Cataclysm, not as bad as we remember?

[SirMeo]

Let's see...
Nope. Still my most disliked expansion.

Immersion-wise they made some bad decision. Reducing Uldum to be mostly Indiana Jones jokes was bad (and I LOVE Indiana Jones... I just don't need it my WoW). Vash'jr was a major base breaker for the players. Questing got more streamlined than ever, but as a result you had to do all the quests in a row with little variation, and to get the reputation tabards you needed to grind all the starting quests on alts too even if you didmange to skip one of the zones. LK might've shown up in Northrend all the time in WotLK but with Deathwing they did almost the opposite. Leveling (if we don't count that achievement for getting roasted) we probably saw him most in... Badlands, was it? Whatever, you know the place... and that place was not 80+ content! To someone who does not follow lore outside WoW that might've been even more of a letdown, the advertised villain barely shows up until the last raid tier.

Speaking of the last raid tied... I actually don't mind DS as such, I had some fun with bosses... EXCEPT the last two bosses. Both Spine and Madness were MEH at best, definitely not a fitting end for Deathwing. What's the point of making a giant badass dragon of doom your last boss if your last boss consists of giving him a manicure and killing some tentacles?

If there was one thing I think Cata did better than MoP it was definitely 5-mans for me. I personally actually enjoy doing 5-mans even if I don't need gear/valor/achievements, and MoP definitely disappointed me, but during Cata we got new dungeons at least. Except dungeons were tiered. This would not be a bad thing EXCEPT you were stuck with 2 dungeons for an entire patch (ZG/ZA to be exact) and the fact the dungeons reused environments with previously liked raids that even dropped mounts that subsequently became Lost Forever for those who were unlucky with RNG. Not a good decision, removing two raids people liked to do even if they were old content and making them 5-mans that were initially hard to PUG due difficulty AND making people run those two dungeons for months. LFD and random groups also did not initially mix very well, making running dungeons more of a chore at the launch if you didn't have a guild group, making them a lot less appealing to those of more casual persuasion.

Azeroth revamp was good and bad. On the other hand the old Azeroth had many, many problems, and the new plot lines and quests are better and more streamlined, but on the other hand you lost something "forever" and people generally don't like that. I know I miss old Silverpine for nostalgia's sake even if I really enjoy the new Silverpine too.

It's small things, but it does add up. The fact WotLK was (at least to me) a rather great expansion (and it still holds up as THE expansion I had most fun in, though this fun is mostly because I had a highly sociable guild back then and probably less WotLK in itself) didn't help Cata the least either. I don't really HATE Cata, but I know I took most breaks during it. It was exhausting and felt somewhat unpolished.

[Deleted]

If anything, time has dulled the edge on the utter hatred and contempt i have for that expansion.
Oddly enough, the thing that most people hated, Dragon Soul, was probably my favourite bit.

[Deleted]

Reducing Uldum to be mostly Indiana Jones jokes was bad (and I LOVE Indiana Jones... I just don't need it my WoW).

Admit it, the Adolf references were cool though.

[hablix]

It was still better than Wrath, but people let nostalgia blind them with that expansion pack. It's starting to happen now with Cata, as usual

Um, ONE (1) poster is saying that as bad as Cata was, maybe it wasn't quite as bad as we remember, with three pages of responses emphatically and unequivocally reminding the OP that no, Cata really was that bad. You call that nostalgia?

[quras]

Sorry but cataclysm was every bit as bad as i remember. It was the start to massive sub losses.

It was the first expansion to give me reasons to stop playing.

[CottonBall]

I never understood the all the grief that Cata gets. I admit, I started WoW in WotLK. Cata to me was more of the same and a few changes. Some of the changes I liked and some I did not. I liked that the talent trees where streamlined a little bit. Could have been more but I was happy. I did not like getting stuck in one talent tree until level 72. I liked the addition of mastery has a secondary stat. I really enjoyed the troll dungeons, but I did not like that the troll dungeons where a replacement for the troll raids instead of being additions. I hated Tol Barad. I felt it was a good concept but poorly implememted.

Dragon Soul. As a raid I enjoyed it, but the addition of LFR... I resent. I have always wondered if DS could have been more if not for the time and resources used to implement LFR. I also resent LFR for being a big hit to the population of the progression raiding comunity. Both ICC and DS had 3 catch up heroics. Both ICC and DS where the last raids of their expansion. So why was ICC such an epic raid and DS, by comparison, good but not as good. I have always blamed LFR. I know I am most likely wrong, but I will keep blameing the implementation of LFR any way.

Thrall. Green Moses. Ugggh. I had thought he was retired and gone but like a bad penny, he just kept comeing back. And the feeling when leveling in rehashed vanilla zones as a Alliance player. Depressing to just keep looseing ground.

Despite the few complaints I have with Cata I still really enjoyed it. (I kept my subscription going the whole expansion. Unlike MoP where I kept leaveing and comeing back only to leave agian.)

PS: Flying while leveling up in Cata was the awsomeness!

[crakerjack]

"Cataclysm looked good if we cover one eye and only look at one aspect of it" Pft... anything could look good if you only focused on the good. Cataclysm is the shittiest expansion blizzard ever released. I quit the game I LOVED because of that expansion. Don't give me that crap about "oh if you loved the game, you wouldn't have quit" except for the fact that the game began to rapidly change during cataclysm. First off, anyone with a brain could tell you that cataclysm was horrible. How can an expansion be good when blizzard alienates the whole PvP community? Some of the biggest names in the PvP community quit that expansion or at the beginning of MoP. Are you just completely oblivious to the mmr glitch? Or did you not fully play the game making your opinion not valid? I played hardcore PvP, PvE and I fooled around w/ other aspects of the game. I wasn't some biased punk who thought the game was good because some aspect was good.

For a game to be amazing, it needs to be balanced thoroughly. When PvP is utter complete shit, that doesn't make a perfect game. PvE might have been doing well, but that's just one aspect of the game. From the very get go, PvP and PvE have been part of the game. "drrr you wrong ratard, thar wuz no bg's at raleese!" yea, but you could attack opposing fractions from the get go, there for it's Player vs Player. Now let me ask again, how can a game be perfect when there's an mmr glitch allowing people to obtain gladiator by beating 1300 teams the whole way up? That's like people finding a way to do LFR, but obtain heroic loot. Do you think there would be an uproar from the PvE community if people were getting the best gear on the easiest difficulty? Oh hell yea there would be... all those that work hard on their characters would feel betrayed, just like I did when blizzard did nothing and gave gladiator to those that abused the glitch. There was no reset for those that cheated and there was no hard reset... cheaters were rewarded and blizzard, shit you not, didn't give a single damn. That's when I knew activision blizzard didn't care about the game.

Not only that, but when MoP was released, blizzard didn't think everything through. Since class balancing was already unfair near the end of cataclysm, blizzard didn't think about how monks with affect that. Even today arena isn't completely balanced and PvP gear is a total fucking joke since PvP power is useless outside of any PvP instance such as arena or a bg. It's funny though, with all these issues, blizzard prioritizes shitty features such as pet battles to attract a VERY small group of players. W/e... to each their own... if you thought Cataclysm was a great expansion, you have every right to, but from someone who played hardcore PvP and PvE, cataclysm was the turning point towards doom.

[Deleted]

It was still better than Wrath, but people let nostalgia blind them with that expansion pack. It's starting to happen now with Cata, as usual

no i loved wraith and tbc and i also like mop better than cata, where is there the nostalgia? its just bad simple as that ;-)

Also i feel the hate coming up again the more i think about it, i better stop to write in here hehe

[Asics]

X expansion sucks!

12 months later

X expansion was actually pretty good. Y expansion sucks!

12 months later

Y expansion was actually pretty good. Z expansion sucks!

etc.

[MrWolly]

Dragon Soul.

Yes it was that terrible.

That's the main thing that killed my desire to raid. I agree.

[Deleted]

Welcome to the world of warcraft. Where every past expansion is bad, and only the current date is fun.

except Cataclysm WAS bad. compared to every other Expansion. The raids where lack luster at best, The Zones whilst interesting where just an extension of Kalmidor / Easter Kingdoms. The introduction of the worst secondary profession of all (archeology) and the revamp of the old zones which would have best been left undone and just updated them so you could fly over them.

Cataclysm was a joke of an expansion.

[Army Dreamer]

Cataclysm, not as bad as we remember?

I have no bad memories about Cataclysm.

[Switchshot]

Well, this certainly did not take the direction I had intended. The point here was to incite some perspective taking. Maybe, just maybe, we could look at the expansion (and the history of the entire game) without a fallacy in every sentence. In any case, every expansion is good and bad all at once, to different people, for different reasons. If we can't even discuss what those reasons are without putting an ounce of rational thinking and a dash of patience, how do we develop well rounded opinions? The sign of an increasingly ignorant society. In any case, I'd like to thank the few who took the time to actually respond to the theme of the thread. All the best <3

[crakerjack]

Well, this certainly did not take the direction I had intended. The point here was to incite some perspective taking. Maybe, just maybe, we could look at the expansion (and the history of the entire game) without a fallacy in every sentence. In any case, every expansion is good and bad all at once, to different people, for different reasons. If we can't even discuss what those reasons are without putting an ounce of rational thinking and a dash of patience, how do we develop well rounded opinions? The sign of an increasingly ignorant society. In any case, I'd like to thank the few who took the time to actually respond to the theme of the thread. All the best <3

So anyone who didn't say anything positive about the game isn't rational? You're right, we should all say how amazing cataclysm was w/ all its faults... we should be happy that the mmr glitch allowed cheaters to get gladiator... we should be glad that blizzard during this period was shutting down threads suggesting tips on how to fix it... Literally, there was atleast 10 threads a day on the matter and blizzard would shut down every single one, even the threads that were upvoted by everyone. Their actions were as clear as day n night... if you can't acknowledge that cataclysm was the worst expansion, then your opinion as a whole is invalid.

You want to know why the TBC was renowned for being amazing? Because arena was introduced into arena at a time where class diversity was well and alive. Each comp was unique and each had a different play style. You couldn't just cc and burst, it was more about forcing your opponents to pop their big CD's while you only used a small 30 second CD. It's like chess, making your opponent move something early to put them out of position. That doesn't happen anymore, all comps play the same way.. either lock down a healer or a dps and constantly cc who ever is the biggest threat or stopping you from winning. It's like that because class diversity is gone... how can you have any diversity when the game is constantly being introduced to new classes? For once Blizzard did the right thing and didn't add a new class, but based on all the negative views from the player base, I'm lead to believe that 90% if not greater, don't know what makes WoW a good game. It's like they're just going w/ the movement.

To you my opinion isn't rational because I have an opposing view, but to me, I'm being highly logical and reasonable. A game can't be perfect when all aspects aren't the best they can be... Whether it's PvP or PvE that's lacking, those two components need to be amazing for WoW to succeed. Everything else could die off and I wouldn't care... pet battles sucks, stupid pitty features in general suck. The game needs to get back to the basics about PvP and PvE, but w/ garrison being added, it looks like the game will continue to head in a direction i'd rather not follow.

[CottonBall]

Well, this certainly did not take the direction I had intended. The point here was to incite some perspective taking. Maybe, just maybe, we could look at the expansion (and the history of the entire game) without a fallacy in every sentence. In any case, every expansion is good and bad all at once, to different people, for different reasons. If we can't even discuss what those reasons are without putting an ounce of rational thinking and a dash of patience, how do we develop well rounded opinions? The sign of an increasingly ignorant society. In any case, I'd like to thank the few who took the time to actually respond to the theme of the thread. All the best <3

I myself am suprised at how many people expressed their opinions as fact. "Cata was awful" they say. No "In my opinion" or "as far as I am concerned" just people stateing their opinion as fact. I know I am new to these forums but I was did not expect this.

[Deleted]

Dragon Soul, Dragon Soul, Dragon Soul, is that all you guys think Cataclysm was? Dragon Soul?

Dragon Soul was one raid and the final patch of the expansion, and even it brought good things like, uhm..transmogrification, so how does one single raid make the whole expansion horrible and ''like gouging your eyes out with a rusted spoon''?

[Xayl1]

You are likely right to be perfectly honest but That was still for me the worst the game has ever been an I seriously don't regret skipping that x-pac.

[Demsi]

It started out nicely, but then 4.3 came.......The horror!

[Deleted]

pet battles sucks, stupid pitty features in general suck. The game needs to get back to the basics about PvP and PvE, but w/ garrison being added, it looks like the game will continue to head in a direction i'd rather not follow.

PvP is the most useless feature in the game, and a major reason for the imbalance in PvE, the sooner PvP gets scrapped the better it is. Pet battles is way more useful and popular, there are way more players interested in pet battles (and "peaceful" features in general), than into PvP and the segregation of factions it brings with it.

[Deleted]

I actually liked Cataclysm more than Mists and TBC.