Cataclysm Deserve More Love! (Long Post Why Cata was the best)

[RobertMugabe]

These posts are a waste of time tbh.

Do you really expect to Change someone's opinion on the internet with your posts?

[Soon-TM]

These posts are a waste of time tbh.

Do you really expect to Change someone's opinion on the internet with your posts?

Well, OP has an opinion, about Cata in this case, and wants to share it. Isn't that what forums are for?

[Aeula]

It was needed though. 1-60 leveling is alot better then 61-110 in my opinion. But then again i like the enviroment alot more of older zones, also the mobs are more fun to kill. Rather kill some random boar/wolf/ogre then a damn magic ass monster who you shouldn't even be able to beat alone. (Immersion and all speaking)

But i think cata was alright, just 4.3 was the biggest shit patch that killed the expansion. (Don't wanna say worst patch in WoW history, because thats the selfie cam patch)

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Remember the dungeons and dragon soul that came with the patch? And that cheap ass trailer they even removed from their youtube channel because it was so bad?
Transmog was the only good thing that came from 4.3 That's it.

I remember the dungeons being fun and an easy way to gear up. So I liked them. No fucks given about the raid or any raid for that matter.

[PuppetShowJustice]

I'm amazed to see someone praising Tol Barad. Do you remember those battles? Both teams running in circles back-capping each other was never fun. This came after Wintergrasp too, making its shortcomings all the more obvious.

Cata was a mess of half-baked ideas and half-assed content. They cut the Alliance intro to Twilight Highlands and gave us the Horde storyline even though the Red Dragonflight being mad at us made literally zero sense. They cut the Neptulon storyline. They cut the water raid. The Worgen and Goblin storylines ended abruptly, leaving the new races to not have a starring role in their own expansion.

RBGs started with a bigger size and I abruptly had to cut our group size down, angering everyone. RBGs are a great concept but Blizzard dropped the ball hard with implementing them under one ruleset and then changing it once guilds have formed their rosters.

Archaeology is lame and was clearly meant to be a sister system to the Path of the Titans, another feature that was scrapped and was apparently quite a big deal if Ghostcrawler is to be believed. Blizzard has never found a good role for Archaeology to play and isn't really trying anymore at this point.

Worst expansion ever.

[Missed]

Cataclysm was an apt name for an expansion that destroyed most of the world as we knew it. Thanks to cata, now we are the champions SAVING THE WORLD together with another couple millions of champions SAVING THE WORLD. Before you approached a new area as an adventurer looking for a job. Now you're sent there as the champion SAVING THE WORLD. Cata introduced this system. As an undead by lvl 10 you actually save sylvanas life. OOOOOOOK.
Cataclysmic mistake. There can't be a million champions SAVING THE WORLD. The streamlined questing system provided way less options than before. And that's not a good thing.
New areas... well what can I say. Far apart, both geographically and stylistically. I will NEVER forgive blizzard for Uldum. Never ever. I still remember finding those sealed doors in the deep southern deserts and thinking "this is exciting I wonder what mysteries hide behind this". If I knew we had German speaking goblins and Indiana Jones references not so subtly shoveled down my throat I wouldn't have bothered.

Overall I didn't like cata. I liked its dungeons, could have turned into something interesting. Hated tol barad but that's not their fault. Not easy surpassing wintergrasp. Transmog amd rated battlegrounds were great.

Not an easy job to come up with an expansion after wotlk which had a pretty good balance overall. So apart from Uldum which I will NEVER forget, I'd say it wasnt a good expansion but I don't blame them.

[Magicon]

It was meant on a relative scale. Cata was imho fairly mediocre compared to good expasions such a Legion and WotLK. For the rest, what can I saw, I'm not a professional comedian, and PvP, honestly, I don't get the point of that in WoW.

Ok, fair enough =)

[Socialhealer]

i see your point OP BUT - dragon soul.

well played thanks for coming better luck next time.

[Orby]

I definitely appreciate the optimism. I like that you went out of your way to pick out positives.

To me it will still be Blizzards worst expansion and I have explained in loads of detail why I hated it on previous topics so I wont repeat myself. But I totally dig your opinion though

[D3athsting]

I mained rogue that time they were so fuck*d up (poisons on spell hit table? seriously?) that Gcrawler wanted to apologize to them by adding legendary daggers in DS

[Miley]

I joined Cata right after Firelands was released. I liked the expansion.

The heroic dungeons were great. Bosses actually had punishing mechanics and were worth doing unlike in wod/mop.

The water zone and hyjals dynamic zone were epic.

Firelands was a great raid. Dragon soul was decent. Mythic Warlord zonozz, blackhorn, and spine were challenging fights that felt great to finally take down. LFR was a good addition to the game. I could get a feel for a boss’s base mechanics and room layout before progression and was also a chance to raid on my alts or offspecs or hunt missing tier/trinket upgrades.

Reforge and transmog were both good systems.

The worst part of Cata was adding 10man mythic raids

[ThrashMetalFtw]

Cata was terrible until 4.3 swept in and saved it with transmog and dungeons that weren't overtuned.

Looks like it's "opposite day" again.

[Battlebeard]

I'm amazed to see someone praising Tol Barad. Do you remember those battles? Both teams running in circles back-capping each other was never fun. This came after Wintergrasp too, making its shortcomings all the more obvious.

Cata was a mess of half-baked ideas and half-assed content. They cut the Alliance intro to Twilight Highlands and gave us the Horde storyline even though the Red Dragonflight being mad at us made literally zero sense. They cut the Neptulon storyline. They cut the water raid. The Worgen and Goblin storylines ended abruptly, leaving the new races to not have a starring role in their own expansion.

RBGs started with a bigger size and I abruptly had to cut our group size down, angering everyone. RBGs are a great concept but Blizzard dropped the ball hard with implementing them under one ruleset and then changing it once guilds have formed their rosters.

Archaeology is lame and was clearly meant to be a sister system to the Path of the Titans, another feature that was scrapped and was apparently quite a big deal if Ghostcrawler is to be believed. Blizzard has never found a good role for Archaeology to play and isn't really trying anymore at this point.

Worst expansion ever.

Tol Barad had it's ups and downs sometimes, true. But almost every TB, we ended up at the same base and big, epic battles took place. It was not rare to see 30-40 peopel per faction fighting. Too see that action today, you have to get very lucky in Isle or AV.

Have you done Goblin and Worgen quests. I don't care about lore or story overall, but these questlines were quit fun. And they had to end somehow, as you outlevel their zones. The "abrupt ending" was not bad enough to counter the amazing chains up to that.

I can't expect people to like Archaeology, as it is optional content, but to me it was a good thing to do outside of raids.

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I mained rogue that time they were so fuck*d up (poisons on spell hit table? seriously?) that Gcrawler wanted to apologize to them by adding legendary daggers in DS

I think it was more to save the class than to appologize, even to those points are very related. At the time, Rogue was at a record low % of the game, by far the least played class.

[Deleted]

Cataclysm was a lot like WoD.
I liked it, but it was't finished.

[Battlebeard]

i see your point OP BUT - dragon soul.

well played thanks for coming better luck next time.

Why do you think so ill of that raid? I mean, the fact that it lasted a long time should not really be a basis to judge how well the raid was designed itself. I think almost every boss was top notch. Morchok was a decent first boss, Yorsah was really great, so was Warlord (the ping pong boss, Hagara, Ultraxion and the Tauren.

Spine was awful in pugs but fun with guilds and Madness was also decent. Mechanicwise, this raid was not bad.

I did however hate the trash before Ultraxion, but so did everyone, that's the only problem I had with DS.

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Cataclysm was an apt name for an expansion that destroyed most of the world as we knew it. Thanks to cata, now we are the champions SAVING THE WORLD together with another couple millions of champions SAVING THE WORLD. Before you approached a new area as an adventurer looking for a job. Now you're sent there as the champion SAVING THE WORLD. Cata introduced this system. As an undead by lvl 10 you actually save sylvanas life. OOOOOOOK.
Cataclysmic mistake. There can't be a million champions SAVING THE WORLD. The streamlined questing system provided way less options than before. And that's not a good thing.
New areas... well what can I say. Far apart, both geographically and stylistically. I will NEVER forgive blizzard for Uldum. Never ever. I still remember finding those sealed doors in the deep southern deserts and thinking "this is exciting I wonder what mysteries hide behind this". If I knew we had German speaking goblins and Indiana Jones references not so subtly shoveled down my throat I wouldn't have bothered.

Overall I didn't like cata. I liked its dungeons, could have turned into something interesting. Hated tol barad but that's not their fault. Not easy surpassing wintergrasp. Transmog amd rated battlegrounds were great.

Not an easy job to come up with an expansion after wotlk which had a pretty good balance overall. So apart from Uldum which I will NEVER forget, I'd say it wasnt a good expansion but I don't blame them.

I am curious, can you give some more details why you didn't like Uldum? It's my 2nd favorite zone of all time after Vashj'ir. I love to be back in a sand area and the quests with Harrison Jones etc were great. I can't remember specifically annoying quests or anything that made me upset there. The german goblins was kind of fun, maybe a bit silly, but not to ruin it.

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I hate Cata with a passion, and always will. The revamp literally wrecked many of my favourite zones, replacing them with fire, huge chasms and cringey pop references. Having portals to each of the new zones, while very convenient, made the whole thing feel disjointed and... unconvincing, so to speak; which was especially bad in what was supposed to be an old world-based X-Pac.

Another irritating issue was the timeline was torn to shreds; you start at level 1 just after the Cataclysm has taken place, as every single NPC reminds you. At level 60 you go back in time to the beginning of the Outland campaign, followed by Northrend, and then you retake the actual storyline... WTF? It would have made way more sense if the revamped old world had allowed to go straight from 1 to 85, while leaving Outland/NR as optional content in the Caverns of Time.

Speaking of 1-85, I !@#$ing hated how rigid and hand-held the levelling process became, and how much of a faceroll it became. Since Cata was the "git gud" X-Pac, it could have used way more difficulty when levelling, so that players weren't complete mouth-breathers in the overtuned HC dungeons of 4.0. The worst part about those dungeons is that they were punishing only to the healers, who were struggling with mana all the time, and (less so) to melee DPS. I had to shelf my HPriest, which I had been playing since Vanilla, and she was unplayable until 4.2 iirc. I struggled to heal a guild HC run, so LFG was completely out of question.

PvP was bad, just bad, with cats running amok with stealth+pounce, then shifting to bear while LOL'ing in your face. I could 2 or 3 shot anyone on my arcane mage. DKs were obscenely OP against any caster other than a frost mage, and trashed melee as well, except kitties. Vengeance working in PvP, fun times lul.

And raids were just meh for my taste. Tier 11 was... just a tier, Firelands was better, but... 7 bosses only... Seriously Blizzard. HC Ragnaros was epic though, the best encounter in the whole xpac. Then came Diarrhea Soul. Suffice to say, I had been playing since Vanilla, and that utter, complete PoS made me quit until Legion.

You bring up a very interesting point, the fact that leveling was easy and dungeons were hard. I do realize it could be a problem for the new players.

I must agree, that this did turn out to be quite subjective for me, who at the time had raided end game in TBC and WotLK, and considered myself a good player, with little struggle with the dungeons and who hated (still do) to level up.

Hard dungeons and easy levels became PERFECT for me, but it might not have been for everyone.

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subjective opinion



Good, but at the cost of max level content. With no new class, there really wasn't any reason to level through these zones apart from, ironically, the lack of max level content making Cataclysm the expansion with the most alts by far.



These dungeons were just bad, sorry. Especially on heroic in the early days. They were completely over tuned and not fun at all. It was like if they replaced the 'random heroic' queue with 'random +15 mythic dungeon' for a day. It always devolved into 1-2 people massively over compensating for the rest of the party which SUCKED when you were the guy having to carry and probably sucked for the vast majority of players (which are terrible) that they kept getting chain kicked.



Good in theory, bad in practice. It was obvious to anyone that had done both high rated pvp and bgs back in wotlk that range comps were going to heavily dominate rbgs. Blizzard didn't heed this warning, so RBGs revolved into two lines facing each other and multi dotting until one team ran out of mana due to one side having more pve gear.




This was just objectively bad. A server bg when most realms are heavily dominated by one side, meaning ludicrous situations like only 20 people being allowed into Tol Barad despite hundreds queueing? Come the fuck on how was this ever a good thing? And when you did get into it, it was absolutely impossible to coordinate because you weren't auto grouped until long after Tol Barad stopped being useful.



Its literally mining but without nodes. You can do practically the same thing if you just turn off 'track minerals' on your minimap and go mining.



The one good part of Cataclysm



This was just a bandaid to how badly the majority of stats were to the majority of specs. Reforging didn't make me feel any less shit about getting a piece of gear that had crit mastery when the only useful stat for my character was haste. It just made me spend some gold and leave the raid for a few minutes.



Good in theory but they ended up derping out hard. Tauren paladins before troll or undead paladins? It was at this point that Blizzard told the playerbase that they would rather make up lore on the spot than follow through with existing lore (We have seen this again with the lack of Zandalari Troll Paladins, but randomly they can be warlocks and Highmountain Taurens can be monks.)



Cataclysm raids were the worst, hands down, of any expansion. Even WoD beats them here. Dragon Soul had 1 recognisable boss. ONE - Deathwing, and his fights were terrible and tedious. Firelands was alright but again it only had one boss you even knew. Ragnaros put this raid on his back and carried it. The other 4 (if you can count throne and tol barad 'raids') were even worse than Dragon Soul.




Having a villain isn't inherently good. I can name you a thousand terrible villains and Deathwing would definitely be up there along with the Iron Horde. Deathwing broke the world just by hopping out of bed, Yet he can't take down Wyrmrest Temple? Deathwing can set entire zones alright with his fire breath, yet he can't roll a few idiots off his back? Deathwing can carve continents in half but can't kill a bunch of ants poking at his fingernails?

Deathwing was a terrible villain. He was briefly insanely cool, but once hes shouted "THE HOUR OF TWILIGHT IS NIGH" the 50th time while telling us "YOUR MORTAL WORLD IS DOOMED" you start looking at him like hes some crazy religious old man. You just want to pat him on the back and say "ok gramps, the hour of twilight can wait till tomorrow" and push him into bed.

Then we get to his death sequence where he literally just turns into pixie dust. Come the fuck on. We mounted nefarians head in Stormwind, we left C'thuns body to rot in AQ, we took KT's phylactery, we imprisoned illidan, banished kil'jaedin, dethroned the Lich King and watched him die in his father's arms and the biggest baddest mother fucker we meet so far, Deathwing, leaves nothing but a bit of his chin behind. Cmon.

How should Deathwing have died? Well for a start, if you're making a guy that big, just make the whole raid be fighting him. Don't make us fight Hagara the fucking stormbinder, an orc enhancement shaman who forgot to respec to elemental. Make us fight Deathwing for all 8 fights and when he dies, make him die somewhere cool, like right on top of the badlands or some shit. Make his body a feature of Azeroth for everyone that's killed him. THATS how you kill a big bad guy.

In conclusion, Cataclysm - MoP - WoD is like the cycle of diarrhoea. You get a bunch of wet farts and shit a little bit (Cataclysm) then you get up and think you're doing fine, (MoP) then all of a sudden stomach cramps and your arsehole turns into a torrent of shit (WoD).

Comparing Archaeology with Mining is not ignorant but quite unfair. They are very, very, very different.

Mining is a grind that doesn't add excitement to the reward. The materials you find are the same, depending on what node. And what you make with the mats is eventually gear for yourself or you sell things for money. It's a regular profession.

Archaeology has no money benefits and it's 100% personal. To see a digsite in Ashenvale that gives Night Elf fragments or a digsite in Uldum that gives TolVir fragments is a huge difference, cause Tol Vir is more rare, and you might be after that specifically. Archeology gives excitement that Mining can never offer. Not only "where is next digsite, come one give me XXX or XXX race" before you check the map, but also the actual solves.

To solve, hoping to get an epic weapon (those were quite OP early expac) or the sought after Mount or any other rare solve, brought so much excitement. It could be your 1st or 1000th solve. I didn't see this as a grind, it was too much fun and excitement.

[Piesor]

I loved Cata up until DS. That’s when I took my first break from WoW.

Same here.

Regarding the revamp of the world: Of course the overall leveling was smoother after the revamp, however I do not like many of the revamped areas.
I miss the old Darkshore and I absolutely hate the new Barrens & Stranglethorne.

Cata was the best expac regarding class specs imo. Loved almost all of them. They made it worse with every xpac imo except some few exceptions.

[Missed]

Why do you think so ill of that raid? I mean, the fact that it lasted a long time should not really be a basis to judge how well the raid was designed itself. I think almost every boss was top notch. Morchok was a decent first boss, Yorsah was really great, so was Warlord (the ping pong boss, Hagara, Ultraxion and the Tauren.

Spine was awful in pugs but fun with guilds and Madness was also decent. Mechanicwise, this raid was not bad.

I did however hate the trash before Ultraxion, but so did everyone, that's the only problem I had with DS.

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I am curious, can you give some more details why you didn't like Uldum? It's my 2nd favorite zone of all time after Vashj'ir. I love to be back in a sand area and the quests with Harrison Jones etc were great. I can't remember specifically annoying quests or anything that made me upset there. The german goblins was kind of fun, maybe a bit silly, but not to ruin it.

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You bring up a very interesting point, the fact that leveling was easy and dungeons were hard. I do realize it could be a problem for the new players.

I must agree, that this did turn out to be quite subjective for me, who at the time had raided end game in TBC and WotLK, and considered myself a good player, with little struggle with the dungeons and who hated (still do) to level up.

Hard dungeons and easy levels became PERFECT for me, but it might not have been for everyone.

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Comparing Archaeology with Mining is not ignorant but quite unfair. They are very, very, very different.

Mining is a grind that doesn't add excitement to the reward. The materials you find are the same, depending on what node. And what you make with the mats is eventually gear for yourself or you sell things for money. It's a regular profession.

Archaeology has no money benefits and it's 100% personal. To see a digsite in Ashenvale that gives Night Elf fragments or a digsite in Uldum that gives TolVir fragments is a huge difference, cause Tol Vir is more rare, and you might be after that specifically. Archeology gives excitement that Mining can never offer. Not only "where is next digsite, come one give me XXX or XXX race" before you check the map, but also the actual solves.

To solve, hoping to get an epic weapon (those were quite OP early expac) or the sought after Mount or any other rare solve, brought so much excitement. It could be your 1st or 1000th solve. I didn't see this as a grind, it was too much fun and excitement.

Sure thing.
I loved the desert feel to it. A bit too crowded in my opinion but these are personal tastes. I personally found the pop references a bit too much. I get one quest where you hint at it, maybe 2, 5 ok. Double digit numbers with a chain spanning across the whole area is too much. I really wanted that mysterious vibe to continue and develop into something massive. Not German goblins and Harrison Jones for the whole area.
Like most of cata quests including old world, it felt silly to me, and still does.

[Battlebeard]

Cataclysm was a lot like WoD.
I liked it, but it was't finished.

I tend to agree to a certain degree. Mostly in the raid department. I said in the first post that I liked the raids, but there could have been more of them.

To have a water raid same time as Fireland was a plan, and it could have been a cool idea, one Water, one Fire, kind of the opposites. Sadly that raid was scrapped and it's a shame. But other than the raids, I felt the expansion was kind of finished, I didn't felt it lacked much other than in the number of raids department.

[Craaazyyy]

there are alot of things to love about Cata:


class design in general for most classes was super good.. even tho i didnt like some things like giving dispel to every healer

early dungeons were amazing

t11 was amazing and would've been the best raiding tier ever for me if not for multiple super annoying bugs

new cata zones were really good outside of twilight highlands and vashjir(i hated that zone), deepholm and uldum are one of the best zones ever

world revamp felt super fresh and it was needed(the quests could've been better tho)

dailies were super fun paired up with cool achievements.. especially firelands dailies

Ragnaros is one of the best, if not the best, bosses ever

new spells they introduced in cata were for the most part super cool



ofc there were some bad things:

flying in Azeroth

a year of Dragon Soul

only 3 raid tiers

class balance(especially in pvp when some classes were just abandoned and were bad for the whole expansion like resto druids, or how some classes like warriors were nerfed after first patch and never got good again)

legendaries and broken trinkets in pvp

broken arena mmr(basically mmr reset mid season in both s10 and s11)

introduction of lfr.. all the top guild bans in lfr


for me personally cata was the 2nd best expansion ever after wrath, slightly ahead of tbc.. i can love it only for class design tbh it was super fun to play ever class i've played(and i've played all of them but rogue and i heard rogues were fun too).. even if everything else was bad i'd still love cata

[Deleted]

Cata was disjointed. I am glad that it refined the old world, but all that focus on the revamp meant less focus on end-game.

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Cataclysm was a lot like WoD.
I liked it, but it was't finished.

Yup, that was the problem they had. I still love WoD. The continent, the garrison, Ashran. I liked it. I wanted to flesh that world out more. But, the pooch got spilled with the timing of the movie and they just cancelled it and moved on to grind central-Legion.

[sam86]

This guy is the reason why Wow became what it is today in term of difficulty. Casual and too easy! What's the purpose of dungeons if you can do it solo mode? Anyways, too many thinks that way and destroyed all kind of challenges that makes Wow satisfying and rewarding! Still a great game but not the game it used to be! The reason why soo many ask for vanilla.

BTW I'm also a healer and I looooved the challenge back in Vanilla, TBC and also pre nerf CATA. Today, I barely have to heal and I dont have any chance to run out of mana... What a challenge!

u 'barely' had to heal ? sorry did u run only lfg dungeons in late wrath ? there is massive difference between having a hard boss, and trash that 1 shot u
if we take wrath example - the best model by proven numbers of subs - wrath has some of hardest bosses that stayed up for way too long, like LK for example, u can youtube if u wish check healers mana and u'll find that it drops way too low, but it wasn't 'unfair' or 'cheating', in cata, u get that from trash mobs, stonecore has many mobs packed together, u get bleed as physical dps, magical enjoy being frozen for 5 sec (or try reflect a dot, as healer that's out of option), let's not forget that even IF no one does a single mistake, u still oom and everyone die, one time in tol barad i mana burned a druid twice, he left the bg, just 1 mana burn removed his ability to heal, a class that wasn't known to oom without using urgent heals
when every single fight turns to 'LK' status for healer it isn't fun at all, and 'this guy' is the majority since that day wow started decline and never recovered from it