Unpopular opinion: Cataclysm was one of the best expansions and I'll explain why.

[Grimbold21]

Coming off from wotlk ret into early cata ret made me reroll

[Osmeric]

(Do not try to sell me that people like Vashj'ir, cause believe me, thats not gonna sell well).

You didn't like the "flight point" caves marked by giant yellow penis worms?(*)

(*) This is not phylogenetically correct.

[sam86]

Polls on fansites aren't an accurate gauge of the community at large.

it is the best option available too, where exactly u suggest a better place or option to gather opinions?
until there is one better, best option is make poll here
and if there is, go ahead and do it
but until then, the best option available as far i know -a poll on this website- proves my word that Cata isn't ranked as the worst exp title, that shit title goes to either BFA or WoD, last time i did it BFA won

[epigramx]

Whoever blames me that the OP doesn't have too many sentences they have to ask themselves if they see a grammatical error or if they're incapable to read sentences that aren't baby-sized.

Unpopular opinion: all expansion were actually good until they run on for to long.

That's exactly right and I imply that from the very start in reality. This game just like any other programming project has gradual changes and even if some of the changes aren't something you definitely like: it's silly to imply expansions are those self-contained "boxes" that you can judge so differently since at the end of the day: tbc is just a "patched vanilla" in terms of mechanics and battle code at least and similarly wotlk is a "polished tbc" and cata a "more polished wotlk" etc etc.

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The leveling zones looked gorgeous

Of course. It was pretty clear from the start that whoever hated Cata was often someone obsessed with their one end-game character and never levelled alts and they had never tried to level a goblin (seriously as a main or 'main alt') because the experience and art design of those areas back then were clearly superior to anything WoW had done up to that point and I doubt it has ever been surpassed.

I love impotent rage posts.

Impotent rage is to hate on an expansion because you got addicted to WoW and you are incapable to admit that to yourself so you have to blame it on an "Expansion" when it is pretty clear Cata wasn't just not terrible but also clearly better than WotLK in some aspects.

[enigma77]

Unpopular indeed.

[epigramx]

Even Dragon Soul wasn't bad. It gets a lot of criticism and that final fight wasn't amazing but it was still a fun raid.

The main reason they hate DS is that MoP took too long to release and they were stuck in DS for months more than needed (similar hate fell upon Siege of Orgrimmar). Sure it wasn't the best raid ever in some respects but it wasn't anything especially different from other raids since it's similar people that designed them all, let alone if you were an arcane mage: spine was the best encounter in their history of the game,

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Cata gets a bad rep because of Dragon Soul, which was pretty horrible in terms of end of Expansion raid. If it were on par with Firelands or if at LEAST Deathwing was on par with Ragnaros in terms of fight epicness then it would have been recieved much much better.

DS was hated for a reason I understand deeply because I played the entirety of it in the game while I was already deeply in the expansion (I was one of the first in my Realm to get the Firelands legendary etc.). It simply took too long to be replaced (too long to release MoP) and people tend to hate ANYTHING that lasts too long in the game if it takes effort. Similar hate fell upon Siege of Orgrimmar for the same reason (it was really annoying at the end though what saved it a little is that the pre-patch was so stupidly overpowered that everyone was cheesing hard mode in a few minutes so the free loot made it kinda fun and a joke for a week or so).

[Atrea]

OP's responses to everyone who doesn't agree with him are a great reminder of how not to spend an evening; methed out of your gourd and with nothing to do but ramble incoherently on the Internet.

[epigramx]

Being the mage on Alysrazor and a healer on hard mode spider boss was super fun. Cata definitely had great moments.

Fire mage on Alysrazor and arcane mage on spine, were some of the best moments (if not THE best moments) in the history of the entire class.
Couple it with getting the legendary early and Cata can be probably the best expansion a mage could experience in the history of the game.

Also Cataclysm in general is helped a lot if you weren't obsessed with an end-game character from WotLK because levelling was pretty.

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OP's responses to everyone who doesn't agree with him are a great reminder of how not to spend an evening; methed out of your gourd and with nothing to do but ramble incoherently on the Internet.

Not agreeing with you doesn't make me a monster. What you said tells more about you than about me.

[Varitok]

Cata was bad because of death wing
Destroying azeroth. After ICC, cata felt like crap. Why? Because wotlk quality and quantity is superior to the "polished textures" cata delivered. In BFA I enjoyed the aspect to go back an do some stuff there. Literally no one was in uldum before BFA anyways.

How soon people forget Ruby Sanctum.

[epigramx]

Well it was the worst back then. But then we had some worse, for example WoD and SL

What annoyed me most back then was that VANILLA ITSELF was so bad in some respects compared to Cata that it was ridiculous that Cata was blamed as "worst in every aspect".

Really? Worst in every aspect?

Those people have never tried to level in the disgustingly incomplete and buggy Vanilla to say that.

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Cataclysm doesn't seem as bad now due to the years of constant trash that this game is enduring, but when everything was still thriving in the game is what the xpac had been compared to. It was still trash, with a few good things. Against the game now and what it has been the last few xpacs... I bet it looks like fucking platinum to the new people.

You misunderstand: what I'm saying is not from someone that sees Cata now: we're talking about something I was seeing BACK THEN and it was pretty clear after MoP was released and everything was said and done.

There were so many people that had rose-tinted glasses from vanilla and their bias was so obvious since they kept ignoring obvious aspects of the game that were worse in anything before Cata but they couldn't see it.

All those things become clearer if you knew that when TBC was out many Vanilla players hated it and the same happened to WotLK and the main reason Cata got more hate was that it was a point most burned out.

[aceperson]

i liked cata but i'm also not a good source of criticism on it. wotlk was when i started and i had just started my transition from console only pleb to a mix of both. cata was thus not only my first expansion, but my first major game release on the computer. the parental controls which kept me from true guild raiding wasn't taken off until mid 4.2 so dragon soul was my first real raiding experience from start to finish. so i definitely have rose-tinted goggles and noob bias from back then blinded a more unbias judgement.

though thinking about what was in cata and trying to be unbias:

1. vash'ir wasn't that bad. it was certainly bizarre as it messed heavily with my sense of depth perception (hehehehe... DEPTH perception in an underwater zone.... hehehehe....) but it was extremely gorgeous. the "flight" points were infuriating with not allowing mounting in caves even though you needed a water mount to move at any decent speed. they should've tried to lift mount restrictions in vash. it was a nice experience but i'm certainly glad the game never touched that concept again.

2. from what i remember, the first three raids were filled with buggy/overtuned bosses which lead to tons of cheesing. certainly not a great opening experience.

3. while i did like the lore of zones and such, it was rather disappointing to go from having the lich king constantly show up and empower people or raise obstacles to stop you to deathwing occasionally burning an entire zone. while that was a cool feature, it really didn't make up for not seeing him from launch to 4.3.

4. cata did give us those goofy as heck rag legs. i remember everyone laughing over those legs. it was like a super body builder having the most womanly legs possible. it just hilariously out of place.

5. i loved the molten front. though a lot of the player base had already experienced similar with the isle of quel'danas.

6. 4.3 was a rather lacking patch. it had the 3 dungeons which were mostly amazing (i was meh about the one with thrall). the raid had some fun bosses but both of the deathwing fights were more annoying than epic. i think the ultraxion fight would've gone better as a prelude deathwing fight than popping his pimples. the boat fight was mostly boring too. fight two human adds, make a macro to death grip a goblin add, and dps dragon adds doing nothing. after doing that 3 times, fight a miniboss.

7. almost forgot that cata is when hunters got reworked to use focus and the devs were very hesitant to listen to the hunter community. in the end, they made our focus generation suggestion into a tier set bonus in 4.3. later made baseline in mop. so good and bad at the same time.

thinking back, most of my fun came from meeting my guild friends i hang out with today or lvling alts. back when the game was actually alt friendly and classes weren't gutted. anyways, i'd rate expacs as wrath > mop > legion > cata > bfa > wod > sl with bfa barely beating wod. the reason i put wod above sl is because i actually wanted to play in wod, there just wasn't anything to do. sl has a lack of fair, respectful content AND fun classes which has caused me to unsub and skip the expac overall for the first time since i started.

[epigramx]

thinking back, most of my fun came from meeting my guild friends

At the end of the day: ANY expansion is that: people have rose-tinted glasses and rarely understand the content itself is only a very small part of what keeps them in this game.
You can literally pick the worst expansion you can think of (technically) and if you put yourself with the best people you were ever with: it becomes the "best" expansion.

This is part of the main point of my OP: on purpose I didn't speak at first so much technically: the main point was that Cata was unfortunate to be released at a point in time that a majority of people started being burned out of the game because most people that were around at the launch of Cata were still players that have never quit the game before but it was about time they did and expansions and expansion quality has very little to do about when people quit an MMO (a game type that requires them to be online for hours daily for years).

[Biomega]

I don't think Cata was the best expansion - but it was probably the expansion I personally enjoyed the most. I loved just logging on for raids, having a good time there, and then logging off until the next raid. But that's me, and I totally understand that a ton of people also hated the expansion for exactly that reason.

[Lane]

Cata will always be my most hated expansion. I loved the hell out of Wrath, I was still very much addicted to WoW when Cata released, even purchased it at midnight. It single-handedly cured 5 years of WoW addiction in less than a month and I didn't touch WoW again for 4 years because of it. There was absolutely nothing I enjoyed about it. The revamp trashed most of my favorite zones (also ruined the music) and the 80-85 experience was so bad that post-Cata I would just stay in Wrath content to 85 despite the huge EXP nerf for doing so. I did Loremaster because I do every expansion and it was one of the most miserable experiences I've had in WoW, it felt like a beatdown because I hated every zone. The story was god awful, Deathwing was a terrible villain, and EK and Kalimdor are now trapped in that timeline seemingly forever. Now because it was such a disaster Blizzard doesn't want to waste the resources on fixing it with another revamp.

As much hate as subsequent expansions have gotten, I didn't hate 100% of any of them like I did Cata. I could give pros for WoD, BfA, and SL. I cannot give a single pro for Cata. F everything about that expansion.

[Razion]

Sure, Cataclysm could be a great expansion. Or a mediocre one. Or a terrible one that people hate today.

The fact that OP even acknowledges that the expansion is reviled even in hindsight today, all these years later, when even expansions like Legion now get less flack should tell us plenty on just how mediocre Cataclysm not even just among its recent contemporary expansions but especially amongst the big picture of ALL the other MMOs which have since gotten less flack, like Mists. Cataclysm remains by and large one of the biggest "mistake" expansions, alongside WoD. That public opinion still hasn't adjusted to rose-color Cata should tell us just how negative those old biases towards Cata were and how badly they can persist even now speaks so heavily to how bad it must have been not only relatively but in perpetuity. People hated Cata, they still hate Cata. People hated other expacs, but have gotten over those. What's the difference here? Cata is still hated and by god that probably won't ever go away. Why? Maybe, because it wasn't good. Maybe, it was bad.

[aceperson]

At the end of the day: ANY expansion is that: people have rose-tinted glasses and rarely understand the content itself is only a very small part of what keeps them in this game.

dude, i'm saying this nicely as someone who mostly agrees with the premise that cata is hated on too much. you are overselling your opinion and it's getting to the point of egotistical. people rarely understanding content? that is so laughable. the sheer fact that games like dark souls can not only be made, but iterated on and made better by community AND devs alike show that people are very capable of understanding how games work.

i pointed out my possible bias in an attempt to be unbias and fair. you aren't being fair. you are only considering you're view as correct and everyone else is wrong. one example being that you think toc was ugly and thus cata was better in that regard. i quite liked the art and environment for toc. it felt unique and befitting of a medival style tournament to determine the best champions of azeroth to confront the lich king.

things like aesthetics/cosmetics are subjective to each person. gameplay is to an extent like this as well. that's why not everyone enjoy the same games. but there is also objectivity in what is good for certain genres of games based on what has and has not worked. you really need to stop being to narrow minded.

also, the reason you gave for catas failure is completely unproven opinion. ff14 (yes, i'm bring up that game) proves against the burnout theory since it was released in september of 2010. it's player base has been growing mostly ever since due to the quality of the expansions and features brought in after launch. this also goes against your "quality doesn't really matter" point. if quality is what brings people in, it certainly affects whether it deters/drives people away. fallout 76 drove tons of people away with it's disgraceful lack of quality.

your next point is that people were getting burned out by cata, which means 6 years is the average burnout time for player. first, how did you get this data? to the best of my knowledge, this is an assumption. i personally have played wow for 14 years and rarely taken breaks because i found it fun. me leaving currently has nothing to do with burnout. i still love warcraft and want to play warcraft. what has caused me to unsub is purely about the quality of the game currently.

overall, it just seems like you are making assumptions, passing them off as fact, and trying to ridicule/downplay anyone who disagrees.

[epigramx]

The fact that OP even acknowledges that the expansion is reviled even in hindsight today, all these years later, when even expansions like Legion now get less flack should tell us plenty on just how mediocre Cataclysm

You fail to see that it's people like YOU that I mainly address and that's EXACTLY why I didn't speak so much about the technical parts of the expansion but mainly about the behaviors of players.

You have to have very little experience in the game back then (from Vanilla to Cata) or not be an adult back then to not having had realized how Cata was unfortunate to be hit with people that happened to be burned out of an MMO that required to play for hours daily and for years with the MMO itself having little to do with it.

You see it was pretty obvious back then that many Vanilla players hated TBC and many Vanilla/TBC players hated WotLK (if you think that's ridiculous you weren't around back then) but when inevitably people hated Cata as well: Cata happened to be at a point in time that most players that ever played the game just burned out because most of the time they were players from the end of Vanilla/launch of TBC and they already experienced the ENTIRETY of WotLK (or some variation of that) and that's enough for any regular player of PC games to burn out and quit because it's not natural to play for hours daily for years without a big break and Cata was a good excuse because just as they hated every other expansion because they were "original gamers" here was a new excuse.

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it just seems like you are making assumptions, passing them off as fact, and trying to ridicule/downplay anyone who disagrees.

You have to realize how easy it is to be cynical against Cata haters when you see how CONTRADICTING those people often are and effectively HYPOCRITES.
For example: they constantly kept implying how Vanilla was "perfect" when Vanilla was an unfinished mess at an alpha stage for many months.
Or they constantly imply that Cata never did anything well when the smallest things like levelling a goblin were just superior experiences.

[Velshin]

Cata for me personally is one of the worst expansions imo and there are many reasons why, here I will list them:

1-The ability to use flying mount in the new Cata areas from the get go and no need to get max level to be able to fly is a major flaw. Not only it made the world felt super smaller but also made quests boring and trivial.

2-The new expansion contents area are splits and disjointed instead of being one big continent like most expansions.

3-They ruined most of the old world and butchered some cool quests like the one from darkshire area. I am still salty about them ruining the Azshara area (the one that located north of Orgrimmar city). It was an awesome mysterious area but then in Cata they ruined it with highways and goblins bullshit.

4-Dragon Soul raid is the worst raid ever created imo because it is a combination of areas we already visited ingame there is almost no uniqueness in it at all.

5-Spine of Deathwing is super bad encounter, in fact tbe entire fight of Deathwing was so poorly designed and Blizzard didnt give Deathwing justice.

6-Mages exploiting the legendary staff in arena is even more annoying than using Shadowmourne in arena in Wotlk.



There are many reasons but these six I mentioned are the big ones for me personally.

[Tylanthia]

Cross-realm raiding was introduced in Cataclysm in the Dragon Soul patch. This allowed open-raid--one of the best wow communities I have ever had a chance to be a part of. All of a sudden, all of the past raids and dungeons opened up--for achievement and legendary farming. Openraid was the only time in wow history that I had a massively positive experience pugging content (before WoD killed it) and I will always be grateful to Cataclysm for that.

As far as the rest of the expansion, PVP was fun, I enjoyed the firelands and tol barad dallies. The dungeons were cool though, if a bit hard at the start.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I don't think Cata was that bad. The raids were amazing. The 5 man situation was pretty fun pre-nerf but still was ok post nerf. The firelands patch brought a really good world content patch. Not to say it didn't have faults as well. The nerf of the 5 mans caused a very open war that went from cold to hot between "the 1%" and "the vast majority" that I feel still rages to this day. It is also fairly obvious the rebuilding of the world good a lot of air out of the room resource wise. The final boss of the expansion was kind of unrelatable and was was kind of lackluster. A major cluster fuck happened with the final raid tier as well by having weird LFR systems and gearing from LFR. I mean remember the high end guild stacking LFRs and funneling gear to players and demands people sell gear to people or get mass reported? Yeah shit like that happened.

Oh, and that last tier wasn't insanely challenging and lasted an insane amount of time. I mean they gave out Diablo 3 as a gift if you stay subbed. So it was the start of the bribes to stick around era that hasn't ended yet (although these days they just give out pixels like mounts instead of things).