a system were skill gave loot and were they wouldn’t be able to clear every dungeon on the first try.

Cata reused old villains with out cooypasting them as under tuned raids ruining there legacy.
The Zul dungeons were the worst rehash and they still had more love put into them than Naxx.

Only at the End, blizzard gave in an went full casual again. But that because people hated it for not being woltk.
If cata would have come before woltk, woltk would never be loved.

Can't agree with this in the slightest. Environmentally, Cata end game was pretty lackluster, with only one truly standout zone (and even that was polarizing). Dungeons were harder, but also less memorable, raids weren't even close to as good.

If anything, Cata could have never existed, and the game would be no worse for it.

[Khaza-R]

So was the crusader raid and Naxx. Rushed and badly scaled

Yes, Naxx was a rehash. They got a lot of shit for that even if only a fraction of players actually saw the original.

I didn't like TotGC at all, however that is exactly what the community asked for. A raid with no trash and only bosses. I don't think it was rushed at all. The whole Argent Tournament thing was pretty extensive.

hard heroics were good.. and blizzard shouldnt have nerfed them.. they should've stuck with them being hard and that would've worked out in the end

I really like the boss difficult in Cata. Probably the best the game has ever been. I was not a fan of the amount of trash though. Requiring CC is not difficult, just tedious.

[Hyral]

Funny. Don't see any mention of the complete homogenization of all healers, one major content patch being literally two 5 mans until the next raid tier, the gutting of half the talents, locking you down to one talent tree at a time until completed killing any and all hybrids that were still playable in Wrath, and for someone who whines about the Wrath badge system it's intriguing you would defend the points system that Cata replaced it with since it made it even easier to gear up and unlike Wrath's free epics the point system was broken from release in Cata. Justice and Honor being interchangeable meant a lot of people just used Honor bots and then traded it all of Justice and got gear from vendors right away. Nice character progression.

And that's just the trash I remember with my shoddy memory and ignoring LFR and DS, I'm sure there was lots more, some reasons not even gameplay related. Like you said the removal of the old world was a big source of the hate, disjointed zones and linear questing were complaints back then too, the destruction of Neltharion's character, etc. Plus Wrath had Arthas, him and thrall had been the poster boys for the franchise since WC3, there was definitely more interest for Wrath in that aspect too.

But hey you are not here to really discuss anything but to try to feel unique for hating the objectively best expansion.

[In Ogres We Trust]

In theory, it started out as an excellent expansion and reboot of the game; in actuality, in comparison to Classic, BC, and WotLK, it came across as craptastic.

[Osmeric]

In theory, it started out as an excellent expansion and reboot of the game

The start went pear shaped almost immediately. It was not excellent in theory; it was fundamentally misconceived, and Chilton admitted as much in the NY Times.

[Battlebeard]

I think Cataclysm was BY FAR the BEST expansion we seen so far.

Few reasons:
- The 80-85 zones were the best so far, Vashjr is indescribably beatiful, and zones like Uldum and Deepholm were the best ever questwise.
- Revamp of old zones made them actually FUN, so many amazing chains, like "I'm gonna punch deathwing in the face".
- Dungeons were amazing and had both perfect lenght, trash count and difficulty.
- Rated Battlegrounds were introduced, most fun I had in PvP!
- Tol Barad, now this was Ashran or Wintergrasp x100, so many amazing battles here, reminded me of vanilla world pvp.
- Archaeology was intriduced, I always loved this profession, so chill, much lore involved and cool rare rewards.
- New Races + Class combos! I always thought every race should have every class and this is a start!
- REFORGED! This was amazing! You could swap stats around, making bis-gear-lists more irrelevant, as they should be!
- The raids, they were REALLY good, mechanics etc. Too few bosses in Firelands and Dragon Soul, true, but what we got was amazing.
- And the BEST part, TRANSMOG!!! This was introduced in Cata and you could finally look the way you want!

How can anyone dislike Cata?

[Zafire]

I had the most fun PvPing in Cataclysm. It may have just been the friends I had at the time, though. I was on a low pop server and cross realm wasn't invented yet, so I had quite the rep and was friends with a few Horde guilds as an alliance player. People would make alliance characters just to trash talk me. Good times. It was also the last expansion where a few pieces of PvE gear were better than the PvP alternatives, which gave me incentive to raid.

For me WoTLK and Cata were the two best expansions, but I can understand why people didn't like Cata.

[ArenaDk]

Funny. Don't see any mention of the complete homogenization of all healers, one major content patch being literally two 5 mans until the next raid tier, the gutting of half the talents, locking you down to one talent tree at a time until completed killing any and all hybrids that were still playable in Wrath, and for someone who whines about the Wrath badge system it's intriguing you would defend the points system that Cata replaced it with since it made it even easier to gear up and unlike Wrath's free epics the point system was broken from release in Cata. Justice and Honor being interchangeable meant a lot of people just used Honor bots and then traded it all of Justice and got gear from vendors right away. Nice character progression.

And that's just the trash I remember with my shoddy memory and ignoring LFR and DS, I'm sure there was lots more, some reasons not even gameplay related. Like you said the removal of the old world was a big source of the hate, disjointed zones and linear questing were complaints back then too, the destruction of Neltharion's character, etc. Plus Wrath had Arthas, him and thrall had been the poster boys for the franchise since WC3, there was definitely more interest for Wrath in that aspect too.

But hey you are not here to really discuss anything but to try to feel unique for hating the objectively best expansion.

You say objectively best. But the majority here seems to disagree with you.

[Powerogue]

I always thought it was siphoned dev time from the 1-60 leveling that made people think cata endgame was lacking. (which I still say was worth it, the 1-60 leveling, especially with scaling now, is just wonderful)

[Destinas]

Don't get me wrong, because I liked both wotlk and cata, but I think that the only thing that went wrong with it was the last raid patch being joke(the raid itself was bad - plain bosses, no big lore with them, only Ultraxion and Deathwing were fine, the trailer for it was worst in the entire game proably, they added LFR and the last boss aka heroes vs Deathwing toenails).

I dunno. The Blackwing Lair trailer was a hot mess. Note the Night Elf trying to hop on the rocks at ~:16 during the totally unepic moment where the paladin is facing off against Nefarian in his chair.

[Alkizon]

Well, lets see:
1) Pruned talent trees, bias toward specs (rather then classes) began, also cutting of class mechanic + abilities + stats/characteristics. Before BfA advent, Cata was the worst of both systems options (bordering with Legion in case of Artifact weapon expulsion due to its “limited existence” and absence of at least any customization system - there was no choice, their fate was to be completely open) and survived only due to unfinished cutting of previous developments.
2) Worst versions (phasing, linearity) of questing systems and old system destruction (old world substitution which doesn't correspond DW history development: without looking at all background and reasons, he was for objective reasons (if talking out of lore reputation) one of the weakest expansion main "villain" ever) - everything that they did was done not because it was necessary for the plot, but because they wanted to change this old system (it didn't correspond to their world design understanding). Moreover, direct expansion quest-part was almost a mandatory, not for player help (otherwise you were almost deprived of any opportunity to interact with other players). It began in WotLK, but only slightly, here it was already done without any pressure. I repeat, this is the worst ever to exist for MMO world, which remains this trend to this day and they only provided it with additional scaling in BfA, which buried progress system as a one and intercepted the baton.
3) Here, for their beloved “group search”, they thought of starting to poke their dirty feet into raids' design (DS design was the worst of “last” raids, also it's not lost for BfA yet, but there are suspicions that this happened because of run-in of LFR system, which was the reason for this design, as I said above) and dungeons (there was a change in tendency from then due to which we witnessed damage/trimming of old Lost Temple, cutting into pieces of Muradon + whole complex of Black Mountain and other Classic's remarkable heritage + ZG&ZA).
4) Introduction of LFR and continuation of WotLK system of relatively easy&many epics - inflation. And here I mean ilvl abnormal growth, which was gaining momentum by little (next step was adding extra gap in MoP, but it was manageable, which means it was within RPG mechanics, and then forge&scaled sh*t begins after, which completed destruction of holistic progress system).
5) Сross-realm technologies continuation of development and implementation. Most of people who recognized this trend already in WotLK started to leave game then.
6) Plot went downhill (but it already become especially noticeable after middle of WotLK - continued with old bosses resurrection, etc.).

The only things that were there:
1) quite good raids on mechanics and idea (most of which they apparently worked during WotLK), with a couple of exceptions;
2) starting dungeon set (with same diagnosis, of course, still worse than Classic, but easily able put to shame almost everything that was in WotLK both in design and in starting complexity).

Something like that... Diagnosis? From course of history point of view, this is nonsense (there is probably nothing to explain here). From design as a whole point of view, this is also nonsense, for everything is just continuation of "decaying" tendencies. Conclusion: it would surely spoil WotLK reputation, because then that extension would have been a “successor”, and therefore it would have looked completely different, but Cataclysm itself won't be the same at this regards - and this is alternative future... more precisely - past and consequences will be no longer facts, but merely points of view/assumptions, too vague and relative - which means there is nothing to argue about. What was - that was, what wasn't - that wasn't.

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Craaazyyy
while i agree with some of it, still for pretty much each pruned ability they added a new one, unlike what they've been doing since wod pretty much, where they just keep pruning and pruning without adding anything pretty much

they also added reforging which was a good addition, they made glyph system better, they added mastery

i think like cata class design was really good for most classes/specs.. for some it was the best ever imo

Well, impressions are relative/individual, but from mechanics point of view - this was the worst option of "old system". For example, MoP was the best option of "new system" but! new one is worse than old in coherence with RPG component of this game. Ie, I can say that I liked MoP classes design, but I continue to argue that in general it's bad system for this particular game. Is that more clear? Mastery was crap in way they implemented it, but reforging was good. Glyphs was added during WotLK, in fact, they were additional "talent" options and could be easily realized inside talent trees, but they found a good place for a new profession, which isn't bad in itself.

- I could like smoking, but this still doesn't mean that it's healthy for my organism.

I may like system, but this doesn't mean that it's correct/better. Just as for current game design, todays class system design is appropriate (*shudders&frowns* it's disgusting to associate this filth with word "design" in general, but let's say this way), but here already conflict is much more global and flawed is entire game design, because it was created in attempt to divide indivisible (аnd the first steps were laid exactly by Cataclysm with its "separation into specs"/LFR/CRZ/phasing attempts). Most evident and obvious present ex.

The team wants to see more class representation in Mythic + and the MDI and will consider this when adding affixes in the future.

- it was needless to take into consideration such shitty additions during class design in MoP (as well as in previous expansions), so... but exactly Cataclysm was transition from old global design to new one, and it fully concerns class design too - it wasn't old and it wasn't new, it was transitional hybrid that had no independent future, because it had disadvantages of both systems together.

What follows from this +:
- game rules (design) are more important than desires and capabilities of subscribers AND! developers together.
Ie it's necessary to listen to everyone whenever possible, but make decisions according to rules for not disturbing game world harmony and not spoil relations with/within community. There is no reason to blame community for what happened, decisions weren't ultimately taken by them. Something like this.

I repeat, opinion is a non-permanent and relative thing, there is nothing wrong with any opinions, but... Rules and laws (basics of your game design: you change it - you get another game, other clients, another attitude towards yourself, you make someone unhappy; maybe it's worth to stop right away on creating another game?) should always be higher than opinions when making a decision, then you don't have to justify it for someone. By adhering to this you will preserve game and customer base integrity. Moreover, they will be much more confident and kinder (psychological climate) because they won't be afraid that someone else will come tomorrow, then ask to change something and company will find it expedient (more profitable = money are worth of loss reputation, trust, fairness and people together). And all responsibility for this lies solely on developers. They must be guardians, not intruders.

ps. Do you know why so-called Blizzard fans' behavior is very offensive sometimes? Is it because they also aren't trust developers, understanding that they can just same way change/return everything back? Is it because these developers have already done so in the past (neglected rules, betrayed their old customers), which means that this can happen with current ones?

There's a world behind the world, Professor Robinson. Lie once, cheat twice and everything becomes clear. Do not mistake my deception for a character flaw. It is philosophical choice, a profound understanding of the universe. It is a way of life. (c)

---

I could say that Legion was the 2nd Cataclysm (transitional moment in game design history) and BfA already is its 3d degeneration (hint that last trends won't only not go away, but will continue and only increase), but don't want much to abuse negative, in addition, BfA continues Cataclysm's tradition of "Azeroth's face" bad changing.

[Craaazyyy]

Well, lets see:
1) Pruned talent trees, bias toward specs (rather then classes) began, also cutting of class mechanic + abilities + stats/characteristics. Before BfA advent, Cata was the worst of both systems options (bordering with Legion in case of Artifact weapon expulsion due to its “limited existence” and absence of at least any customization system - there was no choice, their fate was to be completely open) and survived only due to unfinished cutting of previous developments.[/U].

while i agree with some of it, still for pretty much each pruned ability they added a new one, unlike what they've been doing since wod pretty much, where they just keep pruning and pruning without adding anything pretty much

they also added reforging which was a good addition, they made glyph system better, they added mastery

i think like cata class design was really good for most classes/specs.. for some it was the best ever imo