What is Cataclysm’s legacy?

[Lime]

The first bad expansion.

[Gnosk]

I'm surprised to see people talking negative about dragon soul. I really enjoyed raiding it and firelands. Cata is one of my favourite expansions. It would have taken a lot of work to revamp classic wow but it was a welcome change. WoW classic questing was terrible and poorly thought out, you would go from green/yellow quests to red quests and the rewards were terrible and usually had no useful stats.

I really enjoyed those last 3 5man dungeons they added, nice rewards and a lot of fun to do and actually had lore to the main story. These days I do not follow any lore as it's all over the place and never seems to be 1 main bad guy any more.

[Marrilaife]

I've been playing strait from TBC to BfA, still currently subbed, and have been a Mage the whole time. This is the was the first time I got the chance to be "the special one".

Also played for 13 years or so, unfortunately never had a chance to be "the special one" so as I said, can't just be excited for specific raid because "it gave me legendary" because none did.

Not even mentioning how Blizzard handles my main spec in the raids, that basically every tank except Paladin and Demon Hunter had a raid tier where they shined, often multiple times, while Paladin bounces between "second best" in best case scenario to "absolute worst" in worst case scenario. I think the last time my spec was having 5 mins of fame was somewhere back in wotlk where ardent defender was a passive cheat death... that paladins lost over time meanwhile DKs gained it.

Nah, if I ever had to judge raid enjoyment by how Blizzard treated my main character, I wouldn't be able to enjoy the game at all. And it's really hard to keep it up when half the timespan of the last 2 expansions my spec was basically pushed out of mythic raiding (TOS, Uldir and EP have been the worst).

I don't blame you for enjoying Firelands for the leggo staff, I'm just saying I can't share this experience, and tbh I'm not sure if majority of people were actually praising Firelands because they obtained the legendary (even if you were the "correct" class often there was more candidates than time to grind it for everyone). While I've heard this sentiment a lot "Firelands = good, Dragon Soul = bad".

Personally I enjoyed Blackwing Descent much more, I disliked Firelands both due to the "overwhelmingly orange" visuals (yeah I know fire theme, but that lacks any point to create variety), and the difficulty curve that was off, similar to BODA - end boss was a huge step up while everything before him was fairly linear difficulty with not that many hard bumps.

Transmog wise, actually Paladin set was good, but annoying that you couldn't get a matching belt to heroic set - only normal from the rep vendor. On the other hand, not every class was so lucky. I think Druid one was the worst, with both other Cata sets being better, and the one from Bastion of Twilight / Blackwing Descent being one of the most commonly used Druid transmogs to this day (especially the shoulders).

I get that somebody did not like it, seeing it as a removal of content, but it really did improve alot of things from clearly bad to clearly good. Having zones with less than 10 quests was bad, having zones with no purpose or story was bad, and actually updating the story of the world to current time was amazing.

Adding more quests / modernizing questlines so you don't spend more time running from point a to b, than actually completing quest objectives, was great.

What was shit is making several shared zones Horde-only or giving big swaths of existing zones to the Horde while deleting Alliance vendors, hubs and questlines.

I'm gonna miss old Southshore, Silverwind Refuge, Alterac and Azshara forever. Theramore at least can still be phased and quested in, but the rest is gone. Together with several rare recipe vendors and whatnot.

Also a lot of old iconic questlines got deleted because they didn't fit into "1 sub zone" category or due to changes to timeline. Well at least now people can relive these on Classic, however I'm personally not much into Classic due to the old philosophy where some classes were only meant to be healers or supports. I'm just too entrenched in the modern idea that prot pala, boomkin or ele shaman is meant to be a proper spec.

- - - Updated - - -

The ultimate legacy is breaking zones that, to new players, seem to be broken for no reason. It’s a badly dated expansion “feature” that makes no sense in today’s game. You still have very broken “Who’s the war chief?” Zone by zone.

I imagine they'll try to fix it with Shadowlands and the "Chromie timetravel" options informing players they're in fact going into the past.

[Caerule]

I quite enjoyed Cataclysm. It built upon the existing lore, filled in the gaps on the map, and gave everything a much-needed update. Transmog is great. Flying in the Old World. The themes. Deathwing nuking random zones.

There's only two things that color it darker to me. The very long time of Dragon Soul, which was a mediocre raid that recycled old boss models.
The story had flaws. Such as reducing Deathwing to rampaging monster only, rather than plotting genius. Cho'gall was used well to fill the plotting genius role. But they killed him of, first raid. Then had no one fill his shoes. It left the expansion without a compelling face. Ragnaros kept people's interest for a while. And offered a visual spectacle in what they built around him. But even that just showed how weak Deathwing was made on the scale of compelling foe, in contrast.

I suppose how Blizzard tends to take feedback, played a part in it. The Lich King had been omnipresent. In your face the entire time, doing his plots. Based on feedback of some, Blizzard probably course-corrected Deathwing the other way, away from personal interaction with the player. That they made him a human form seems to indicate they indeed changed plans on that one. But it was a bad direction to take. He could have really used the compelling story, surroundings and side-bosses that make other epic expansion bosses so enjoyable.

[Aruhen]

To me Cataclysm will always be special because that's when some of my irl friends decided to finally give the game a try. Before that I just played with people I only knew online so it was really fun just hanging out and helping them with things. On top of that the launch end game content for Cataclysm was really fun in my eyes with the dungeons and raids. Its honestly the last time I genuinely had fun with the end game in WoW that I've tried to reignite but I just cant with how the modern game works.

Of course I have things I hated about it. The whole pug scene that Wrath created was honestly sorta fun to do with alts on the side after your guild raids. This whole scene was almost entirely killed in Cataclysm and honestly to this day its still not even close to how it was in Wrath.

As for the legacy it'll be remembered by probably the world change. Transmog would be higher up but I don't think many people associate Cataclysm and tmog to the same extent they do with the world change.

[goukix]

Never a fan of content removed from the game. Leave the choice of whether or not content is relevant in the hands of the players. You can phase zones, let us pick.

[Melsiren]

Other: Transmog.

[oplawlz]

It's the first subtractive expansion and heralded a downward trend for WoW. That said, I certainly liked some of the features it added, like transmog and archaeology(before they ruined it).

[Kallisto]

I enjoyed Rift. I thought it was underrated and got a lot of undeserved hate. It was certainly way better than Cataclysm.

Yeah but when you're advertising with "We're not in Azeroth anymore." you can't just be good, you have to be special (This is from someone that loved rift all the way up until you killed Regulos in the first expansion.)

[Lollis]

The beginning of classes becoming specs when the talent tree was mutilated.

[Slybak]

The Good
- Transmog
- Goblins/Worgen
- Guild leveling and perks; honestly one of the few reasons guilds are still relevant for most players, and I'm still baffled as to why it was never built on in future expansions
- Archaeology was fun for a while
- Probably the biggest engine updates (DX11 support, 64 bit client, etc) since Vanilla
- Putting dungeon quests inside the dungeon
- Story-wise, first expansion that took us out of the immediate context of Warcraft 3.

The Bad
- Reforging; really just a patchwork that failed to address a lot of "stat creep" and opaque mechanics like Expertise that were continually added to the game since Vanilla and really just needed to be culled.

The Mixed
- Class overhaul. Some of the changes were very much needed as well as removal of a lot of bloat, but Cata was probably where the spec differentiation started going into overdrive.
- Old World Revamp: Made the world overall prettier and allowed for flying, but resulted in a lot of narrative dissonance (i.e. "Who's My Warchief?") that has persisted to this day.
- LFR

[Enthusiastic Steward]

Everything in the game I currently dislike had their seeds sown in Cataclysm.

[Halicia]

Everything in the game I currently dislike had their seeds sown in Cataclysm.

I'd have to agree wholeheartedly with this, but not so much for anything they really did "in game", so much as it made me question why I was dumping money on a monthly subscription when Blizzard stopped doing any sort of development on the expansion after it launched.

I was cool with them re-using Naxx for Wrath, but good god... all Cata gave post-launch was 2 recycled dungeons, 3 new dungeons, and a poorly cobbled together raid of recycled zones culminating in an end-boss almost directly ripped off from Rift. If you're going to recycle content and sacrifice quality, at least get the quantity to make up for the deficits. (For those that forgot, Firelands was a "launch raid" that got delayed when Blizzard realized they didn't have any content in the pipeline post-launch or the funds to start developing content)

[Manariel]

Breaking the world. Almost all Alliance leveling zone are unfinished and in the Eastern Kingdom they almost always end worse than they started. It's truly unsufferable when leveling alts, you have to devote a lot of time to chart the least miserable gaming experience you'll have, which usually imply questing in the least revamped zones or making use of the new leveling changes to get out of the old world by almost never moving to the 40+ zones.

[Lane]

Yeah but when you're advertising with "We're not in Azeroth anymore." you can't just be good, you have to be special (This is from someone that loved rift all the way up until you killed Regulos in the first expansion.)

I think people just like to trash any MMO that isn't WoW even when that MMO does things better. Rift's main weakness from my point of view is their questing experience didn't offer anything different (and the lore was subjectively weak). Otherwise, I thought it was superior to what WoW offered at the time.

When I saw Torghast my first thought was Blizzard finally decided to add Chronicles to the game that Rift had 8 years ago. :P

What was shit is making several shared zones Horde-only or giving big swaths of existing zones to the Horde while deleting Alliance vendors, hubs and questlines.

Yes. -_-

[Beuargh]

transmog.

what's up with that shit poll? good, bad, this is your opinion.... you give the 2 options for lfr but "breaking the world" can only be bad and revamping the lvling can only be good ? that's bullshit. same with dragonsoul and fireland.... I think fireland was terrible. the questing zone, the raid, it was terrible...

[korijenkins]

I will always thank Cataclysm for bringing Transmog into the game. Still one of the best features in WoW.

If only Blizzard didn't get lazy after it was added and start making poopoo sets. It was almost as if they were phoning it in for gear design with the mentality of "if you don't like it, tmog"

[Soon-TM]

If only Blizzard didn't get lazy after it was added and start making poopoo sets. It was almost as if they were phoning it in for gear design with the mentality of "if you don't like it, tmog"

Cata gear was horrible imo, but Pandaria, WoD and especially Legion sets have been quite neat. Now, BfA... /shiver

[TJ]

Revamp is always going to be the main thing it's remembered for. I actually loved Cataclysm and played like a maniac for the whole expac. DS dragged on for too long, but Firelands and the first tier were really good. Transmog is also one of my favourite things ever added to WoW.

[Drusin]

Voted breaking the world. I will always remember cata as the expansion that took away a ton of stuff from zones