Cataclysm, not as bad as we remember?

[Switchshot]

Note
I did not play WoW consistently during Cataclysm. I am merely trying to understand the arguments put forth for the why people have such a negative perception of the expansion. Share in some constructive discussion!

Is it possible that the dislike for Cataclysm may not be as all encompassing as the online forums seem to imply? Perhaps much of the disdain came more from burnout than actual disliking of content? If not, we can try to build a few examples of things that may have created the negative image / experience. Here are a few I've thought of. I will add more as I keep up with the thread.

1) The villain, Deathwing emerged right after a monumental, loved villain was just defeated. In direct comparison, and so soon after, it is very easy to critique him as a villain. He had less depth (in his Cataclysm rendition) than Illidan or Arthas. In the end, Deathwing was not pure failure of a villain, though it appears that he felt irrelevant until 4.3.

2) The world got bigger, but at the same time, vastly smaller. The new zones, dungeons and raids upon release, in addition to the Firelands, were great from an art standpoint (subjective, but you can tell much effort went in). The likes of Uldum, Deepholm and Vashj'ir were well crafted. Hyjal and Highlands were a little more conventional, but great zones nonetheless. The difficulty in trying to come back to the old world (like many players seemingly wanted), is that they littered zones around the world. Because it felt problematic to have to travel to each one (though I disagree with this notion), they created a portal system in the faction capitals, effectively shrinking the world.

3) The faction capitals became the central hub of players again. BUT, this had not been the case to such a high degree since vanilla, a time before queues. In the attempt to make guilds more compelling and attractive, Blizzard added conveniences like mass summons. This, in addition to portals, LFD / LFR and all amenities present in faction capitals, players did not have many reasons to leave the city.

4) Very slow content rate mixed with some bad rehashing at the wrong times. The troll dungeons did not feel like genuine content, and after such a long wait, it was very frustrating. Also, dragon soul used uninteresting environments (aside from spine). As a point of perspective though, in Naxx, Malygos and Sartharion (the first raid tier of WotLK), only Malygos used a unique environment.

5) PvE content appears to have been inferior post-patch 4.0 raids were not very much enjoyed (apparently with the exception of Heroic Ragnaros). No unique art for bosses in Dragon soul felt bad. Further, the low raid boss count per raid made them feel limited.

Any thoughts?
If you genuinely liked or disliked the expansion, give some compelling reasons why!

Edit #1
I am not saying that Cataclysm is good or bad. The point I am making is that, maybe our negative perceptions of it are more towards the systems that did injustice to the actual content of the expansion (see above post). I am curious to see some thoughtful opinions on the matter. "Nah cata was so bad, bad game, bad expansion, bad company", is a near useless thing to say.

Edit #2
Added 5) and cleaned up some wording.

[Icechaosss]

To be honest I loved cata riiiight up until Dragon Soul. The troll dungeons were.. Annoying and kinda.. Stupid in my opinion, but I kept playing. Tier 11 and Tier 12 weren't that bad either, though people wanted more raid content past BoT BwD and Throne.
LFR was what REALLY killed it for people, hell even me because it kinda made progression trivial in a way, and made most "Elitests" feel annoyed that other people could afk in a raid and get shiny epics like them. Kinda understandable, but people do go overboard a lot with the hate.

[Deleted]

Nah its still bad very bad no nostalgica with this

[Resentful]

Oh fuck that no it was fucking horrible like it was like gouging your eyes out with a rusted spoon over and over do you know why? DO YOU KNOW WHY?

DRAGON SOUL

Okay I'm finished :3

[Mukki]

Cataclysm was really boring. Sit in town, Q for everything, raid once a week (with tiers that were quite dinky after T11).
I didn't enjoy it much after 4.1.

[Deleted]

Cataclysm was really boring. Sit in town, Q for everything, raid once a week (with tiers that were quite dinky after T11).
I didn't enjoy it much after 4.1.

Sure because now you don't have to queue for lfr/flex/dungeons/scenarios.
At least in dragon soul you had to walk a bit to the entrance, now it takes 10 seconds to get to soo.

[Faldric]

Dragon Soul.

Yes it was that terrible.

[Araxie]

Dragon Soul.

Yes it was that terrible.

Sums up this thread pretty nicely.

[Deleted]

Dragon Soul was good right up to the point where we stood on the Spine of Deathwing, From there on the instance just let it self down massively, and the final encounter considering it was the end boss, was a complete and utter let down, fight a claw! Could really have done with several more bosses and at least an encounter with DW in humanoid form.

as for the rest of the expansion, it was fucking awful.

[Adramalech]

So it begins...

[Okacz]

If you fuck up a dragon fight, no, go back: a BIGGEST BADDEST FREAKING DRAGON fight, then you pretty much fucked up the whole expansion.

[melodramocracy]

*looks back*

Yep, just as bad as I remember.

next.

[wych]

Don't let nostalgia cloud your judgement.

Cata had it's up points, but on the whole it was average as fuck and had little content post-release, most of which was either awful or just more of the same thing we had had for years.

[Switchshot]

Sums up this thread pretty nicely.

Could not disagree more.. I'm looking for some sort of thoughtful discourse here. Not just a repeat of your subjective conclusions. I've heard them all. What I'm saying is, perhaps the fact that it became repetitive and that there was little motivation to explore, the content they made (which for the most part, was of excellent quality!) went unappreciated.

Is it possible that the bad experiences that came from the few flawed systems gave us a negative perceptual filter for the entirety of the expansion?

Don't let nostalgia cloud your judgement.

This isn't nostalgia. I am hoping for a discussion of the exact opposite. Was the expansions ACTUALLY that bad? Or did the design flaws / shortcomings that I outlined (or that anyone could add) cloud our judgment of the whole expansion?

[Deleted]

Past release I can't remember many good things I have to say about it. 4.1 and 4.3 were pretty terrible. DS alone outweighs any nostalgia I had for Cata.

[Deleted]

This expansion made me hate wow, y it was bad did i mention it?

[Deleted]

T11, the absolute shittiest tier there has ever been (with exception of Throne of Four Winds, which was decent).

[Darmalus]

No individual component of Cat was bad, but the expansion failed to combine as a unified whole. Felt more like a bunch of random DLC than a cohesive whole. Plus the extremely on-rails questing experience left a bad feeling for a lot of people.

[Chirri]

Dragon Soul was good right up to the point where we stood on the Spine of Deathwing, From there on the instance just let it self down massively, and the final encounter considering it was the end boss, was a complete and utter let down, fight a claw! Could really have done with several more bosses and at least an encounter with DW in humanoid form.

as for the rest of the expansion, it was fucking awful.

Dragon Soul was a disappointment to me from the first boss. Nothing in later bosses was able to redeem the instance from that first boss.

They put a ton of work into 1-60 content and a good bit of end game content just got bumped off the Expansion truck. Poof. Gone. They had too many people wasting time on TITAN, not enough on WoW (hindsight and all that) and it mattered more than they anticipated.

I've played through a bit of the 1-60 revamp and it was actually a lot of fun for me. It made me sad that they hadn't had the time to actually finish the rest of the expansion off properly.

I still liked it better than the Wrath experience. XD

[Switchshot]

T11, the absolute shittiest tier there has ever been (with exception of Throne of Four Winds, which was decent).

Care to expand on that? This contributes absolutely nothing to an actual conversation. Why? What about it? The people, the encounters, the theme? This is nothing more than a statement of your opinion with no logical support.

No individual component of Cat was bad, but the expansion failed to combine as a unified whole. Felt more like a bunch of random DLC than a cohesive whole. Plus the extremely on-rails questing experience left a bad feeling for a lot of people.

Finally! An explanation That seems plausible. I have to agree with the questing experience as well. It felt very linear and lacked true deliberation. The story was streamlined though. Did the cons outweigh the pros?