We're almost 2 months into Mists, and I have a question for all of you!

[Beet]

MoP is better to me just because they gave us more to do, and Pandaria is bar none way cooler than the crappy Cata zones. Vashir was disgusting to everyone except for a few people. Hyjal was okay. Deepholme could have been so much more. In lore it was designed as basically being a giant cavern in the earth. There was no sky to see period. Instead they decide to say screw the lore and gave us a giant crater. Uldum I'll say was pretty awesome. Twilight Highlands was bleh. No one really got to do it anyways. There was no point at 85 in doing it or going there really, and you'd be 85 before you even got there half the time so you didn't even level up there.

Also the Cata entry raids were indeed amazing. In my opinion that was Blizzard's best tier at that point since Ulduar. It was brutally difficult for many people which most of us were happy about because we complained at how easy they made raids and heroics in WotLk. 5 man heroics in Cata were also great at launch for that matter. However I have a negative emotion regarding Cata heroics because Blizzard caved and nerfed the hell out of them.

And Dragon Soul indeed is one reason why many view Cata as a terrible expansion. It was pretty rough in WotLK having only ICC for a year, but Dragon Soul was even worse. At least ICC was new with a couple new boss models for example, and we were fighting Arthas. Dragon Soul was not even in a new dungeon enviroment, and seriously almost every single boss model was something old and outdated. I was shocked when i saw two of the DS boss models were simply a Tauren Male and an Orc Female...

And the Deathwing fight was a MAJOR disappointement. We had just had an amazing end fight with Firelands and Ragnaros too. Then we do Dragon Soul and see what a terrible fight Deathwing is. Especially the Madness encounter. We don't even fight Deathwing, we just see his giant claws.. Also Dragon Soul was only 8 boss encounters which was very very sad.

Cata also failed on the promise of giving us Path of the Titans. And the re-doing of the talent system in Cata was all but pointless.

So yeah so far I'd say MoP is a grand slam of an expansion compared to Cataclysm. In fact overall I'd rate Cata as the worst expansion we have ever had. With the best being Burning Crusade followed by MoP then ICC.

[Osmeric]

Your argument in the Dailies Thread was you couldn't down the bosses due to your gear, which you "have" to get from dailies.

What boss are you even on in MV, or HoF, or Terrace? I never asked this.

If you're stuck on like..Spirit Kings or Garajal, no offense but your Raid Team isn't good.

I am not in a guild with a raid team. I have not entered any normal mode raids in WoW since ICC.

[Scottyjscizzle]

The reason I disliked Cata was because it felt like a overdrawn patch, most of the things that looked interesting didn't make it in. As well as dragon soul being half-arsed and a joke. Blizzard could redo all of the old instances for all I care (would really REALLY like a touched up BRD) in a short amount of time between raid/large content patches and i'd be happy. It just feels like they take forever to release new stuff on top of the fact it sits on PTR. Would be awesome to one tuesday log on to loading screen to an event that no one knew was coming.

[Deleted]

I'll make a little list of things I can think of that I didn't like in Cata:

1. On-rails questing, I hate this and I wish they could go back to the semi hub questing style instead.
2. Disliked the new healers - You couldn't outplay them and if they have equal gear then can just stand there and heal 24/7 and never Oom. (They were supposed to Oom but they didn't.)
3. HCs took ~60 min because everything took so long to kill, I was enjoying the Wrath AoE style with quick fights. (I hate trash mobs and tanky ones are even worse)
4. Who was Deathwing, seriously, who was he?
5. The game was horribly unbalanced at the start. Feral bleeds taking you from 0% to 100%
6. Still no MMR reset GG (Still a problem)
7. Very few talent changes, I love talents
8. Didn't feel bursty in PvP anymore as Shaman. (Did get scaling stat as Elemental Yay)
9. Elemental was dog shit before the lightning bolt glyph.
10. They took a long long time to fix anything even the most glaring of problems.

3. Was an huge one for me, I feel that a fight doesn't need to take long to be challenging or difficult. Trash could have different effects and spells that force you to work differently every pull and preferably something avoidable. Have a room filled with trash and one mini-boss-trash mob which casts spells that have to be avoided or worked around. Transferable dots which ramp up the longer they are on target, laser beams, fire, etc.

[Osmeric]

Also, I have to ask what you're comparing the raid difficulty to?

To normal mode raid difficulty in Wrath, back when subs were high. After they moved away from that, raiding pretty much died for most people.

[CoolHwip46]

my main problem with mists right now is with the pvp. 5.1 doesnt seem like its going to really fix anything, even with the class nerfs.

[Buu]

Yes, Cataclysm lived up to its name. What an horrible expansion.

There is this awesome 1~60 refurbishing and then all crap.

[namelessone]

Cata wasn't terribad, it was just a step in the wrong direction since Wrath. A lot of people were burnt out on increased length and difficulty of Heroics, many didn't like Cata questing zones, over-reliance on reused assets, etc etc. I liked first two raiding tiers of Cata, frankly I liked first Cata tier a lot more than first tier of Wrath, but overall, it did not innovate and improve as many things as previous expansions.

[TrapTripper]

There is this awesome 1~60 refurbishing and then all crap.

want updated character model crap too?

[Mawnix]

I am not in a guild with a raid team. I have not entered any normal mode raids in WoW since ICC.

..............

Then why the hell are you complaining about anything?!

---------- Post added 2012-11-20 at 04:56 PM ----------

To normal mode raid difficulty in Wrath, back when subs were high. After they moved away from that, raiding pretty much died for most people.

Or, ya know.

8 year old game.

People outgrow it.

...8 year old game.
......8 year old game.
...............8 year old game.

[Osmeric]

..............

Then why the hell are you complaining about anything?!

Because I did enjoy raiding in Wrath... and they killed that. Of course I'm resentful.

Also, I'm not so much complaining as enjoying pointing out the failure of the model they replaced Wrath raiding with.

Or, ya know.

8 year old game.

Or, you know, the sudden ramp up in difficulty with Catalcysm, leading to immediate decline in subs. But nah, it must have been synchronized sudden onset boredom.

[Slummish]

Cataclysm was only bad if you're not smart enough to realize the purpose of the expansion. Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms were in dire need of modernization... and that's exactly what we got. The majority of people on this forum are the educated pve/pvp type and are therefore unconcerned with how the game feels to new or casual players. Fortunately, Blizzard is not so myopic. The old world needed fixing.

If there was a truly failed expansion, I'd have to go with WotLK or MoP. Truth be told, WotLK was probably better than MoP because MoP has provided very little outside of dumbed-down mechanics, a bloated daily quest regimen and a new class that is too complicated for most of the playerbase to utilize effectively. At least Wrath had Ulduar.

[Algearond]

Dragonsoul.

I really liked some parts of Cata, but as the OP wants to know why people dislike it, here is my reasons.

-Orc Mages/Gnome Priests. Neither fit with the lore.
-Uldum. Had waited for YEARS for this zone to be opened and the whole Raiders of the Lost Ark crap was complete garbage. Zone itself was amazing.
-Dragonsoul. Rehashed content. Deathwing should have been epic, it should have made ICC look like crap. Instead it was underwealming even worse then ToC.
-DS LFR. I like how LFR is now but the way it was implemented was horrible.
-It really seemed to change WoW at the end into World of Queuecraft.

Their was a lot I really liked about it but those things left a bad taste in my mouth.

[Mawnix]

Because I did enjoy raiding in Wrath... and they killed that. Of course I'm resentful.

Also, I'm not so much complaining as enjoying pointing out the failure of the model they replaced Wrath raiding with.



Or, you know, the sudden ramp up in difficulty with Catalcysm, leading to immediate decline in subs. But nah, it must have been synchronized sudden onset boredom.

Well apparently 10 million persons who are currently playing love the raiding system, and, well, ya know, if you go to that thread "So what's your verdict", you can see a lot of people give the raids in Mists 8 and above. And by a lot I'd estimate..80%+.

So, you don't have to carry your own "I have a personal grudge against Blizzard cuz they ruined the game for me so I'm going to listen to my opinion and only opinion" attitude just based on that.

[Osmeric]

Well apparently 10 million persons who are currently playing love the raiding system, and, well, ya know, if you go to that thread "So what's your verdict", you can see a lot of people give the raids in Mists 8 and above. And by a lot I'd estimate..80%+.

Non-randomized sample is non-randomized. The progression stats show great dropoff in interest. The people who like the more difficult raiding are a tiny minority of the player population, judging by how many of them actually do it.

[Mawnix]

Non-randomized sample is non-randomized. The progression stats show great dropoff in interest. The people who like the more difficult raiding are a tiny minority of the player population, judging by how many of them actually do it.

Can you then get me your own statistics of how many apparently raided from Vanilla to Cata then? If you actually can I'll take your word for it. All you're going off are claimed statistics.

Not only that, but haven't a minority also always raided, and the LFR system brought more people into some form of raiding?

And, if that's the case, don't MORE people raid now?

[Paarthurnax]

/cracks knuckles

First off - the begining of the death of 25 man raiding. Being one of the only 25 man guilds since vanilla on our server (even survived after 40) really murdered us for trying to recruit people.

Secondly - I LOATHED the heroic dungeons... they were way too long and slow moving. I FULLY admit this is because I had an action-packed year of Wrath-LFD awesomeness. I fully admit that Wrath completely changed my standards of the game that I played in Vanilla/BC. Wrath LFD taught me that you don't need to slam a car door on your head for an hour to have fun.

The zone stories were VERY lame... and the one zone I was looking forward to was Uldum - After experiencing Storm Peaks, I couldn't imagine how an Egyptian Storm Peaks would be like... I never thought they'd turn 90% of the zone into nothing but a Raiders of the Lost Ark lampoon. >_<

After that, it was an absolute LACK of quality content. I left for a year and only came back for 4.3 when I heard they brought back the dungeons to Wrath-style play. First off... they didn't. They instead introduced 3 dungeons at Wrath-difficulty that were a) not dungeons, just funky events - two in Dragonblight! >_< and b) were locked into their own separate queue, so you burnt out of them INSANELY quickly! I didn't burn out from Wrath-LFD dungeons because I had 15+ dungeons in my random queue. I could go theoretically 5 days at 3 dungeons per-day and not see the same dungeon twice in wrath.

Deathwing was a stupid joke... especially if you were a fan of him in the books like me. The way he's in the books vs the way he was in the game was 250% different and contradicted many of his key characteristics. The fact he is a willing pawn of an Old God goes completely against the point of his character.
In the books, he was a paranoid mastermind manipulator hatching complicated schemes. In the game, he's a brainless Godzilla flying around who's cunning masterplan was to fly around and burn random patches of land.

In Wrath - I got to see everything of Arthas. Why he became who he was... his corruption... see him grant powers, betray allies, and hatch a plan that ultimately involved me. Deathwing I saw jack squat of. No origins... next to NOTHING that told me of what his character was about at all.

Wrath also had another thing going for it... a unified theme for the expansion. Nordic mixed with Titan/Roman styles. Cataclysm was an insane bunch of unconnected zones that seemed very disjointed with no real feeling of being in one place or overall theme.

And don't get me started on the story... Thrall suddenly getting Super Shaman Powers inexplicably overnight. Malfurion Stormrage waking up and going totally neutral despite his people getting murdered in Ashenvale, and DON'T get me started on the Alli/Horde design imabalances. Even Blizz admitted they lacked on the Ali side in order to get the game out... particularly with the Worgen.

Seriously, I could go on and on... I really REALLY could not understand how they could follow up something as cohesive and epic as Wrath with something as abysmal on almost ALL fronts as Cataclysm. It broke more than the world... it broke the game.

^^ This. On the raiding front, while T11 was by far the best tier of the expansion in terms of bosses and quality it was way to hard for how little other content was available to people. Then Firelands hit and while it was ok it was too short and Heroic Rag was WAY to hard far to long, most guilds burnt out on him. Then Dragon Soul was overall pretty damn bad, with the hardest fight being Spine (aka one of the worst fights ever conceived) and the final fight being a 4 platform joke where you did the same thing 4 times only slightly harder each time...yawn.

[Highmoon7]

From a casual PvE player and hard core PvP player my problems were...

1) Heroics were too dificult for pug groups. I don't think I cleared any heroics in Cata. I just wanted to do some for fun. I had no real interest in the gear. It would have been nice to clear just a few...
2) Talent tress were terrible. Trees were more cookie cutter than ever. Everyone had the exact same set up. Although idk if it is much better now.
3) 25 man heroic items in PvP. Don't have time to raid 10+ hours a week? To bad now you lose at pvp too. (tho it was in wotlk it wasn't as bad)
4) God status of Rogues in PvP. Insane lock down, insane damage, compeletly self healing.

[Mawnix]

From a casual PvE player and hard core PvP player my problems were...

1) Heroics were too dificult for pug groups. I don't think I cleared any heroics in Cata. I just wanted to do some for fun. I had no real interest in the gear. It would have been nice to clear just a few...
2) Talent tress were terrible. Trees were more cookie cutter than ever. Everyone had the exact same set up. Although idk if it is much better now.
3) 25 man heroic items in PvP. Don't have time to raid 10+ hours a week? To bad now you lose at pvp too. (tho it was in wotlk it wasn't as bad)
4) God status of Rogues in PvP. Insane lock down, insane damage, compeletly self healing.

Number 4 describes Warriors in PVP currently.. @_@.

[Osmeric]

Can you then get me your own statistics of how many apparently raided from Vanilla to Cata then? If you actually can I'll take your word for it. All you're going off are claimed statistics.

Not only that, but haven't a minority also always raided, and the LFR system brought more people into some form of raiding?

And, if that's the case, don't MORE people raid now?

I'm sure few people raided in Vanilla and BC. I'd also consider the game moving back to that model to be unacceptable.

You may be asking: why did they even play the game then, if it was so bad? Because newbies experience their first flush of MMO addiction will put up with an awful lot that isn't ideal. But that wears off and they become more discriminating with time. They're not becoming tired of the game, they're becoming less blind to its failings.

As for LFR: I had planned to do that in MoP, but my experiences with it are that the randomized groups introduce so many negatives that it's not a tolerable end game experience. I would much rather have seen two levels of difficulty in manually formed raids; one Wrath level, one closer to current MoP normal modes. As for current MoP heroic modes... no need to include that, since only a very small number of people care.