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  1. #161
    My reason for hating cataclysm? The PvP wasn't that great. What's funny is, MoP is a worse expansion to me than Cataclysm for that fact as well. PvP is in the worst state it has ever been. However, PvE is in a great state hence the subs coming back and decent numbers, so forth. Most of the playerbase PvEs for the most part and PvPs casually, if it at all. The PvP playerbase has been dwindling, and or moving on to PvE as more of a timesink. In Cataclysm, the PvE was a bit lackluster and at the start, too hard for a lot of the 'casual players' who ended up hating it, and then it ended up too easy and the hardcore players wern't happy, etc. That's how I see it, regardless that I don't play anymore.

  2. #162
    The Unstoppable Force Resentful's Avatar
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    You know it was fine T11 was one of the best tiers of raiding and Heroic Ragnaros was one of the best encounters ever made in the game however what shit on Cata personally to the point where I even retired raiding was Dragon soul.

    Such a terrible raid ( I M O )

  3. #163
    Cataclysm IMO started off really good. The leveling was smooth and easy and at least to me, interesting. The heroics were probably overtuned slightly, but I think Blizzard went too reactionary with MOP. Post-initial-nerf heroics were probably better.

    Queues were atrocious, and it didn't help that tanks were in short supply and so much of heroics were tank-dependent (I figured this out real fast when I made my first tank). The Satchels were a good motivation for me when they (finally) put them in game.

    4.1 was a fucking failboat, and the expansion sort of went downhill from there. That and instead of keeping raids hard and pug content (heroics) easy, they decided to start nerfing raids. 4.2 was fine but couldn't make up for 4.1, Dragonwrath basically was a drama-creator, etc. I think Blizzard just gave up on the expansion at some point between 4.0 and 4.3.

    To me beginning of Cata was when I really started to get in the game and hence it's one of my favorite memories, however, I think the horrible ending just left a bitter taste in people's mouths.

  4. #164
    Quote Originally Posted by Omniscient View Post
    My reason for hating cataclysm? The PvP wasn't that great. What's funny is, MoP is a worse expansion to me than Cataclysm for that fact as well. PvP is in the worst state it has ever been. However, PvE is in a great state hence the subs coming back and decent numbers, so forth. Most of the playerbase PvEs for the most part and PvPs casually, if it at all. The PvP playerbase has been dwindling, and or moving on to PvE as more of a timesink. That's how I see it, regardless that I don't play anymore.
    Yes, MoP's PvP has been sad. The devs seem to be in agreement, given the substantial changes being undertaken.

    It's ironic, given that this was supposed to be the "Alliance/Horde at War" expansion.

    I'm cautiously optimistic that the changes for 5.3 will bring PvP back into a better state, and hopeful that there won't be such serious class changes for the next expansion that PvP will be ruined again.
    "There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
    "The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
    "Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"

  5. #165
    Quote Originally Posted by Rivelle View Post
    When people think back on something like that, they're more likely to remember the bad things than the good.
    So it's nostalgia, except when it's not?

  6. #166
    I think many people just found the expansion underwhelming. A lot of the effort put into it went into the lower level areas being changed, and many players could not have cared less about that and just wanted more end game. Personally I thought the expansion was better than people gave it credit for, but I would still call it the worst up to that point. Though, I do think it was better than the one we have now.

  7. #167
    terrible levelling. nothing to do at 90 except raid. lack of content, apparently due to all the work they put into ruining the old 1-60 world. archeology. oh my god, archeology. the secondary profession so half finished that it needed an addon to get a useable UI for it. Cata was shit, and it was diluted shit. like a shit sandwich crammed full of shit that only JUST tasted like shit. it dropped in what appeared to be beta form, with bugs all over the place, as they concentrated on getting it out of the door according to a financial timetable, rather than the "when its ready" philosophy that was supposed to be the basis of Blizzard.

    it really wasnt very good.

    just realised how angry it STILL makes me how piss poor that whole thing was. and i havent played the game for over a year now.
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  8. #168
    Quote Originally Posted by Endemonadia View Post
    What i mean is that during Cata it was defended vigourously by the Wow-fanboys and yet now Cata is over and we r in MoP these very same people r now admitting that Cata kinda sucked.
    All 4 of them.

  9. #169
    Legendary! Rivellana's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by melodramocracy View Post
    So it's nostalgia, except when it's not?
    Pretty much! :P

    I suppose it depends on the person and how cynical they are.

  10. #170
    Quote Originally Posted by Dabrix32 View Post
    Who would be defending Cata? Blizzard lost 25% of their players during cata. You dont need a poll for that. Thats a pure FACT. Losing 25% of your players means the expansion was horrible.
    I could name a few that said Cata was great and the best the game has ever been (won't name any names as I am sure doing so would be against the rules of this site).

    As for why I hate Cataclysm? The promise it had when first revealed was enormous. The Blizzcon reveal made it seem great. I should have known things were going to be bad when they butchered both genders of worgen (especially the female) to look nothing like wolves (males look like Splinter from the 90s TMNT cartoon, females look like demented chihuahuas). Then them requiring CC in EVERY PULL in all dungeons, making every class practically the same as the others, removing epics from the final boss's loot table in the 5-mans (which have been dropping epics since january 2007) to appease the "Make epics epic and heroics heroic!" crowd. Ramping up the difficulty of the 5-man dungeons would have been completely reasonable IF THERE WAS NO DUNGEON FINDER. It would be like LFR had the difficulty of heroic raids, instead of being as easy as 5-mans (for the most part).

    And don't even get me started on the horrendousness of the old world "revamp". Revamps are supposed to make something better. I personally believed they failed hard. They were aiming for the nose-bleed section, and barely made it to the pitcher (to add in a baseball metaphor).

  11. #171
    Quote Originally Posted by Pachycrocuta View Post
    Then them requiring CC in EVERY PULL in all dungeons, making every class practically the same as the others, removing epics from the final boss's loot table in the 5-mans (which have been dropping epics since january 2007) to appease the "Make epics epic and heroics heroic!" crowd. Ramping up the difficulty of the 5-man dungeons would have been completely reasonable IF THERE WAS NO DUNGEON FINDER. It would be like LFR had the difficulty of heroic raids, instead of being as easy as 5-mans (for the most part).
    I don't think 5 mans should be bland like they are now, but there were numerous fails in the design of those 5-mans.

    For instance Corla sounds like a good fight that teaches players "raid mechanics" in theory right? However you were fucked if you didn't have addons or if you weren't on massive Adderall in terms of watching stacks here and there. That meant that groups with newer players would consistently fall apart at that fight, and people weren't "learning to raid," they were getting frustrated, pissed, annoyed their 45 minute queues were going to waste, and honestly, who wouldn't fucking quit the game at that point?

    Ozruk, another fail, Shield Slam fail, group with no purge fail, etc. A boss that was easy with the right players and comp, and miserable without. Especially for non-organized groups.

    I could go on, but I think Blizzard in both current heroics and original Cata heroics missed the balance mark by two massive extremes.

  12. #172
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Pachycrocuta View Post
    As for why I hate Cataclysm? The promise it had when first revealed was enormous.
    Yeah i was very angry at this fact too.

    Blizzards promises were awesome about Cata and yet they failed to hit pretty much every single promise.

    I remember them making a big issue that Alliance and Horde would be fighting against each other loads more with far more action out in the world... yep that never happened. The introduction of flying within vanilla areas shouldve encouraged far more attacks on faction cities... that never happened.

    They promised an epic enemy in Deathwing and he would be ravaging the land making it dangerous to venture out into the world. What happened was we hardly ever saw him and the world was totally safe due to everything out in the world being nerfed to make levelling easier.

    There were plenty more Cata promises which never materialised, im not gonna try to list all of them here.

    Now i simply dont trust Blizzard at all.

  13. #173
    I think it comes down to that WoW isn't getting as many new players anymore and most of us have played at least from TBC/WotLK and we're getting a bit teird of the game. Not saying that there can't be improvments to make it super fun again or that all expansion were the same, but I think this is a very strong contributing factor.

    ---------- Post added 2013-04-30 at 05:19 PM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Kazgrel View Post
    I forgot about how god awful Archaeology was during early Cata. I think I had suppressed the memories of grinding that stuff out.
    Oh don't even mention it, please!

  14. #174
    Spam Assassin! MoanaLisa's Avatar
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    Personally--and I've always said this--Cataclysm was a miss. It wasn't as terrible as people like to make it out to be but compared to everything that came before (and now after) it was clearly a misguided attempt at first to guide the game away from being quite so casual and a serious misreading by Blizzard of their player feedback.

    It was also the clearest signal that Blizzard has ever received that they do have limitations. The 1-60 revamp, while very ambitious and welcome, did have serious impacts on what was available at 85. At this point in time it's hard to know whether or not it was worth it. Leveling from 80-85 was too linear; only 5 zones was something of a disappointment; later patches were thin and often delayed with promised components missing or cancelled altogether. The entire ZA/ZG affair was a huge pain-in-the-ass and one that wouldn't get any relief for far too long. Much was promised for the last raid and a lot of that was lacking too. The fights were largely recycled and the visual scaling of having to fight DW so that we ended up beating on his toenails was silly. Bigger monsters aren't always better monsters to fight up close. It was just messy and left people in a perpetually bad mood for nearly a year.

    There were some good things too: T11 was a good tier, the Ragnaros fight was really well done, the revamped zones are much better for leveling than previously. Transmogrification is cool and reforging is pretty useful.

    The best thing that came out of it was what Blizzard apparently learned a lot from it and applied that knowledge to how content is being released now; how they have apparently reorganized their design strategies; and the need for more and different things to do at end game. They've also learned to be more careful about what they've promised (not perfect but better) and to be more up front about their limitations in the face of a player base full of amateur game designers that seems to think that they can do anything and that it's all so very very simple.

    Still and all, Cataclysm was a miss and is not likely to ever be remembered with a lot of fondness by most of those who stayed through the whole thing.
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  15. #175
    Merely a Setback breadisfunny's Avatar
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    let me see........
    one shot mechanics in dungeons that lead to constant wiping in pugs because if just ONE person died in your 5 man even among dps it was pretty much a wipe. even on trash.
    45 minute queue times for dps prior to satchel due to launch of guild perks encouraging guild play which meant if your werent in a guild you were screwed as a dps.
    waiting 45 minutes.......tank/healer leave group disbands.....great times you just wasted 1 hour of your life you'll never get back.
    heavy phasing means no questing with friends unless your on the same questline. also killed world pvp/made it impossible for anyone to help you if you got camped.
    mat requirement for lvling professions was brutal past 500.(exception being enchanting.)
    raids with only 6-8 bosses compared to 10+ boss raids of wrath/bc/vanilla.
    10's and 25's being on the same lockout killed alt raiding.
    bosses constantly getting skipped. so glad they ended this in mists. hated it in wrath/cata. need a piece of gear from a specific boss? better hope tank isnt just here for valor.
    halls of origination was the worst offender in this. you could skip almost the entire instance.
    archeology. worst secondary profession ever.
    there was a nasty bug in cata where if you played fullscreen and alt tabbed out while riding a taxi mount. you would get disconnected upon landing.
    cutting down the talent trees.
    the ending for cataclysm was just awful.
    thrall being propped up as a all powerful being....lol what?
    Last edited by breadisfunny; 2013-04-30 at 05:51 PM.
    r.i.p. alleria. 1997-2017. blizzard ruined alleria forever. blizz assassinated alleria's character and appearance.
    i will never forgive you for this blizzard.

  16. #176
    Quote Originally Posted by Endemonadia View Post
    Blizzards promises were awesome about Cata and yet they failed to hit pretty much every single promise.
    I'm imagining there was a Powerpoint slide somewhere that listed all the selling points of Cataclysm, and this got passed around and became internal gospel, even as the reality diverged. Those points might even have been written into Blizzard's annual plan, which can only be changed with approval of the board of directors.
    "There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
    "The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
    "Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"

  17. #177
    My problems with Cataclsym:

    Fantastic story, but it was all over the place. Low level zones contributed to the story for max level raids. No clue which zones led to which story hooks. At the same time, things made no sense. Malfurion and Cenarius totally cool with the Horde who are currently razing Ashenvale, clear cutting and leaving wood to rot (deforesting more than they could use at a time).

    No new features until the end. All Cataclysm brought was guild perks. Until we neared the end and got Transmog and LFR, there wasn't really anything new added while BC and Wrath started exploring and experimenting with new additions/features.

    As an Alliance player, I got tired of getting my face smashed in every time I turned around or zones that simply never concluded or were entirely pop culture references. That last one is a personal gripe, though.

    Unlike some, I actually really liked the raids in Cataclysm on normal 10 man raiding. Heroics were a little overtuned at the beginning for me. I liked needing CC, but the length of them combined with difficulty were a little much. Cata heroic difficulty with shorter dungeons might have worked better for me. MoP heroics are a little too easy still. I was one shotting bosses in heroics in LFG when none of us had any clue what they did. Blizz isn't good at middle ground, the pendulum just swings real far one way or the other.

  18. #178
    Biggest issues for me:

    *No coherent/consistent story. There were new zones, but they were spread out and had no relation to each other. Basically it was the same old world we have seen before, remade into a worse version of old Azeroth, including a few new zones here and there.
    *DS was one of the worst raids in a really long time, and raidingwise I felt like the whole expansion lacked something. The other raids were fine, but not mindblowing.
    *Most of the expansion consisted of standing in Orgrimmar, waiting for the queue to something to pop. At least now in MoP you have a lot of things to do, so you still visit the other zones for different reasons.

  19. #179
    Raiding:
    Dragonsoul was the best raid in the expac, and it was 8 bosses for a VERY long tier. Firelands was only 7 bosses! T11 had enough bosses, but they sucked. They sucked hard. Part of T11 was poor dps spec balance. Raiding was overall ok, but the mandatory change to 10 mans was disruptive and depressing. Gear was wiped so quickly you could barely blink.

    PvP:
    Was better than MoP, about even with LK, worse than BC. Most specs had some ability to compete, but usually you needed a special comp with a dumb trick. The launch of RBGs was pretty disruptive to competitive PvP, and really encouraged bizarre class stacking. The stated "tug of war" mechanic over a life pool, which is admirable, became a strange game where some specs could just erase you and others needed a perfectly executed CC chain, and other comps just had to win on pressure, as they literally could not burst at all.

    Class design:
    Classes ended up getting crazy things added and subtracted. Low level balanced was entirely erased. Level 64 mages were outdpsing full raid geared level 70 benchmarks. Low level balance is still terrible today, but Cata was what broke it. The neutered talent trees erased over half of the specs I used to play, and took away all the utility and niche builds that had made the early game so interesting and charming (Ever run into a shiv rogue in a tunnel in storm peaks? You sure didn't once Cata hit the streets!). Melee classes were pretty unbalanced. Ranged classes were absolutely dominant until several stopgap fixes, including making a raid buff be "+20% AP". After that, melee were dominant on any fight that let them melee but didn't also support multi-dot, a pretty halfassed solution. Despite the deletions of all the old cross-specs and having much agency over your talent tree at all, they kept almost all the archaic limitations of the different classes.

    Zone design:
    The best zone was an underwater zone that almost no one went to. Hyjal was also a high point. Past the two starting zones, you had stuff that was hit or miss based on preference. I've talked to a couple folks who really like Deepholm, but others who hate it. When a zone is the elemental plane of earth, and it's all rocks and wide wide open spaces, it's going to be hit and miss. Uldum ended up not being at all what we thought. All hints were that this would be a Titan city, much like the similar Ulduar. Instead, all that setup was just a tiny door into Egypt. Also, cat men. That zone was cool, but it was not Uldum. Uldum is gone, and we'll never see it. Twilight Highlands, which should have been a solid and fun zone, was ruined by phasing, making it impossible to gank and sometimes impossible to gather. The spread out nature of these zones meant that you couldn't really go from one to the other except with portals.

    Quests:
    Quest design has pretty much been linear and uphill. If you can overlook the phasing, the Cata questing was pretty much straight awesome. Some quests are better than MoP quests. I still remember grinning from ear to ear with the Vezax lookalike started casting "wedding crash". If you have a problem with questing in Cata, it's gotta be that you did the quests too many times or something. Flying with Flintlocke is a high point of this game.

    Story:
    The Cata story was generally shit. There were exceptions, here and there, but the overarching story was full of holes and mostly stupid. Did anyone really follow why the main good guy cleric suddenly threw in with Deathwing? And not just in general, at the VERY last second. Deathwing himself was more insane than evil, and it wasn't really that logical. One of the opening Alliance plots makes you walk up to a phased boat. While you wait this interminable time for the damned boat to arrive, a bunch of foot soldiers talk to each other. You find out that Deathwing not destroying Stormwind was apparently an accident, and that no one could do anything about it. IMO that's a poor direction, and it means that the only reason the good guys win at all is because Deathwing is too dumb or crazy to just go wipe out the main cities, which apparently "no one can stop".




    Cata wasn't a terrible expansion, but it was, I think, unarguably the worst. I could make the case that BC was worse- but if BC was done with modern game design tech as Cata was, it would have been far superior. Lich King kicked the shit out of Cata. MoP set new ground for expansion design (but not PvP balance lolololol). I didn't hate Cata, but it's the worst WoW thing we've seen out of Blizzard. It's also the only expac not to offer a new class (BC kind of cheesed this, offering you the class that had been previously denied for excellent flavor reasons and factional distinction).

  20. #180
    Dragon Soul was absolutely abysmal, but T11 was amazing on the other hand. Overall the bosses we're pretty challenging across the board which I loved. Then the QQ train came to town and we got Firelands which was ok at best and then the worst raid of all time in my opinon, Dragon Soul. Cata started off great, but ended up a fucking disaster.

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