Bashing Cataclysm...why?

[Redmage]

I think cata had some of the most boring content, but I don't "bash" it because it did bring us a lot of great things in terms of features.

[Sharein]

Cataclysm suffered from a perpetual lack of content, bad lore, boring last boss, and boring gameplay. PvP was neglected throughout the expansion and the content that did came out was half arsed and boring.

Cataclysm was bad.

[Sildor]

Cata was ok, but it lacked in content after Blizzard spent a lot of time redoing the old world.
Even though I'm sure most people agree that redoing the quests a bit was needed many people (including me) don't necessarily like the remake of Azeroth. I know it's nostalgia, but let me have it, vanilla was brilliant the at time.
Also, 4.3 was a very lackluster patch, DS wasn't great and there wasn't really a lot to do in the game. There's already more raid bosses and content overall in MoP halfway through than Cataclysm had in its entirety.

[judgementofantonidas]

Every poll and thread here where expansions are compared, Cata gets worst opinions or close to it.

Im really interested why ppl didnt like Cata.

For me, Cata wasnt best expansion (wotlk and tbc are), but still, I cant say it was bad. It had great 5-man heroics (loved DM prenerf), we got old world flying, rewamp of old world zones.
Only bad thing were raids, DS in particular, maybe cos it lasted too long.

What do you think?

Because casual players who could excel at the EZ wrath content had to wake up and perform.

[eldritchforeshadow]

I disliked Cataclysm because:
-Phasing made it where I could not help a guildmate and friend quest
- Heroic dungeons started out as difficult where one had to learn to CC and I liked that but then they nerfed the dungeons and after that, was boring as hell.
- Dragon Soul was a pathetic raid which had little meaning to me and did not seem well-made like it was slapped together at the last minute.
-There wasn't much lore in Cataclysm and I wondered why Deathwing, this all powerful Dragon being, was barely in the story anywhere or involved in much of anything really
- I liked some of the zone revamps but mostly hated that they had messed around with some of my favorite places like the barrens for example.
- 25/10 man lockouts suck and Cataclysm is where lockouts started
-Archeology

What I liked about Cataclysm:
-Firelands and the Molten front zone
-alt leveling was easy
-Thrall
-Rares
-Tamable rares
-The new questing from 1-60 was actually fun
-Uldum Indiana Jones questline
-Worgens and Goblins
-Flying everywhere!

[judgementofantonidas]

Cataclysm imo simply killed the social aspect of the game.

I would almost say I like LFR for the convenience to go into a loot pinata instance, but considering what the concequences of LFR I really do not like it as a feature, and somehow I would hope that they would just remove it.

But in the end what I hate about cataclysm is that the changes implemented in cata with 10/25 man shared lockouts and later LFR. Destroyed the need or want to guild together or have some kind of social interaction. And that is for me very important in an mmo. Now a days it is just a glorified single player game and a single player game i can finish in a month, a game that you play together with other people that i can play for months and years.



p.p.s. if we are not supposed to say how much we dislike cataclysm what then are we supposed to do. Praise cataclysm although we hate a lot of things that where implemented in cata???

cannot agree more on your statement about lockouts. being able to run both allowed players the leeway to leverage progression by running some bosses on 25 in order to increase their chance at gearing. just another superficial progress "c" block by blizz

[Wildberry]

In short, everything.

It seems like most of the focus time was on revamping the old world and everything else suffered because of that. (As much as I enjoy the new storylines, I felt more at home with the old quests to be honest)

They also gave people harder heroics, that would have been good normally, but the introduction of LFD made it horrible, pre-LFD your server had a community and you could really pick and choose who to bring, but in a post-LFD world, they might design content for players who have a little bit of knowledge about this game, however, I still have a chance to get paired with "Leggollasx Jenkins" and have the fun of it completely sucked away.

T11 was alright, I did like the fights in BWD, To4W was decent (Not as good as it's made out to be) and BoT was even decent, FL is where things started to go down hill, FL honestly was where we saw the big introduction of "Gimmick" mechanics (Rhyolith anybody) Actually THE ONLY redeeming fight in FL was Ragnaros. DS tanked hard, it was just painful to go through, from even more "Gimmick" Fights to an underwhelming 8 boss, small loot table, 1 class legendary raid, and that's not even mentioning Deathwing the Big bad that had been talked up the entire expansion had his fight completely botched, it honestly never felt like we were fighting HIM at all.

As far as Raid Stories Go:
-Nefarian Setback
-Air Elementals, Fire Elementals, Other Elementals, oh my!
-Old god, old god, old god, old god.
-Deathwing ItsTheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowItAndIFeelFine
-Zul'again
-Thrall surpassing even the most terribly written DBZ fanfic characters in terms of power, he is now Go'el.

Even at it's best Cata storytelling paled in comparison to the WotLK Stories.

Cata PvP - World of Warcraft: Casterclysm

As far as those claiming Cata will be remembered in a good light somewhere down the line? Maybe for others, Honestly I don't see too many redeeming qualities with it and I've loved this game since Pre-BC. Cata was the ONLY expansion that I not only didn't have fond memories of, but can't look back at anything and go, "that was pretty cool". I don't know how others will feel about Cata in the future, but I can personally say that it will remain as a stain and a blemish upon WoW's good name

....Oh, and fuck Vashj'ir, that was the worst zone I've ever even touched. I sincerely hope we don't see anything like that again because it was just terrible.

[ringpriest]

8 months :P

Yeah, but it felt like Dragon Soul was out for over a year. It was just that boring

[Wildberry]

Yeah, but it felt like Dragon Soul was out for over a year. It was just that boring

Honestly at the end of it all, DS felt more stale than ICC did by the time the new expansion had rolled around, and I quit halfway through DS.

[Kazgrel]

Things I liked about Cata:

- Old world revamp. New quests/quest lines are a lot of fun, better itemized rewards (no more agi + spirit leather, for example).
- New playable races. A bit shoehorned in lore-wise, but both goblins and worgen fit their respective factions fairly well.
- Rated Battlegrounds added: A way to re-introduce the old pvp titles, plus other rewards (best ground mounts in game, IMO)
- Transmog added; for me this has been an absolute blast, going back farming old sets or farming odd drops here and there for some crazy xmog.
- Reforging added; not perfect but a huge boon for min-maxing gear (oh noes I'm under hit cap...jk reforged an item for hit, np np)
- LFR. I view it as a plus overall, even though it is FAAAAR from perfect. It at least allows some form of raiding without having to schedule it.

Things I didn't like about Cata:

- Shared raid lockouts + shared loot tables: The latter is ok, IMO...however the shared lockouts coupled with said shared loot tables decimated 25 man raid guilds, from which the game has not recovered.
- Early expansion difficulty: T11 raids and the heroics leading up to them were pretty brutal. CC was required early on, and the changes to all the healers had them OOMing on trash pulls just to keep people alive at that point (when you were in 333-346 gear with maybe a crafted 359 or two).
- Raid design: Felt really weak overall. Firelands was ok, but I did not run it when it was current. BWD and BoT were basically hallways with a couple of large rooms attached for bosses. Throne, while small was unique...but why exactly did Al'akir join Deathwing? I've never been able to find out. DS...well, don't think I need to go there. It dragged on for freaking ever (felt longer than ICC even though it wasn't).
- The Therazane "requirement": Want shoulder enchants for a toon? Have fun clearing 90% of all the quests in Deepholm. The enchants could've been BoA, or there could have been a token turn in a la Sons of Hodir, but no...do all those quests just to get the tabard so you could finish the grind. Absolute nightmare if you had alts out the wazoo like I do.
- PVP imbalance: As an shaman whose main spec as ele, I got to enjoy going from being a top quality dps for pvp to being an absolute turd as soon as 4.0 hit. Of course, from the ashes of competitive ele, OP Resto took flight and has been flying along strongly ever since.
- Leveling dungeons: basically only getting BRC/TotT from 80-82 then VP/Stonecore from 83-85...ugh. This is one area MoP has actually regressed further.
- Tol Barad (the battle): How they went from developing Wintergrasp (which was some of the most fun I've had in WoW) to TB...I'll never understand. It's like having the winning lottery ticket in your hand, only to have IRS folks walk by and snatch it away from you.
- Old world revamp: New quests were fun and better itemized, but the linearity is pretty awful. All part of getting people to level cap ASAP, I suppose.
- Rehashed content: ZA/ZG as 5 mans being the main offender (and also being under the "early expansion difficulty" moniker). Environments for DS
- Deathwing: For a primary antagonist, a former dragon aspect of all things, I felt very underwhelmed by DW. Sure he set zones on fire once in a blue moon, but that was about all the interaction you got out of him (vs. all the quests/stuff with Arthas throughout Wrath). The final battles with him...ugh. Madness of Deathwing: clip his wings and toenails until he can't take the pain anymore, then punch the teeth out of his jaw.

[dacoolist]

It was Blizzards first step towards the deciline off wow, as there main focus. 4.1 showed that - rehershed 5 mans, instead off Firelands as we exspected. So we had to deal with 5 man's, and when 4.2 shipped it wasen't really that good. Firelands was a great raid, mainly bagged by Ragnaros trough.

But 4.3 ruined wow for many. For the first time you see even old timers calling it quits. Dragon Soul is the worst raid ever made. It screamed lazyness so badly it can't be forgiven. Blizzard from now clearly shows there main focus aint on wow content anymore. What it is now, I have no idea about - Maybe SC2? Can't think off other games (titan dosen't exsist hurr hurr) that takes away there focus.

-> I agree that Cata wasn't AWESOME, but I would have to say: "Old Timers" - have been quitting since TBC.. And it's funny hearing it over and over.. every expansion. Over, and over, and...

[Stormspellz]

Most of the time people tend to focus and remember only the bad things of something thus making of Cata the least liked expansion atm.

In the future it wont be like that anymore.

except there wasn't much interesting or good things of cata, 5 man heroics were fun at the beginning then quickly out gearing it along with bads crying they couldn't aoe the instance down, questing was boring- get quest, fly to x, kill y; repeat. No immersion to the story. twlight highlands was the biggest disappointment so much could of been done with the dragonmaw vs wildhammer sub story but all we got was some blah dailies and uninspired leveling quests. The only decent tier was the first one, even if nef "magically" reappears with no explanation. Deathwing was made to look like another bad Saturday morning cartoon villain. PvP was horribly bad as usual on many levels from bugs, exploit cheats, and just flat class balance.

About the only thing they did right was the old revamp which was done very well, except if you leveled alts you mostly did instance grinding as it was/is far faster for most of it.

[McNeil]

Most reasons of why we are bashing Cataclysm has been said plenty of times by now. Its mostly because of:

- All the promises they couldn't keep. Like the Abyssal Maw and War of the Ancients raids that they scrapped.

- Way too many rehashes.

- A villain that people barely knew off, and Cata did a poor job developing him. He came over as another big bad random dragon.

- Uldum being ruined by a cheap Indiana Jones ripoff

- Spending a lot of resources on the 1-60 content, while most of their playerbase was already at max level and had no reason to do them.

- Lackluster raids, ESPECIALLY Dragon Soul.

- Way too much Thrall lore, that only ruined the character

- Archaelogy had potential, but is now a very boring/grindy profession that only rewards when your near max level

[Ebildays]

I know this is crazy but I just cannot see the zone revamp as part of the Cataclysm xpac. The revamp was something they did to bring the old world up to make it more appealing for people looking for a new game to play when so many new mmos were coming out. It seems like a lie to try and add that content to Cata when you don't need Cata to play it. At the end of Cataclysm I felt cheated as player by the lack of content it had and by the devs using the revamp as a way to explain the lack of content away. Even in MoP now they are doing the same thing basically by not adding any new dungeon content and moving the shift to scenarios. Which is even worst because scenarios were suppose to add content to the game not replace content but that is another gripe.

[Otimus]

I know this is crazy but I just cannot see the zone revamp as part of the Cataclysm xpac. The revamp was something they did to bring the old world up to make it more appealing for people looking for a new game to play when so many new mmos were coming out. It seems like a lie to try and add that content to Cata when you don't need Cata to play it. At the end of Cataclysm I felt cheated as player by the lack of content it had and by the devs using the revamp as a way to explain the lack of content away. Even in MoP now they are doing the same thing basically by not adding any new dungeon content and moving the shift to scenarios. Which is even worst because scenarios were suppose to add content to the game not replace content but that is another gripe.

I sort of agree with this. I also hate that people throw that around as part of Cataclysm. I mean... everyone freaking got that. Even if you didn't own Cataclysm. Also, coming off of WOTLK, which, it seems to me, had a mega-ton of content, Cata was just a let down.

Frankly, in terms of the amount of content in comparison to WOTLK, MoP is sort of a let down, too. (but still a good expansion. I just guess getting the amount and quality of breadth of PVE content the likes WOTLK had is pretty much never going to happen in WoW's life again)

[Perryn]

I agree that Cata started off well. The dungeons were a real high note to start off with and T11 was overall a very nice raid tier. However, while FL was good too, you started chain running the troll 5m's many, many, many times and aside from those two there really was nothing to do at end level. Then they capped it all with DS which was just a poor raid overall, letting the expansion end on a low note rather than the other way around.

[Kazgrel]

I forgot about how god awful Archaeology was during early Cata. I think I had suppressed the memories of grinding that stuff out.

[Deadite]

Im really interested why ppl didnt like Cata.

The thing that tipped me into Hate Land was that every quest outside of the Twilight Highlands was exactly the same for both factions. There are other thing as well but i don't really want to rant.

[Socialhealer]

crapaclysm still owes me an EPIC DEATHWING ENCOUNTER, after 6 bosses i cleared 2 packs of trash and that was it we saved azeroth, total fail.

[david0925]

because it made me quit the game as a raider (World top 30 guild in TBC, had a few US firsts in WoTLK, casual 10 man raiding with all stuff done on heroic while relevant. Not saying I'm great, but just to state my experience)

Having challenging 5 man was "fun", but honestly it was targeting the wrong audience. It ended up receiving neutral to slightly positive from people that quickly moved on from them while getting mostly negative feedbacks from the crowd it was intended for.

Launch raids had just about the right difficulty for both 10/25, although both modes had their issues. Firelands was actually fun to be honest, but the biggest problem became grinding for the legendary staff even after you are already completely done with the instance. I know Legendary should last through the expansion, but having alternative ways to do it inside relevant content would have been preferred.

My biggest issue was with Dragon Soul. It took all the positive experience I had to Cata raids and turned it entirely upside down. Even on heroic, the entire concept of raids was "stack up for group heals" "spread out for adds", with "timers" you beat. The better fights were ironically the earlier bosses. Ultraxion was boring, gunship was ok, Spine was stupid, and Madness was terrible. When the last 2 bosses of the expansion, while still difficult, were just boring and required absolutely little movement, it has to leave a bad taste in your mouth.

I heard Pandaria was decent, although Cata 4.3 gave me too big of a scar to try it. Busier real life obviously contributed as well.