Why people hate Cataclysm - a thought.

[Deleted]

Because the last patch (dragon soul) is one of the worst content ever in this game (if not THE worst) and we got stuck with it for a whole year, and that's what people will forever hold from the expansion.

Recently I leveled another alt and for the first time going back to that content since MoP came out. Vashj'ir, Deepholm and Uldum are, in my opinion, some of the best zones ever. Hyjal is ok and Twilight Highlands is a bit boring (and the last, so, like before, not good to keep good memories alive), but the rest of the Azeroth overhaul is superb.

That, launch raids (Bastion and Blackwing), Firelands (the whole patch, not only the raid) and the whole streamline of gameplay was some of the best things Blizz made for this game. Also, Cataclysm is my favorite WoW soundtrack so far.

Besides, the whole apocalyptic-fiery-violent and chaotic feeling to it just seemed right at the time (after the alien TBC and the Dark WotLK).

This is just a rambling on a underrated content, spoiled by the major failure that was 4.4.

Hope WoD will come soon enough so we dont get burned out by SoO aswell (i dont think that will hapen, though... we were stuck with ICC for a whole year aswell but it was awesome, instead).

[Stormcall]

Recently I leveled another alt and for the first time going back to that content since MoP came out. Vashj'ir, Deepholm and Uldum are, in my opinion, some of the best zones ever.

I like Deepholm and Uldum pretty well, Hyjal and Highlands are okay, but Blizzard would have to pay ME a sub fee to even get me to consider going back Vash'jr. I mean, I'd rather do a fucking marathon quest of the entire Eastern Kingdoms than have to go through even the first part of that shitty zone again.

[Dooney]

I like Deepholm and Uldum pretty well, Hyjal and Highlands are okay, but Blizzard would have to pay ME a sub fee to even get me to consider going back Vash'jr. I mean, I'd rather do a fucking marathon quest of the entire Eastern Kingdoms than have to go through even the first part of that shitty zone again.

Never have so many hated so few I did the citizens of Vash'jr. I leveled there once and have not touched down on that wretched land since then. I liked Uldum, but with the Egyptian 'motif,' it didn't feel right with the theme of the rest of it.

[Zallex]

I hated cataclysm because:

1. The world was completely empty, everyone was bunched up in SW/Org the entire xpac
2. Pvp balance was horrid (mages and rogues were the worst offenders)
3. Massive amount of times between sub-par content patches
4. The game basically became world of queuecraft
5. Disjointed new xpac zones
6. Overwhelming horde favoritism(half of alliance towns were destroyed or taken over by horde)
7. The final boss was a tentacle fight.....

I'm sure I could think of many many more but those are the ones just off the top of my head.

[KCguy]

The raiding was fine until Dragonsoul, but that isn't the problem. The problem is that they put so much work into the 1-60 zones that the end game content suffered. There was literally nothing to do a month into the expansion besides raiding. People sat around their respective cities bored out of their skulls.

[Dooney]

I hated cataclysm because:

1. The world was completely empty, everyone was bunched up in SW/Org the entire xpac
2. Pvp balance was horrid (mages and rogues were the worst offenders)
3. Massive amount of times between sub-par content patches
4. The game basically became world of queuecraft
5. Disjointed new xpac zones
6. Overwhelming horde favoritism(half of alliance towns were destroyed or taken over by horde)
7. The final boss was a tentacle fight.....
I'm sure I could think of many many more but those are the ones just off the top of my head.

I wasn't that excited for Worgens either.
I don't know why I started to avoid dungeons and raids.
I spent most of Cataclysm farming mats and making gold on the AH.

Finally, there were a lot of cut scenes and gimmicky references, if I remember correctly, and most of the time it felt like I was in a movie.

- - - Updated - - -

The raiding was fine until Dragonsoul, but that isn't the problem. The problem is that they put so much work into the 1-60 zones that the end game content suffered. There was literally nothing to do a month into the expansion besides raiding. People sat around their respective cities bored out of their skulls.

If it weren't for Trade Chat, I might have leaped off the mage tower in SW, so bored.

[Flutterguy]

I didn't like Cataclysm for two primary reasons...

It was the epitome of trying to do everything at once and finishing nothing. It was Blizzard's biggest undertaking with the highest expectations and it didn't deliver. Many of the things the devs will refuse to do now are based largely on what they learned with Cataclysm. It was the only Blizzard beta I was in where it felt like the beta closed way too early, particularly with all the problems they had in Vashj for not only all of Beta testing, but well into release. And for all the complaining about female worgen models...They were in the beta for all of a couple weeks as playable at all.

The other reason was that Deathwing, who had been built up to be this grand successor to the Lich King was an utter failure. The 1-60 experience and the glimpses of the great dragon, namely when he came into your zone and killed you, were wonderful. Even some of the 80-85 content with him was great like his battle with Alexstrasza. But then came Dragonsoul and he was just neutered. We didn't get the most amazing dragon fight ever. We got a two-part trash boss to close out the expansion. Deathwing's back and then his tentacles with a brief appearance by his face for the last bit. While the difficulty of the fight, namely part 1 was well documented, it lacked so much substance I felt bad for selling the cunning and greatness of the wyrm to my friends as a fan of Warcraft II. All the, "I told you! He's been behind everything in the game so far!" amounted to that pile of raging emo shit.

[Elestia]

Have to agree, Cata zones and dungeons are perhaps the best content designed. The release raids were also superb. Firelands unfortunately began a downhill spiral. The Firelands raid, while epic, was only 8 bosses long. Add to that the fact the Abyssal Maw raid was scrapped, which included 5-8 additional bosses, in addition to lore content involving the fate of Neptulon. Its sad really. The instance portal still stands agape waiting for us to come rescue the Tide Hunter.

Finally, what should have been the ultimate apex of WoW, being the Deathwing fight, was horrible. DS single handedly killed the xpac, as has been mentioned. To add insult to injury, Blizz cited LFR development for draining resources. Not only that DS had more bosses created and ready that were cut since noone wanted to tune and test the encounters. The raid itself was a disaster. Going from butthole to butthole in the snow, fighting disgusting abominations, then flying up a tower that we've been to a million times during Wrath, and that's it for a raid? That's not a raid, or an experience! That's going to two buttholes and a tower! There's probably a sex joke in there somewhere!

And then you have the Deathwing fight itself! Granted two fights made things more epic. Granted spine was difficult, and epic because it was difficult, does not make how Deathwing died okay. Roll back to the first time you watched the DS trailer and just thinking "Oh fuck." Now take that thought, and look at how Thrall kills him. (That's the other irksome thing, fucking Thrall kills DW, not you the raider. Although the same can be said about Velen showing up at the Sunwell, Maiev killing Illidan, Tirion killing Arthas... fucking Thrall trying to kill steal Garrosh, players NEVER get to kill an end boss.) Thrall kills DW with a disk and some shiny light because he's an "Aspect." Aspect my eye. HE'S AN ORC. Orcs don't even belong on Azeroth, and yet the dragons are cool with it. Alexstraza was enslaved by the Dragonmaw ffs. All dragons view mortals as dirt, and orcs are beyond contempt. Her blessing Thrall at the end, ridiculous. So there ya go! We got robbed of duking it out with DW in a direct stand off, and once again Thrall's the showcase of WoW = terribad.

[The Madgod]

Because the last patch (dragon soul) is one of the worst content ever in this game (if not THE worst) and we got stuck with it for a whole year, and that's what people will forever hold from the expansion.

Recently I leveled another alt and for the first time going back to that content since MoP came out. Vashj'ir, Deepholm and Uldum are, in my opinion, some of the best zones ever. Hyjal is ok and Twilight Highlands is a bit boring (and the last, so, like before, not good to keep good memories alive), but the rest of the Azeroth overhaul is superb.

That, launch raids (Bastion and Blackwing), Firelands (the whole patch, not only the raid) and the whole streamline of gameplay was some of the best things Blizz made for this game. Also, Cataclysm is my favorite WoW soundtrack so far.

Besides, the whole apocalyptic-fiery-violent and chaotic feeling to it just seemed right at the time (after the alien TBC and the Dark WotLK).

This is just a rambling on a underrated content, spoiled by the major failure that was 4.4.

Hope WoD will come soon enough so we dont get burned out by SoO aswell (i dont think that will hapen, though... we were stuck with ICC for a whole year aswell but it was awesome, instead).

I disagree.

The content of all the patches was largely okay (with a couple exceptions like the Madness of Deathwing encounter) when you look at them individually. Most of the encounters were fun. There were some gems, but the overall experience was kinda meh for me. The real problem was the packaging.

There was really nothing to do. Blizzard created content that really did not have much longevity. 4.0 reps were farmable without ever touching a daily quest or even a repeatable turn-in. 4.1 offered a short two hour at most questline and a pair of heroic dungeons. 4.2 did an okay job and got us a fairly longer lasting content hub. 4.3 got us the raid and some more dungeons that we quickly ate through. 4.2 dailies were then obselete so no point in returning to them.

Blizzard streamlined content too much in Cataclysm. 4.2 was the only time where you had some incentive to leave Orgrimmar or Stormwind, aside from when you were raiding. That's not good game design.

[LTCrystallite]

A few other reasons:

1. content was cut or simply not finished, too many promises were made
2. the 1-60 revamp wasn't experienced to it's full potential because leveling pace became an absolute joke
3. the promised talent bloat fix didn't actually solve anything, it actually took some choices away and left us with 2-3 talent points to spend on a worthless talent
4. content became stale ridiculously fast (ZA/ZG rehash, DS)
5. the most clunky/unintuitive the game mechanics for DPS classes have ever been 13 button Demonology, lava surge resetting LvB CD before you even cast it, long Boomkin cast times with eclipse and starfire, Destro overloaded with DoTs)

It really wasn't just DS. Some of the polish and questing design was pretty damn good, and the new art was also pretty impressive. It just failed miserably at everything else.

[Salech]

Really, people are now saying Cata was good?, damn man cata was good for the first 2 months approximately when it went total shit throughout the entire campaign, only good from cata was when dungeons actually took skill/co ordination to do instead of that AoE fest it became.

[Flutterguy]

Have to agree, Cata zones and dungeons are perhaps the best content designed. The release raids were also superb. Firelands unfortunately began a downhill spiral. The Firelands raid, while epic, was only 8 bosses long. Add to that the fact the Abyssal Maw raid was scrapped, which included 5-8 additional bosses, in addition to lore content involving the fate of Neptulon. Its sad really. The instance portal still stands agape waiting for us to come rescue the Tide Hunter.

Finally, what should have been the ultimate apex of WoW, being the Deathwing fight, was horrible. DS single handedly killed the xpac, as has been mentioned. To add insult to injury, Blizz cited LFR development for draining resources. Not only that DS had more bosses created and ready that were cut since noone wanted to tune and test the encounters. The raid itself was a disaster. Going from butthole to butthole in the snow, fighting disgusting abominations, then flying up a tower that we've been to a million times during Wrath, and that's it for a raid? That's not a raid, or an experience! That's going to two buttholes and a tower! There's probably a sex joke in there somewhere!

And then you have the Deathwing fight itself! Granted two fights made things more epic. Granted spine was difficult, and epic because it was difficult, does not make how Deathwing died okay. Roll back to the first time you watched the DS trailer and just thinking "Oh fuck." Now take that thought, and look at how Thrall kills him. (That's the other irksome thing, fucking Thrall kills DW, not you the raider. Although the same can be said about Velen showing up at the Sunwell, Maiev killing Illidan, Tirion killing Arthas... fucking Thrall trying to kill steal Garrosh, players NEVER get to kill an end boss.) Thrall kills DW with a disk and some shiny light because he's an "Aspect." Aspect my eye. HE'S AN ORC. Orcs don't even belong on Azeroth, and yet the dragons are cool with it. Alexstraza was enslaved by the Dragonmaw ffs. All dragons view mortals as dirt, and orcs are beyond contempt. Her blessing Thrall at the end, ridiculous. So there ya go! We got robbed of duking it out with DW in a direct stand off, and once again Thrall's the showcase of WoW = terribad.

lol You reminded of that part in Twilight Highlands when the red dragonflight wants to murder me and I'm like "Wait a second. We freed your asses from the dragonmaw during the Second War!"

[Deleted]

Cata was bad since 4.1.
Like many people above said, it was horribly boring. You did all your proffessions, all rep in first month and then only thing to do was raiding shortest raids ever (7 and 8 bosses, lol).
I agree zones very really good, I liked them all, but they were spread around the globe so much Cata didnt even feel like proper expansion.

[Fluttershy]

Because the tiers were just a rehash.

Oh t11, look it's nefarian all over again. also the balance team should've been fired on the spot for perhaps the worst raid tuning ever where all 10man HMs except for alakir were 10x harder than 25s, the difficulty was jumping all over the place and 50% of the fights required split second interrupts or you auto-wipe even if you did perfectly well for 6 minutes now.

Zul'gurub and Zul'aman, how new! sure is nice doing heroics that take 40 minutes to complete for garbage gear, #@%$ off, probably the worst update since voice chat for BC.

T12, oh look it's ragnaros again!, trashlands with 10x more trash than before, just 7 bosses, lord rhyolith, a very dull instance from an aesthetic point of view.

T13, just plain mediocre.

Then they raped all the leveling zones, now it's just a point A->point B 1 quest at a time linear walk, mobs health also increased by 3x for no good reason which was fine for OP base damage classes like warriors/hunters but now spriests and locks can't just dot tab and kill groups like wotlk.

Sure is fun leveling 5 times, then having to travel 50 miles north! back then I coulda stayed in the barrens from 10-25 if I wanted to.

[The Madgod]

Really, people are now saying Cata was good?, damn man cata was good for the first 2 months approximately when it went total shit throughout the entire campaign, only good from cata was when dungeons actually took skill/co ordination to do instead of that AoE fest it became.

This is always the pattern. Once some bit of content is a full expansion behind us people will come out and start praising it, even if they were scorning it before.

Happened to classic WoW. Happened to TBC. Happened to Wrath. Now it's happening to Cata.

[Paulosio]

The zones aren't the problem really. I loved Vash'jir because it felt fresh and new and I loved the whole atmosphere of the zone and the music. I also enjoyed Uldum because it had fun quests even if it didn't feel very WOWish.. The other zones weren't brilliant but they weren't bad.

I didn't really like any of the raid content other than Firelands. There were a couple of bosses that were ok such as Maloriak but overall I didn't like the raid instances or bosses. Dragon Soul was a massive let down. Yorshaj and Zonozz had some nice mechanics but everything else was boring. The 2 deathwing fights must be the most underwhelming end of xpac boss of any xpac (in fact it's probably the most underwhelming end of any tier boss ever).

I want to feel like i'm exploring a new world when I start a new xpac. Cata didn't feel that way because we weren't exploring a whole new land... We were portalling to zones tacked onto the side of Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor (mainly).

[Deleted]

I liked Cata a lot actually. I quit at Wrath because it was boring and a real faceroll. Subbed back at Cata and loved the hard heroics at start, loved the setting and the raids. It got worse as the nerfs came but overall it was pretty fun gig.

[Paula Deen]

The overall problem with Cataclysm was, as said previously, lack of content and the ability to keep a promise. They promised way too much from what they could handle at the time. It really did not help at all, that they seemed to just abandon the idea and players which made a lot of us feel helpless. They could have done much more with keeping content current. I think if they manage to get on a MoP Style Content Cycle after WoD (including faster releases than June ffs) the game will feel much better for what it is. The problem is just a lack of content. That is the bottom line, if they want to make the game have a bit more longevity they could have (and still can) add more to do at the endgame side of things. They need a team doing dailies, a team doing events (Timeless/Thunder Isle), a team doing raids, and a team doing PvP. That is how they should be doing it, which as far as I can tell, they aren't. I can tell you this. Cataclysm will more than likely be seen as the BAD expansion, for years to come. I was one of the guys that thought it would be considered good after MoP, but boy am I wrong. MoP really turned things around, but Cataclysm is still, my least favorite expansion. It is a shame, it had so much potential.

[Raugnaut]

This is always the pattern. Once some bit of content is a full expansion behind us people will come out and start praising it, even if they were scorning it before.

Happened to classic WoW. Happened to TBC. Happened to Wrath. Now it's happening to Cata.

Except with cata, the very few ppl even daring to mention it was good gets quickly drowned out by the "majority" stating that it was horrid. Sure, it MAY have had a few good points to it, but overall, it was the worst of the lot, and hopefully will remain the worst of the lot.

[darxide]

People hate Cataclysm? I thought it was pretty ok. Just ok, though. Wrath on the other hand, I get why people hated Wrath. Certainly the worst expansion for the game without question. (Ok, I can't say that it's the worst because I have never played MoP so I don't know if it's worse or not). But Cataclysm? /shrug

EDIT:

I liked Cata a lot actually. I quit at Wrath because it was boring and a real faceroll. Subbed back at Cata and loved the hard heroics at start, loved the setting and the raids. It got worse as the nerfs came but overall it was pretty fun gig.

Essentially this.