1st tier of Cataclysm

[Deleted]

And? How many pugs were getting past saurfang? Maybe festergut/rotface if you were lucky, but at least it was puggable.

People say casuals are taking over this game, and I ask, how? Where are they? They must have all left after Wrath. There is literally NOBODY playing anymore. People can say whatever they want, but no matter what part of the expansion you could pug anything, why? Because there was more people. Now there is NOBODY playing which means there are no pugs that you can pick up and recruit for a guild. Why do you think all the big name guilds are going 10 man? Aside from a select few gulids, people too find for raiding at a decent level is pretty much obsolete.

If you find a lack of raiders, shitty daily quests, boring LFR, boring game play, grindy leveling. Fine enjoy yourself. And for those mentioning my sig, I bet you didn't realize how old the sig is, you know level 80 sig, if that doesn't tell you how much I care about my signature, I don't know what would.

It's impossible to penetrate a wow fanboi's head. I've been in your guys shoes. Now if you can manage to get out of the rat race and hamster wheel that is wow you might actually enjoy your gaming experience.

Most encounters are also way harder on normal mode than they were in for example wrath. More mechanics, and more unforgivable mechanics.

The current raid content on normal and heroic is way better than what was presented in wrath aswell IMO. I agree on the dailys, that's a step backwards, but the raid content is just awesome this tier.

And you obviously cared enough about your sig to defend it :P

[Icaras]

The funny thing is, in my raid team at least (Well the one I had back during cata, lost a few peeps now ) we didn't think much of it at the time, but in hindsight agreed it was actually the best cata tier.

[eschatological]

I actually really like the opening raids of the past two xpacs, t11 and now t14. Granted T14 is new subject matter and not as iconic as Cho'gall, Sinestra, and Nefarian, but if you think T14 is boring you're obviously still just in LFR. I think people are too quickly judging a tier by the LFR content, which is a ridiculous thing to do. When you start wiping on bosses when you learn them, you pick up the themes and story by osmosis, and I can appreciate the tier as a heroic raider much better than anyone who is mindlessly mashing buttons on LFR can.

I'm actually quite impressed with the raiding so far this xpac. ToES normal was undertuned compared to HoF normals (which is supposedly before it progression-wise) but maybe ToES heroics will be "after" HoF heroics, in terms of difficulties. It'd suck to have Sha of Fear go down in less than a lockout, imo.

[Wildmoon]

And? How many pugs were getting past saurfang? Maybe festergut/rotface if you were lucky, but at least it was puggable.

People say casuals are taking over this game, and I ask, how? Where are they? They must have all left after Wrath. There is literally NOBODY playing anymore. People can say whatever they want, but no matter what part of the expansion you could pug anything, why? Because there was more people. Now there is NOBODY playing which means there are no pugs that you can pick up and recruit for a guild. Why do you think all the big name guilds are going 10 man? Aside from a select few gulids, people too find for raiding at a decent level is pretty much obsolete.

If you find a lack of raiders, shitty daily quests, boring LFR, boring game play, grindy leveling. Fine enjoy yourself. And for those mentioning my sig, I bet you didn't realize how old the sig is, you know level 80 sig, if that doesn't tell you how much I care about my signature, I don't know what would.

It's impossible to penetrate a wow fanboi's head. I've been in your guys shoes. Now if you can manage to get out of the rat race and hamster wheel that is wow you might actually enjoy your gaming experience.

LOL in WotLK most pug can finish normal 25 Naxx and ToC easily and they can finish half of ICC with pug. That's how easy normal as in WotLK. Fanboy? it's you that is fucking WotLK fanboy. You are blinded if you can't see how much more well designed MoP's encounter than WotLK's where you can faceroll most fight in normal.

[Kevyne-Shandris]

People's perceptions of cataclysm are interesting. It was not until about 4.3 that people started saying "Oh this thing sucks," and then started "remembering" about how much they supposedly hated the rest of the expansion, and then eventually started to pretend that they had hated Cataclysm the entire time.

From the forums it was the next best thing since sliced bread...until players (the real gamers, not those trolling the forums) left in droves.

WoW never suffered such a mass loss of players before in it's history. That in itself says by how much it sucked, with facts to back it up.

Didn't like Cata even before it was released with how healing changed. It's the expansion that made healers but carbon copies of each other, to the point why even have 4 (then) sub-classes of healers. Now we have 5, and healing is about as generic as it comes. Gone are the days each healer brought something special that made it worthwhile to level/gear that sub-class. After DS began to hate Holy Radiance with a passion.

Liked the WotLK healing model where each healing sub-class was unique. Liked how busy a healer would be. Not this snorefest.

[Hanto]

I liked certain fights in BWD, but not the rest nor the rest of the raid content available. So far I like all of the raid content MoP has to offer (haven't done HoF yet but will tomorrow).

[Baphomette]

T11 was pretty good, but the tuning was way off. Raid tiers should get more difficult as an expansion progresses, not less.

The first four options (Magmaw, Omnomtron, Halfus, Conclave) were all FAR too complex for introductory raid fights and probably discouraged the masses from raiding more than anything else.

People's perceptions of cataclysm are interesting. It was not until about 4.3 that people started saying "Oh this thing sucks," and then started "remembering" about how much they supposedly hated the rest of the expansion, and then eventually started to pretend that they had hated Cataclysm the entire time.

This isn't quite true. People started complaining about how long T11 was current content and what was taking FL so long and blah de blah, and when 4.1 came out with just ZG/ZA the QQ was immense. T12 and T13 only having half a tier of content each was just the cataclysmic icing.

[Wilian]

As I mentioned in my review a while ago, the opening tier (11) of Cataclysm managed to hold the expansion together after first two weeks of it's release when all non-raid content was finished.

But even that ran thin really fast.

People's perceptions of cataclysm are interesting. It was not until about 4.3 that people started saying "Oh this thing sucks," and then started "remembering" about how much they supposedly hated the rest of the expansion, and then eventually started to pretend that they had hated Cataclysm the entire time.

Funny you would say that because after the release Cataclysm's bad opening content (Or rather, lack of it that persisted for roughly half a year) was the cause behind in the first and one of the steepest declines of WoW subscribtion base.

Blizzard was at crash course then, which also was reason that credited to the separation of 4.1 and 4.2

They just were desperate to give players something to do before the ship sunk too deep.

[Osmeric]

T11 was pretty good, but the tuning was way off. Raid tiers should get more difficult as an expansion progresses, not less.

And now, they have repeated the mistake with normal mode raids in T14. LFR is such an terrible experience it doesn't count.

[Djuntas]

This disscusion again? I tough anyone agree'd by now that Cataclysme started off great, but then it got to be absolute crap.

When the crap starts you may wondor`? When Blizzard delayed Firelands inn 4.1 cause "players aint ready", and instead gave us 2 new 5 mans that weren't anything speciel.

Since 4.1 (4.0.6, could have done abit more aswell but it was okay) Cataclysme showed Blizzards true nature towards wow...Its the B-team working on it.

[Osmeric]

So "anyone" can "agree" as much as they want, we have some damn facts on that and they tell us the complete opposite.

Yep. And the overtuned normal mode raids in T14 are going to cause people to leave too (well, except for the griefers and masochists who plan to enjoy LFR for the entire expansion.)

[Whiskra]

T11 was great. It was so much fun progressing through normal modes and acctually feeling some kind of accomplishment for completing them, with heroic being that almost unreachable pinnacle which all made it seem like the journey was reward enough for our hard work.

However, people were bitching about the difficulty like no tomorrow because they were too braindead to kill a boss within 20 wipes or less, and thus left, which caused Blizzard to make a complete flip on their design choice for the remainder of the expansion, which might explain why the next tier took so long to be released (they might've had to remake alot of it just to accomodate to people's bitching), and the removal of another raid entirely.

[lebowski]

Liked the WotLK healing model where each healing sub-class was unique. Liked how busy a healer would be. Not this snorefest.

Yeah, WotLK healing model was soooo much better. Discs spam shield, Shammies spam CH, Pallies spam HL or FoL (lol), Druids spam Rejuv and hit WG. Skill issue. And to call them carbon copies is just ignorant, healing has never been as truly diverse as it is now.

To the point, tier 11 was awesome, everything went downhill from there.

[Huehuecoyotl]

People's perceptions of cataclysm are interesting. It was not until about 4.3 that people started saying "Oh this thing sucks," and then started "remembering" about how much they supposedly hated the rest of the expansion, and then eventually started to pretend that they had hated Cataclysm the entire time. Things people did way back at the beginning, and didn't care too much one way or the other, suddenly became "the tragic failures of Cataclysm." It's really kind of cute. This extends to every part... leveling, raids, you name it. Hell, people even started to complain about how Cataclysm content "reused skins" too much (when they really meant skeletons, which blizzard has been doing forever) because they were so bored at the end of 4.3.

Cataclysm out of the box was fine. I felt leveling was done fine... all the complaints that arose about it, at the end of the expansion after everyone had by and far finished leveling for the better part of the year, seemed to revolve around it being too "disjointed" story-wise and yet somehow too linear. The linear-ness has merit to it (likely an issue that arose for people leveling alts) but I feel the stories in each zone were told with... competency (especially if you compare it to burning crusade... "stories?") I thought Hyjal and twilight highlands were bland and boring, but Vash'jir and Uldum were great zones.

I really enjoyed the so called "difficult" heroics. I don't recall ever really having issues with any of them... ask if anyone needs an explanation for a fight, stop, explain it, pewpewpew, move on. Moreover, the dungeons were really cool too... Lost City of the Tol'Vir and Halls of Origination are two of my favorite dungeons. I also liked how ALL of the boss fights, from all the dungeons, had fun little quirks to them (that you actually had to observe.) A shame that there was a community outcry to "dumb them down" into triviality.

As for the raiding... I thought the first tier and Firelands were quite well done.... Unfortunate that they fumbled it so badly on dragon soul. While Bastion of Twilight was a little... trite... (pointless corridors leading to boss, followed by more pointless corridors) Blackwing Descent was a really nice raid overall. (Though I feel It should have been more expansive layout-wise, and with more trash too.) Throne of the Four Winds was a nice, simple raid. All of the bosses from the raids had a nice unique aspect to them. Despite the raid's various shortcomings, they all had interesting boss fights.

I really enjoyed Firelands too. Again, all interesting boss fights (baleroc was a little bleh from a DPS standpoint though,) with a nice overall theme. You can tell Blizzard put a lot of work into making it... among other things, it and ZA are the only content patch raids in the game to use different newly introduced models for each boss.

As for Dragon soul... ehh. I've always displayed my distaste for this raid. The setting in Dragonblight, while sensible, is no less boring. While the bosses aren't bad in it of themselves, their complete pencil-lore status and relative simplicity (compared to earlier Cata raid bosses) drags the raid down. Most of all, I dislike it because I feel they thoroughly squandered Deathwing as an epic fight, and as a villain overall.

I do not believe the relative failure, however, of Dragon Soul serves to really "pollute" the actual good parts of Cataclsym.

speak for yourself. i hated Cata from day 1. the levelling was dull, putting me off levelling an alt for months. the numerous bugs in the game were jarring. what they had done to the old world zones was appalling for an RPG. and there was, literally, nothing to do at 85 apart from the raids. the raids were very, very good. but everything else sucked to such an extent that the hubble telescope was being used to investigate the gravitational anomolies coming out of Blizzard HQ. which is why so many people took one look at Cata and said "nope, not for me thanks".

[Deleted]

I don't get why T12 and T13 had so few bosses.

Because the were saving money? and doing mop. it's not that complicated to understand.