Cataclysm - How it should've been implemented

[Z a v i u s]

Cataclysm

Vanilla - BC - Wrath all compile and tackle the old lore and story that was created in Warcraft I-III. Since Cata is where Blizzard started to take off on its own creative story from what was established, I feel the best way they should have tackled this is by jumping ahead in time 10-25 years, where we as players retire our old heroes and start new. This I know would cause a lot of backlash from the player base due to all the time invested in that character and they wouldn’t want that to have gone to waste. This I understand, and will discuss how I think this could be handled.

All New Zones
World Map
Starting zones
- With the Cataclysm each faction’s starting zone will be somewhere drastically new. Building the fact that you are a newb and are needed to help with what has happened. Something more exciting and new from what we actually got. Ex. Humans spawn as the refugee themselves where you have to come from rags and basically nothing in your pockets to enlisting to help out your fellow companions and grow into a hero.
Major Cities
- Major cities being reworked Visually ( Stormwind having more homeless people, it being burned by Deathwing and the fire. See this on rooftops, the stones, etc.)
The Feel of the cities themselves feeling more like the cities they are with growth over time and tragedies that have happened.
Each Major city would have a plot of land that is available to the players to buy and put homes on. Each player is limited to 1 Per server. (Player housing wouldn't be like the garrison in WoD where it keeps you away from everyone but a statement of your achievement: Much like in Vanilla when you were the few to have tier 2, Grand Marshal Gear, etc). Also each plot of land is locked behind a couple of profession quest / contribution lock, Which with each profession unlock certain things in the plots and each weekly reset once they reach one contribution goal reach it unlocks just some minor cosmetic things to that plot of land. (Just to show their progression)
- Big plots (Cost extremely high more so used for guild Halls or the exceptionally rich solo player)
Options from all race castle styles that you can choose from. If its a faction that your current character is, you would need to obtain Exalted with that race to unlock their style of buildings.
Can hang guild, faction, race banners.
Statues of achievements
- Medium plots
- Small plots

New dungeons for leveling and end game
- The old dungeons from prior 3 expansion have been resolved (Making this a living expansion with past event not having to be replayed)
- New dungeons throughout the entire world that reveals what is going on in the current lore. Much like Vanilla WoW’s dungeons
- Dungeons tying in the building of the time gap of what has happened, Also Going to the New Hero note, dungeons that have said hero that gives you quest and impact in said dungeon.
- Dungeons that explore and build the new races added (Worgen, Goblin)
New Raids
- Attunement quest that explore the lore behind why you are doing such raid (More Vanilla required attunements and not BC)
-First patch would be the basic evils that have been built over the time gap (Maybe someone falling from grace or leadership)
- Next big patch would be the next level of evil the ones that decieved prior raid bosses (Building on what establish).
New Heroes
- Character development from prior expansion are pushed to the top of their faction or make a stunning fall from grace. Where quest throughout the world explore also into what has happened over the past 10-25 years.
Fresh start for all 1-60
- Allows experience gamers from prior expansion to be on pair starting off with New players.
- Allows all players to learn the game
New lore being implemented and allows players to be brought back into the World of Warcraft. (Immersion)
Archive Old characters in The Hero's order hall
- Top 5 characters from each class and faction are remember on their very own server (Order Hall) With statues of that character and a Monument about that person
- To become considered top 5 have to achieve one of these Achievements
1. First character of that class/faction to reach max level
2. Most achievements accomplished for that class/faction (This would keep achievements character bound)
3. Highest ranked pvper for that class/faction
4. Most quest completed by class/faction covering all 3 prior expansion. (If completed all quest available it goes to first one to achieve this)
5. Top performer (Meaning out of the prior 4 listing you were near the top in all categories compared to everyone else in your class) * Example you were the 50th paladin to max level, 5th most achievements for pallies, #1 pvper, top 100th for quest. Which gives you the option to pick this title or select the pvp option. If you choose the pvp option then top performer faults to the next and vis-versa.
LIMITATIONS
1 character per account
Only 1 of those being listed (Meaning that if you were the first to max level, your character earns that spot
Update professions
- Classic or Ancient recipes that craft old items
- Each profession would have new Skins for their crafted items unless a legacy/ancient recipe.
- Herbs,Ore have new and old reagents.
- Each Profession will have recipes that can be loot from world bosses, Mobs, quest, etc. that are associated with player housing.
All new item models
- Greys, Greens, Blues, Epics, and even the rare Legendary items.
- Old models of gear would be crafted as legacy
- Old models that show wear and tear over the years as lower level dungeon or crafting gear.
- Each faction would have its theme of gear drop in its zone and according to the level of the zone.
- PVP would have different gear for different BGs you win from. Much like the warfronts we are seeing today.
- Arena Gear would have its own theme away from the BG gear.
Tier sets for each Class
- No basic recolors for different loots such as pvp gear just being red compared to the PVE equivalent gear.
Updated race models
- Which were implemented later into Cata. Have them at the start along with the Worgen and Goblin

Patch 4.0
The new world is the main focus of this patch. Lvl and learn the new lore, The end game is the New bosses with the background lore / building on the expansion with the end game raids and dungeons.
Patch 4.1
New Zones (Uldum, Vashj’ir, Twilight Highlands, Deepholm)
New Quest in each zone that builds off the changing world and leads into the Real Evil behind everything that has changed.
New dungeons (Blackrock Caverns, Grim Batol, Halls of Origination, Lost City of the Tol’vir, The Vortex of Pinnacle, The Stonecore)
New Raids (Blackwing Descent, Bastion of Twilight, Throne of the Four Winds)
Patch 4.2
New Zones ( Mount Hyjal, Tol Barad)
New Raid ( Firelands, Baradin Hold)
Path 4.3
New Raid (Dragon Soul)

Expansions After
Mist of Pandaria
The ending that leads into WoD would need to be rewritten to lead to the discovery of the Broken shore and lead into Legion with the lore
Legion




I understand that this would basically be making a new game instead of an expansion. But with the events of the Cataclysm and to bring people together instead of having this Old school gamer that has all this experience in WoW, now playing with these cata boomers that just got into the game. I feel it would be a way to bring them together so we can move forward together as a community. I mean this by the old WoW players having the knowledge of how the game works basically helping and teach the new gamers what is going on as we play through the world which is new all together. So the Experienced gamer wouldn't know everything just the basic mechanics of the game or at least they should.

Thank you all for your time to look at my new ideas. I would greatly appreciate it if you had some ideas pop in your head on what you would add to my list or even things you would change or even the things that you think wouldn't work. Leave a comment on what exactly came to your head! I would love to read your feedback!

[Redwyrm]

While I see the appeal of a "World of Ruin" (ala FF6) style time jump. I disagree with the leaving old player characters behind and starting over.

[Video Games]

as long as I get to keep the hypest trailer. Literally made me cry

[sam86]

i think the biggest problem of cataclysm was dragon soul, also WoD is worst exp in general, there is no question which raid is the worst with most used assets, not to mention how raid was about stack shaman resto/arcane mages to pass spine
I did NOT play cata, but i still did many runs in older raids, and dragon soul is the laziest raid i ever saw in wow history, it is worse than ToC which is literally just 1 big coliseum! (every fight is unique before someone get pitchfork, and most important ToC was more of filler raid than actual full raid)
Cata we weren't still burned from wow, so i don't agree with idea of - back then - reset of wow, but i do support it 100% now

After wrath i was expecting bigger better game, LFG (i still beat myself for being 'happy' for it) killed the social part of a social game, why blizz doesn't remove it already ?
at least u can't queue mythics ...

[Z a v i u s]

In sum, you think they should have gone with wow 2.0 after wrath. I don’t disagree. At some point expansion after expansion wears thin.

I think that at some point and this point in wows history it would've made the most sense to basically reset WoW. Lore wise, the company turn over, and mainly how the lore at this point and forward was all brand new; from the Warcraft-Warcraft III RPG story line

[Super Kami Dende]

about 7 years late to the party with your ideas.

[Soon-TM]

Cataclysm was supposed to be the "git gud" xpac, or at least that's what was intended originally by Mr. Street. Ok, it was a good starting point... but in that case, why was levelling made trivially easy? Shouldn't it have prepared players for what was expected at endgame? And my pet peeve, why was healing made so !@#$ty at the beginning? I've been healing since Vanilla, and it was never that hard. Not even in BC, when healer mana was a precious commodity.

PvE was a mess. Heroics were simply overtuned at launch, only to be nerfed into kingdom come shortly thereafter. Raids were also badly tuned, with some bosses being very hard in 10m but a cakewalk in 25, or viceversa. Also, the shared lockout was a really dumb idea. The first raid tier was meh, the second one was very good, but also very short (8 bosses Blizz, c'mon) and the last one... made me quit for almost 5 years LOL.

PvP was also a mess, but since that's the norm for WoW (with a few exceptions), there is no need for further comments.

Add to that the... controversial world revamp, which OBLITERATED several beautiful zones of the old world just to replace them by stupid jokes all over the place (Uldum anyone?). And the story - DW has been the worst main antagonist in the entire game imo, especially after the LK, with whom the original WC3 story arc was closed.

In short, the idea behind Cataclysm was neat, but horribly executed.

[Onikaroshi]

Absolutely. Beginning of Cata was excellent. Firelands was eh, but it’s the middle tier that’s ok. Dragon soul was horrendous.

Cata wouldn't be remembered as horribly if DS wasn't such a phoned in, piece of crap, short raid that lasted WAY too long.

[Rogalicus]

It shouldn't have existed to begin with.

[Kokolums]

This would fail as badly as cata did because you didn't address the problem. The problem was they destroyed the in-game community. Cata was where the bulk of the social players jumped ship. You completely redid the expansion but did nothing to fix social, so they will still jump ship.

[Onikaroshi]

I remember thinking, because that was when subs first started to decline, that they must have phoned it in on dragon soul because they were trying to rush to get to the next expansion. Nope. The hot heroics were solid though. To easy, but solid dungeons.

Believe that was the last expansion until legion that had post release dungeon launches... Cata had some good dungeons imo.

[ONCHEhap]

Cataclysm was supposed to be the "git gud" xpac, or at least that's what was intended originally by Mr. Street. Ok, it was a good starting point... but in that case, why was levelling made trivially easy? Shouldn't it have prepared players for what was expected at endgame? And my pet peeve, why was healing made so !@#$ty at the beginning? I've been healing since Vanilla, and it was never that hard. Not even in BC, when healer mana was a precious commodity.

PvE was a mess. Heroics were simply overtuned at launch, only to be nerfed into kingdom come shortly thereafter. Raids were also badly tuned, with some bosses being very hard in 10m but a cakewalk in 25, or viceversa. Also, the shared lockout was a really dumb idea. The first raid tier was meh, the second one was very good, but also very short (8 bosses Blizz, c'mon) and the last one... made me quit for almost 5 years LOL.

PvP was also a mess, but since that's the norm for WoW (with a few exceptions), there is no need for further comments.

Add to that the... controversial world revamp, which OBLITERATED several beautiful zones of the old world just to replace them by stupid jokes all over the place (Uldum anyone?). And the story - DW has been the worst main antagonist in the entire game imo, especially after the LK, with whom the original WC3 story arc was closed.

In short, the idea behind Cataclysm was neat, but horribly executed.

Heroics were definitely not overtuned,in fact,I'd say it was the best dungeon experience that ever existed in WoW,and that's comming from someone who really disliked cataclysm.pre-nerf heroics were the best thing about cata imo

[munkeyinorbit]

In sum, you think they should have gone with wow 2.0 after wrath. I don’t disagree. At some point expansion after expansion wears thin.

Cata is commonly known as WoW 2. You basically get a new world to use except you keep your character. Was a nice thought at the time.

[Soon-TM]

This would fail as badly as cata did because you didn't address the problem. The problem was they destroyed the in-game community. Cata was where the bulk of the social players jumped ship. You completely redid the expansion but did nothing to fix social, so they will still jump ship.

Not only that, they introduced LFR just to make sure that any random asshat could raid and grief ppl. Typical (post Activision) Blizz, doubling down on failures.

- - - Updated - - -

Heroics were definitely not overtuned,in fact,I'd say it was the best dungeon experience that ever existed in WoW,and that's comming from someone who really disliked cataclysm.pre-nerf heroics were the best thing about cata imo

They were harder than BC heroics in appropriate gear. And those were hard enough.

[Z a v i u s]

This would fail as badly as cata did because you didn't address the problem. The problem was they destroyed the in-game community. Cata was where the bulk of the social players jumped ship. You completely redid the expansion but did nothing to fix social, so they will still jump ship.

I think the whole starting with fresh characters would actually help with the social issue. Since they implemented LFR for the new players to get in touch with raiding, I would advise to not implement that and also remove the LFG tab. With forcing everyone to start with a new character and give the option to swap to new servers if they wish, this would build that strong community that Vanilla had. Build up your name/player rep within that server and community.