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

[epigramx]

People also treated each other better without LFG. They had their reputation, plus it's always awkward to look for new players halfway down an instance. That level of social commitment no longer exist. People treat each others like pawns in their own game.

That point has some merit but it's clearly overrated to me when I compare TBC (I did a lot of 5mans back then and some raiding) to current WoW.
Right now you get the exact same experience when you try to do mythic 5mans because without a good group you picked manually you're ruined.
In TBC/WotLK when a 5man was easy to complete: it was obscenely easy to find a group anyway: I never felt like I had to do much for those.

[vertigo12]

People also treated each other better without LFG. They had their reputation, plus it's always awkward to look for new players halfway down an instance. That level of social commitment no longer exist. People treat each others like pawns in their own game.



Right. The raids of any expansion age the poorest and Cataclysm lacked a lot of raid content. So when that drops away, Cataclysm compares more favourably to expansions that had this going for them.

Back then people were frustrated with the lack of raiding, there was nothing else to do. The expansion just ended into a void. That frustration painted everything else about the expansion unfavourably.

So we might just be looking at a difference in experience between people that tried to take Cataclysm to its limits, and those that didn't play it back then or quit the game early. The latter are now able to explore the strengths of Cataclysm at their own leisure. Especially with Chromie time.

I guess one of the main reason why veterans, I call them veterans since they are players who are already in their 30's + have a family and kids already and have a taste of experience of how raw WoW was back then during the 1st 3 expansion, TBC has attunement and the concept of progression feels organic and rewarding. The amount of available raid no matter how it is (1 to 3 boss Gruul's, Magtheridon's) means there is something waiting ahead. BT was the pinacle of raiding and the trophy of all your efforts.

some how during WotLK devs cut back on the gating through attunement as it frustrates new blood players who lack the necessary patience and understanding for having implemented such design philosophy.

You got The Eye, Naxxramas, Onyxia and OS as your entry level raid which is a substantial number of raid selection you can choose from. After that, everything becomes monotonous as they release 1 raid+1dungeon per expac and once you speed run through these contents, the experience feels stale and the only way to feel engaged or accomplished is making an alt. Good thing that they introduced borrowed power during the 3rd phase of WoW's lifetime (Legion, BfA, SL) and the timing was right in putting Torghast, Island expedition to keep everyone preoccupied while waiting for the next major point X content of that expac. The concern with how they release their content right now would require a good decision making and implementation of when to release their content.

[RobertMugabe]

People also treated each other better without LFG. They had their reputation, plus it's always awkward to look for new players halfway down an instance. That level of social commitment no longer exist. People treat each others like pawns in their own game.

No, they didn't.
TBC Classic proves this once again, as did Classic. I also firmly remember that what you're saying wasn't true all these years back.

[iinverse]

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.

The only good thing in WotLK was Ulduar. Other than that it bring the worst raid tier and worst dailies (tournament).

[trapmaster]

I personally find cata xpac alright out, even i like heroic that HARD but blizzard decides it's too challenging and gave in to tone it down is pretty dumb. I think Mop reigns superior than all previous xpacs.

[Soon-TM]

I won't claim that expansion for anything. MoP is the only one I'll argue was overlooked and memed into a hell deeper than it deserved.

MoP was the only expansion I didn't play at all when it was current. I have played it instead on *censored* servers, and I must say that it really blows Cata and everything that came afterwards out of the water. And yes, that includes Legion.

[Ielenia]

Cataclysm was the worst expansion, because it did little to expand the game.
Instead, it REMOVED thousands of hours of content in the way of collectibles, quests, dungeons, raids, and storylines.
I always look at it this way.
What kind of developer thinks their product is so good that can just remove the work of the previous team en masse?
Say what you will about WoW now, but this level of absurdity has not happened since, and that is a very very good thing.

More so, how short sighted were they, to do this as if to say "the story has evolved past those quests" and then NEVER do it again.

Tells you everything you need to know about Cataclysm, the opposite of an expansion.

I don't mind it happening again, as long as we get Zidormi at the main cities with the option to allow us to see the old world before "world-changing event X" happened.

Off-topic, I hate WoWPedia's new look. Thanks for making 50% of my monitor screen useless.

[loras]

I don't mind it happening again, as long as we get Zidormi at the main cities with the option to allow us to see the old world before "world-changing event X" happened.

Off-topic, I hate WoWPedia's new look. Thanks for making 50% of my monitor screen useless.

If it's a whole world we might as well make the old world accessible via the caverns of time.
Honestly i'm surprised the caverns of time have not seen more use.

[Bakis]

To me it was an enormously ambitious expansion. It didnt turn out well (to me) but in the long run that level of ambition and will to go totally off in one direction is needed for WoW to thrive long term.
Cataclysm to me was just so much cool thoughts (which is fine) but it lacked some sort of cohesiveness to me. I feel the same way with Shadowlands to be honest but more that it slipped too far from one of WoW core values, raiding.

[Ielenia]

Your personal attacks can't re-shape reality.

You do know that the poster has not "personally attacked" you even once in their post, right? Saying "you're wrong" may be rude to say in this few words, but it is in no way a personal attack. Unless any and all disagreement toward you feels like a personal attack to you, to the point of having such a thin skin that it might as well be non-existent.

The main point I'm making is against the fanaticism of haters of expansions and fanbois of expansions: they have the delusion there are "perfect" and "abysmal" expansions: in reality all of them are in a range.

Then why did you title your thread "Cataclysm was one of the best expansions and I'll explain why" when you just admitted that this was not the point of your thread, especially when you haven't explained yet why you think Cataclysm is "one of the best expansions" or even be in the top 50%.

[spalernTJ]

I liked the initial presentation of Cataclysm, specifically healing in dungeons. That's a subjective thing tho'

[epigramx]

People also treated each other better without LFG. They had their reputation, plus it's always awkward to look for new players halfway down an instance. That level of social commitment no longer exist. People treat each others like pawns in their own game.



Right. The raids of any expansion age the poorest and Cataclysm lacked a lot of raid content. So when that drops away, Cataclysm compares more favourably to expansions that had this going for them.

Back then people were frustrated with the lack of raiding, there was nothing else to do. The expansion just ended into a void. That frustration painted everything else about the expansion unfavourably.

So we might just be looking at a difference in experience between people that tried to take Cataclysm to its limits, and those that didn't play it back then or quit the game early. The latter are now able to explore the strengths of Cataclysm at their own leisure. Especially with Chromie time.

No, they didn't.
TBC Classic proves this once again, as did Classic. I also firmly remember that what you're saying wasn't true all these years back.

Yep: calling old WoW respectful is peak delusion. Back in TBC you had people actively harassing you or people that left an instance in the middle ruining it and all kinds of other toxic things.

Because guess what; people are assholes; and they were assholes a few years ago too.

[Kaykay]

Cataclysm was the start of the end. Especially for the story of warcraft.

Removed, was the race lore and story elements that made the foundation for the world. And taught you what it meant to be a denizen of your race as you leveled.
replaced with immersion breaking vehicle heists and sherlock holmes memes. Showcasing your favorite anime or tv show in every zone, completely disconnected from the previously immersive game experience.

The gameplay of the quests was updated, to be better. But the tone of the game took a sharp turn for memecity in Cataclysm.
Westfall and Badlands being the most memorable examples i can think of, sherlock holmes, and "the day deathwing came".

So i always felt it was super jarring whenever they tried to return to more serious themes in later expansions. And the choice to tell this story through cinematics of a handfull of mary sue characters, instead of drawing upon the world and themes they built in war3 and lasted upto the end of Lich King.

[Asrialol]

Lol what. People don't quit wow for real life reasons or stuff like that. The only reason people quit the game is because the game is bad. That's the only reason why people would quit.

[Johnjohn]

I would say that it was the start of a lower quality WoW, but I do think it was a little underrated.

I would rank Vanilla through WOLK a solid 9.5/10. I would rank Cataclysm through Legion a solid 8/10.

I enjoyed heroic dungeons in Cata as they felt pretty challenging but not insane. I also understood that the revamped the entire levelling experience which obviously meant less max level content. I was fine with it as I leveled a few alts through the new zones and found it fun, although maybe a little too much tongue-in-cheek.

Not the best expansion by a long shot imo, but I would not call it bad.

[Saltysquidoon]

Cata had to follow up Wrath which was never going to go well. In spite of what ghostcrawler says Arthas was the final boss of wow for a lot of people.
Wasting time on the old world alienated the "muh 'nilla" crowd ultimately simply served to update content that was designed for obsolescence by its own nature and ultiamtely drained resources from cata's actual endgame leading to the dreaded cut content.

The content that was there was good though, BoT/BWL/Tot4W are good raids (BoT has Halfus guildbreaker who has to honor of cucking greedy guilds who thought they could 'trim the fat' by going 10man).
Firelands is a top 5 (in my opinion top 3) raid ever.
The pre-nerf heroics were just *chef's kiss*
They even had the molten front for people who didn't want to raid which was hyped up at the time for being the first foray into 'solo endgame'.

Then came the troll filler patch...
Then came dragon soul: With metzen's self inserting going ssj 3, a shit raid, a terrible final boss AND fucking LFR all with the glorious rancid cherry on top of lasting for a fucking year.

TL DR? Cata had the impossible job of following wrath, started strong, fell over midway thanks to the cut content curse, and left a bad taste in everyone's mouth with a year of dragon soul which has transformed over the years to "Cata is when WoW started being bad".

[TEHPALLYTANK]

It was the worst one, before WoD, Legion, BfA, and SL existed. Now it isn't the worst one because other expansions managed to be worse.

[Rennadrel]

It was probably the worst experience for me and forced me to quit. As a raider, from the get go I hated it. 10 man raids pretty much exclusively favoured ranged classes on every encounter, so if you played melee characters like be, you were effectively useless, especially on the heroic mode fights. So you'd have to ride the pine if you were in a 10 man guild like I was initially. I think we eventually got through it all but I basically didn't do any of the heroic content up through Bastion. At which point I transferred servers and played with a 25 man guild for a while before quitting. The leveling was pretty enjoyable and the environments were good, but a lot of the dungeon and raid content was just not good for me.

[arkanon]

****WARNING - OPINIONS INCOMING****


I was having this discussion recently with some mates - Cata really was a turning point of sorts. Things had for the most part, steadily improved overall since vanilla release, with MOST things feeling very complete and enjoyable during wrath, but with classes really taking a big step in Cata. Was the game perfect? no. But I genuinely enjoyed at least ONE spec of EVERY class, to the point that I had 1 or more of every class at max level, and played most of them somewhat frequently. I really enjoyed swapping around between "mains" to the extent that on any given raid night, I might play 3-4 different CLASSES, as required by the guild.

We had 4 tanks in our mostly 10man guild, and although I tanked 100% of the first kills, I would often swap out to a different class that added something we needed during a particular encounter. Content overall felt well fleshed out, the dungeons were fun right from day 1, and although the changes to gear quality bothered some, I couldn't have cared any less if it was purple or blue, so long as it was appropriate for the content, which it was.

I wasn't a huge fan of having the content re-use the old world, but, i felt enough was changed or added that it felt entirely new, and this was balanced out with the entire world feeling different thanks to the revamp. I think it suffered from a few things though. Firstly, it was the new popular thing to hate - streamers were jumping on the "its too hard" bandwagon, and then ironically swapped to the "its too easy" bandwagon mid expansion. And secondly, it suffered from just being......good. It didn't fluctuate between AMAZING and TERRIBLE, it just cruised along middle of the pack, which I think is fine. Nothing in cata blew my mind, but nothing made me angry either really.

It seemed to me Blizzard tried to build on the things people liked, while toning down or removing the things they didnt. My problem with retail now is for me personally, they are doubling down on the things I DONT enjoy, while minimising or removing the things i do. I fully accept this could be a "me" issue, as its obviously subjective, but at least SOME people seem to agree.

And lastly, it finished with a fizzle, instead of a grand explosion, which left a bad taste in the mouth of the community. That being said, I quite liked WoD, and didnt particularly enjoy Legion overall, so i guess im just "wrong" about these things...

[Ryzeth]

Not a very unpopular opinion. Maybe unpopular on MMO-C but most opinions are, that aren't trashing the game/Blizzard.

Lots of people like(d) it. Wasn't as popular or Wrath or MoP, which is came between (particularly with pvpers) but it definitely wasn't in the subpar category.

Raids were good aside from the final two DS fights.
PvP was actually relatively solid aside from a few minor gripes.
Leveling was fresh and new for the most part.
Expansion was actually very alt-friendly.

At the end of the day, no expansion has been perfect. I'd argue that no expansion has even come close to perfect. But Cataclysm was by no means awful.