Why is BFA hated ?

[WingsofLiberty]

Honestly, I feel like, conceptually, BFA was quite good. They put a lot of effort in it and that's easily proven (we had 4 full patches instead of 2, see WOD).

The huge problem though are the insane levels of grind and time-gating which served no purpose apart from filling Blizzard's pockets:
- dailies giving 50/75 rep
- honor level grind with no actual rewards (it takes 4 times the honor than it did in legion to reach the max prestige level)
- visions time-gated to 3/4 per week
- island expeditions are incredibly boring (apart from pvp ones, I'll give them that) and their sole purpose is to have the players grind them for the mounts
- corruption is even worse than tf when it comes to rewarding you for grinding them out

Now, it had other issues, but those were present in other expansions as well:
- insane level of stat inflation (we have like 8-10x more dps/health than we did at the beginning)
- weird class balance (seriously, every single class has like 5 heals, 5 absorbs now...)
- troubled story

[ClassicPeon]

Honestly, I feel like, conceptually, BFA was quite good. They put a lot of effort in it and that's easily proven (we had 4 full patches instead of 2, see WOD).

The huge problem though are the insane levels of grind and time-gating which served no purpose apart from filling Blizzard's pockets:
- dailies giving 50/75 rep
- honor level grind with no actual rewards (it takes 4 times the honor than it did in legion to reach the max prestige level)
- visions time-gated to 3/4 per week
- island expeditions are incredibly boring (apart from pvp ones, I'll give them that) and their sole purpose is to have the players grind them for the mounts
- corruption is even worse than tf when it comes to rewarding you for grinding them out

Now, it had other issues, but those were present in other expansions as well:
- insane level of stat inflation (we have like 8-10x more dps/health than we did at the beginning)
- weird class balance (seriously, every single class has like 5 heals, 5 absorbs now...)
- troubled story

Disagree with your main point.

You are comparing 4 patches with relatively little content to the worst expansion in wows history in terms of content.

Look at balance, nyalotha in general, the cinematics we got in the end, corruption and azerite and how it was worked on. The alpha in itself. There where so many half assed things with BFA thats its actually insane

[Tic Tacs]

I enjoyed this expansion way more than Legion, that said... random lag spikes in daily zones and mindless M+ grind to raid endgame content were things I didn't enjoy.

[Dommie530]

I enjoyed this expansion way more than Legion, that said... random lag spikes in daily zones and mindless M+ grind to raid endgame content were things I didn't enjoy.

Personally having played through 15 years of content, my personal worst expansion will forever be legion as legion paved a new way for the game like cata did back then to, but legion i dindt like the way they went with endless systems with endless rewards thrown at you. I think thats realt unhealthy

[Raelbo]

Just because I really, really hate the "vocal minority" bullshit argument:

If you are going that route no feedback ever at any point has any value. No matter if it positive or negative feedback, no matter if Blizzard asked for it or not, no matter if it is constructive or not. The moment say "the vocal people are just a tiny fraction, they don't matter", you invalidate all feedback and communication between the developers and the community. If you say "the loudest opinion is worthless", all opinions are worthless.

I never said anything remotely like "No feedback ever at any point has any value" on the basis of it being a minority.

What I am saying is that just because it appears that a certain opinion is popular on some forum means very little in and of itself. People need to stop using this "everyone knows this is bad so it must be bad" bullshit as a crutch to avoid applying critical thinking to their arguments.

And there are certain regular offending themes (with the usual suspects who champion them) that are totally guilty of doing this - where the argument is thin, but the opinions are loud. That kind of feedback has no value whatsoever. Worse yet, it just makes noise that drowns out other, worthier feedback.

[Accendor]

I never said anything remotely like "No feedback ever at any point has any value" on the basis of it being a minority.

What I am saying is that just because it appears that a certain opinion is popular on some forum means very little in and of itself. People need to stop using this "everyone knows this is bad so it must be bad" bullshit as a crutch to avoid applying critical thinking to their arguments.

And there are certain regular offending themes (with the usual suspects who champion them) that are totally guilty of doing this - where the argument is thin, but the opinions are loud. That kind of feedback has no value whatsoever. Worse yet, it just makes noise that drowns out other, worthier feedback.

And yet again you fail to understand the point. If it manages to drown out other feedback, the other feedback is not "worthier" or anything. On the contrary, it is way less useful. Way? Because if more people would agree with it also more vocal people would agree with it. Those people exist for EVERY topic. Of course they are louder if there is more of them, but if there is more of them this means that also more people share this opinion.

It does not matter if this opinion is good or bad or the game in the end. If the developers ask for feedback and the majority of people that speak out are against a feature, it makes total sense to remove or change it. If this would not be the result of getting this feedback, then why ask for feedback at all?
Again, I really disagree with the "loud opinion" in a lot of points (Legiondaries, AP system, warforging for example) but your attitude to this topic means that no feedback ever matters.

- - - Updated - - -

But it's true, vast majority of opinions are useless unless queried at least a quarter of playerbase.
I dont like that - Is not a constructive argument
You have to grind that - Is not a constructive argument, you always had some kind of grind

For example when people screamed "account wide essences". That was a dumb idea. Blizzard acknowledged the problem but the real problem - you had to farm previous content that nobody else wanted to do again. They made a perfect solution to real problem. But community went pants on head retarded.

First of all you need to acknowledge this is blizzard game, and they are doing it according to their vision. They are in no obligation to cater to any or even all players.
Community very rarely presents valuable feedback. And because there is so much garbage feedback it's kinda hard for them to fish out the good ones.

You too fail to understand this: Blizzard is ASKING for feedback. It does not matter if the vast majority of the feedback they receive is bullshit or if it only consists of "I don't like it", because this is true for EVERY FEATURE in the game and for ALL feedback they ever get.
The only difference is the noise that a specific topic makes. The more people have a problem with something, the more loud people will have a problem with it and thus complain.

[Raelbo]

And yet again you fail to understand the point.

Awesome. I was trying to clarify what I meant because you were the one who failed to understand my point. But yeah, clearly I must be failing to understand my own point.

PS: Stop telling people they "fail". Work on your own comprehension, and try to be more clear if you think people aren't understanding you.

If it manages to drown out other feedback, the other feedback is not "worthier" or anything.

Simple logic: If an opinion is very loud, it drowns out most other feedback. If an opinion is loud and shit, then at least some of the other feedback it drowns out is going to be more worthy.

On the contrary, it is way less useful. Way? Because if more people would agree with it also more vocal people would agree with it.

You seem to be conflating popularity with merit. My experience is that loud and obnoxious people can be very convincing even if they're full of shit. Hell there is an entire science devoted to this. It's called politics.

Those people exist for EVERY topic. Of course they are louder if there is more of them, but if there is more of them this means that also more people share this opinion.

No, it does not mean that. The number of people expressing a certain viewpoint on a forum is a completely unreliable indicator of how well represented that opinion is in the game itself. It's a huge problem with pretty much all forms of social media that people assume that opinions prevalent on those platforms are representative of the population at large, when in reality, this is very often not the case.

A forum like MMO-C is going to attract a certain type of person, who is more likely to hold a certain opinion than the "average" player. What I am saying is that if you want to participate in a such a forum, you need to be careful about what assumptions you make based on perceived popular opinion and rather focus on the substance of the arguments people are making.

It does not matter if this opinion is good or bad or the game in the end. If the developers ask for feedback and the majority of people that speak out are against a feature, it makes total sense to remove or change it.

That is utterly nonsensical unless there is good reason to believe that the feedback received is representative of the playerbase at large.

By way of example: Look at what happened with Flying in WoD. The consensus on the official forums seemed to be that players in general were in favour of no flying because in all the threads on the subject, most of the people writing were opposed to flying. So Ion made a grand announcement that there would be no flying in Draenor, expecting this announcement to be met with enthusiasm and joy. What they got was the complete opposite and 2 weeks later they announced that they had done a complete 180 and came up with Pathfinder.

You see, up until WoD they had always brought out flying. So all the players simply assumed that this would continue to be the case in WoD. What this means is that the players opposed to flying felt they needed to lobby for their viewpoint, while the pro-flying crowd felt there was no reason to contribute. It was only when Blizzard announced their shocking plans that suddenly the pro-flyers felt the need to express their opinion, and it became immediately clear that a lot more people were pro-flying than anti-flying.

If this would not be the result of getting this feedback, then why ask for feedback at all?

Because quality feedback is very useful.

It's the same principle as sifting through tons and tons of crushed ore to find a diamond. Most of the feedback is not going to be useful, but if they can sift through the piles of crap, there will be some really useful gems hidden in there.

Again, I really disagree with the "loud opinion" in a lot of points (Legiondaries, AP system, warforging for example) but your attitude to this topic means that no feedback ever matters.

Again, no, that is not my attitude at all. Why are you insisting on trying to tell me what my attitude is even after I have told you that you are incorrect on this?

In short: I am arguing for quality over quantity.

[Recovery]

Agreed about wotlk. It was overall, an excellent expansion that needed tuning and never really got it (at least not in the right direction). It seemed to be far more liked in the first half. It was a strange expansion being that during its beginning it really didn't seem push over easy. Certainly not as difficult as TBC heroics or raids, but it still had some challenge to it. After a while however, it started showing signs of being too easy heroic wise and in some other areas. I recall this being the period of when the first hint of "dungeon rush" started to show its ugly head. We didn't notice it as much or come to full realization of what was happening at the time. We were involved in an expansion that had, for the most part, very high production value.

Well, also, at that time, people were generally getting a lot better at the game. Min maxing was becoming very popular. People were understanding their classes and rotational abilities a lot better. IDK if the issue is so much that the game got significantly easier or if players got significantly better. In wrath, i guess the dungeons didnt require quite as much CC and interrupting abilities... But an expansion that did.... like cata, wasnt any more difficult in my opinion. The players who were good knew they had to interrupt and cc anyway.. I didnt have a problem with it. Also, those dungeons were really only slightly more difficult for a week or 2 and then (like all other dungeons in every expasnion) people steam rolled them with some gear..

Wrath was by far the best the game has ever been, even with its hiccups. Every aspect of the game, in my opinion, was better than anything we've had since. I really enjoyed Cata.. I dont understand where all the cata hate in the community comes from.. Maybe its nostalgia due to the community i was a part of at that time, more so than the actual game.. Im not sure.

- - - Updated - - -

So you're essentially repeating what I said, just in different words

First, Blizzard took longer to drop cata - yes thats why we had said content drought of ICC and the joke raid.

Second, the dungeons. Easier, thats exactly what the "problem" was. The hate came as a result of the wrath ones being easier. Pick your poison, on launch or end of expac makes no difference. It made people lax, the average skill level dropped in pugs and people generally became of the mindset tank and spank was acceptable for any dungeon at any level. This is the mentality they went into cata with and they got slapped across the face. The majority of the player base at the time decided to place the blame on wraths systems, not themselves for getting sloppy. When you couple that with frustrations and anger its a breeding ground for hate and it will be directed at the external source. In this case the expansion. Example mentality "Wrath broke everything, everything is so hard now"

I'm not saying the hate is justified, I'm not saying it's correct, good thing or that its persisted. I'm just telling you; at the start of cata; the hate for wrath was most likely at its peak, essentially because the player base got spoon fed everything and cataclysm leveling alone, brought the difficulty back.

As for the expansion itself, I find it a tied 2nd place for my favorite expansions. Like I said to another person, I'm not tell you my preference of the expansion I'm just pointing out where the negative spawned from. You need only go back on these and the official forums towards the end of wrath and start of cataclysm to see what I'm talking about

Cataclysm leveling was difficult? Are you kidding me? I literally had every class at 85 (except DK cause i was still bitter) by like 2 months in.. lmao. Easiest leveling wow has EVER had. BY FAR. Im guessing the hate youre speaking of on forums and wherever else, came from the extreme casuals of that time who were able to make some progress in wrath because trivial content was trivial. Its crazy.. I remember people being extremely happy that Cata dungeons were a bit more difficult.. I remember my friends saying: "oh wow, i actually have to interrupt mobs? amazing", "oh we cant pull all 10 of these and kill them? we have to sheep something? Awesome" etc.
If people were complaining about dungeon complexity... lol i dont even know what to say... especially if they were blaming their bitterness on a past expansion.

[FuxieDK]

I remember a time where Wrath of the Lich King was the WORST EXPANSION EVER.

Isn't it still?

[Raelbo]

Well, also, at that time, people were generally getting a lot better at the game. Min maxing was becoming very popular. People were understanding their classes and rotational abilities a lot better. IDK if the issue is so much that the game got significantly easier or if players got significantly better.

I would argue that WotLK started to make content more accessible, which meant a lot more people were doing the content, which meant that people started to get a lot better.

In wrath, i guess the dungeons didnt require quite as much CC and interrupting abilities... But an expansion that did.... like cata, wasnt any more difficult in my opinion. The players who were good knew they had to interrupt and cc anyway.. I didnt have a problem with it. Also, those dungeons were really only slightly more difficult for a week or 2 and then (like all other dungeons in every expasnion) people steam rolled them with some gear..

Cata dungeons were a lot harder than WotLK dungeons and this was particularly evident in LFD. And no, people didn't start steamrolling them after 2 weeks because of gear, it was because they got hit with the nerf bat after 2 weeks.

Wrath was by far the best the game has ever been, even with its hiccups. Every aspect of the game, in my opinion, was better than anything we've had since. I really enjoyed Cata.. I dont understand where all the cata hate in the community comes from.. Maybe its nostalgia due to the community i was a part of at that time, more so than the actual game.. Im not sure.

I agree that Wrath was excellent. And even though I think the game has improved technically in a huge number of ways since, that doesn't detract from WotLK being what it needed to be at the time. It had a particularly strong theme, story and setting, and it was the first time that the game became properly accessible to the majority of players.

I also enjoyed Cata a lot, but I think it suffered from being a lot more disjointed than Wrath, and it definitely had less new content because a significant chunk of the development effort went into redoing the old world. They did a good job of it (the world revamp), but it was largely lost on most players. And the final raid was somewhat of a let down - I thought that all the fights were good, it just felt like the raid was too short, and we didn't get to fight Deathwing properly.

[cface]

I have 2 friends that came back to BFA cause of the corona, and these are guys with job and families, but although they are casual, they still can complete atleast 15 keys. It's just that they log on, and feel they have to do mechagon/nazjatar/uldum/vale AND vision(massive timesink) to get their essences to not feel so far behind. After they have done this, they barely have time for a key or two. Now they just lost ALL motivation to log on.

In Legion, the same thing happened, they came back after skipping all of Legion, and they had no problem getting their weapon upgrades and legendaries very fast, and you could do it WHILE playing m+.

In BFA, most of the stuff you do, you gotta do more or less solo, which is not a MMO worthy. I wish you could also get all that stuff while doing m+, so we could enjoy challenging content together AND get our stuff done.

[Recovery]

I would argue that WotLK started to make content more accessible, which meant a lot more people were doing the content, which meant that people started to get a lot better.



Cata dungeons were a lot harder than WotLK dungeons and this was particularly evident in LFD. And no, people didn't start steamrolling them after 2 weeks because of gear, it was because they got hit with the nerf bat after 2 weeks.



I agree that Wrath was excellent. And even though I think the game has improved technically in a huge number of ways since, that doesn't detract from WotLK being what it needed to be at the time. It had a particularly strong theme, story and setting, and it was the first time that the game became properly accessible to the majority of players.

I also enjoyed Cata a lot, but I think it suffered from being a lot more disjointed than Wrath, and it definitely had less new content because a significant chunk of the development effort went into redoing the old world. They did a good job of it (the world revamp), but it was largely lost on most players. And the final raid was somewhat of a let down - I thought that all the fights were good, it just felt like the raid was too short, and we didn't get to fight Deathwing properly.

Ehh.. dungeon finder wasnt added until 3.3. Wotlk was hugely successful and amazing before that point. lol. I dont think accessibility added by LFD had a lot to do with it. It was just a system that removed the need to travel to a dungeon and ultimately destroyed the games need for a close nit community.

I dont understand where you get that cata had less content. lol. It literally released with 2 full raids. lmao. You may have just not taken part in all the content that there was.

[Zantera]

Ehh.. dungeon finder wasnt added until 3.3. Wotlk was hugely successful and amazing before that point. lol. I dont think accessibility added by LFD had a lot to do with it. It was just a system that removed the need to travel to a dungeon and ultimately destroyed the games need for a close nit community.

I dont understand where you get that cata had less content. lol. It literally released with 2 full raids. lmao. You may have just not taken part in all the content that there was.

Cata had a lot of content when you boil it down but the revamp of the 1-60 leveling zones and adding flying into those zones was definitely a massive undertaking and a big chunk of Cata's selling point. I can definitely see why people have their grievances with it as a result. I really appreciate what Cata did overall to the game, but I also think if you weren't leveling alts at the time and only focusing on the max level stuff, it did feel a bit more bare bones than TBC and WotLK. But I think also the introduction of LFR and Dragon Soul being a bit mixed reception is definitely what casts a large shadow over Cata.

I think generally an expansion will often be remembered for its end tier and how that was received. As for lack of content, Cata was the most spread out expansion with 1 zone here, 1 zone there and I think that gives a perception that there's less content.

[Raelbo]

Ehh.. dungeon finder wasnt added until 3.3. Wotlk was hugely successful and amazing before that point. lol. I dont think accessibility added by LFD had a lot to do with it.

I said it started to make content more accessible. I didn't say anything about LFD. WotLK dungeons were designed with a more casual player in mind: They were far more forgiving than TBC dungeons and required less co-ordination between players. And the raids were definitely a lot more accessible with different modes to cater for different skill levels. On top of that, WotLK got rid of long and arduous attunements, and also introduced catch up mechanisms which means that guilds were able to participate in all the raid tiers, where in TBC, the vast majority of guilds got permanently stuck on a lower tier and unable to progress because of the amount of work it entailed trying to gear up new raiders needed to replace those poached by better guilds.

It was just a system that removed the need to travel to a dungeon and ultimately destroyed the games need for a close nit community.

Or maybe LFD was an obvious response to the lack of a close-knit community....

I dont understand where you get that cata had less content. lol. It literally released with 2 full raids. lmao. You may have just not taken part in all the content that there was.

Maybe if you stopped trying to be so condescending and started applying a bit of critical thinking you'd realise that you're making yourself look foolish. Cata's initial raids added up to 13 bosses. Wrath opened with 17. Cata then proceeded to Firelands, which was an awesome raid, but literally half the size of Ulduar (7 vs 14). Cata then finished with an 8 boss raid compared to wrath doing Trial of the Crusader(5), ICC (12) and Ruby Sanctum (1).

Look, I liked Cataclysm, and I enjoyed the content, but the fact that it was light on content compared to the expansions preceding and succeeding it is a valid criticism.

[Headayke]

Broken systems to fix broken systems to fix broken systems. You need the HoA, then you need essences for it, then you gotta get corrupted and only now are half of the classes either only slightly better or on par with the same power level as they were at Legion while the rest feel worse.

The content is dull and having the only fun part, allied races forced behind reputation gating is awfully executed. Throwing any characters under the bus, ignoring obviously more important stories while never once revealing what is actually going on with the overall expansion aside from new trolls and new humans are at war and discovered Nazjatar which led to everyone finding an old god that was killed super simply by shooting a laser beam. End.

[Celestraza]

How can people claim WotLK was a bad x-pac. It is pretty much agreed on that Ulduar was one of the best raids ever in WoW. Class design was so good. ArP was an amazing fun stat. That x-pac had so many goodies.

I played more WoD than BfA. Ashran was very enjoyable where I spent much time and class design was good enough for most classes which kept me engaged at least. I can't even bring myself to play BfA since Battle for Dazar'alor.

[Kalisandra]

I just haven't felt it much at all. I've probably quit and come back like 3 times just in the last year alone.

Likewise. This alone makes it worse than Legion, where I slacked off for a couple of months before broken shore dropped out of boredom and irritation at how long it took for flight to be made available. And worse than WoD in this respect too - for the first time ever I dropped my sub of WoW in WoD for a couple of months before Taanan in protest of their unwillingness to introduce flight and the way they kept saying "We can turn it on whenever, so if/when the time is right". It became obvious that actually they had no real intention of allowing flight, and when they did relent after a lot of yelling, it was apparent that they'd actually decided not to allow it and thus had never finished Taanan properly and thus its release was delayed while they flight-proofed it.

However, once they got their heads out and sorted it, Taanan was okay. Not great, but okay, and the raid was decent (but we were in it way too long, as usual).

The thing is, I'm so unhappy with WoW now that I guy time month by month rather than having a rolling sub, and the only reason I've put time into it recently is that I've had lots of time (COVID-19 to thank for that) and so have a lot of old guildies not seen for years, so it's been a bit of a reunion.

[Zantera]

How can people claim WotLK was a bad x-pac. It is pretty much agreed on that Ulduar was one of the best raids ever in WoW. Class design was so good. ArP was an amazing fun stat. That x-pac had so many goodies.

I played more WoD than BfA. Ashran was very enjoyable where I spent much time and class design was good enough for most classes which kept me engaged at least. I can't even bring myself to play BfA since Battle for Dazar'alor.

Ulduar was amazing yes but that's 1 tier of raiding and it doesn't compensate for the rest being crap. While I think Wotlk is a better xpac than WoD for example, just based on raids alone I'd easily take WoD over Wotlk as I enjoyed all the raids in that xpac VS 1 of the raids in Wotlk. Personally I rate Wotlk close to the bottom because I did not like the raids (other than Ulduar), I did not care for the dungeons much and the daily quest hubs like Argent Tournament felt bad compared to Isle of Quel'Danas for example. I know other people dislike it for being the start of 'casual Warcraft' when they started making many things a lot simpler. I don't really mind that necessarily myself, but epics were easier to obtain, LFD was introduced, raids felt a lot more puggable than before etc.

[Kathranis]

In a nutshell, it launched with half-baked systems and the war campaign story pretty much sucked. And for some people, the design of certain specs was bad and killed their enjoyment.

If it launched in the state it was by 8.2, with the improved Azerite Traits and Essences, I think it would have been received far better. 8.2~8.3 is a much better game than 8.0~8.1.5 was.

[Kalisandra]

Well, also, at that time, people were generally getting a lot better at the game. Min maxing was becoming very popular. People were understanding their classes and rotational abilities a lot better. IDK if the issue is so much that the game got significantly easier or if players got significantly better. In wrath, i guess the dungeons didnt require quite as much CC and interrupting abilities... But an expansion that did.... like cata, wasnt any more difficult in my opinion.

Wrath's heroics didn't need the insane amounts of CC that BC's did, largely because of the 'bring the player' philosophy meaning that you couldn't assume that a heroic 5-man group would have at least two mages/hunters/rogues to CC the hell out of it. They still needed a fair number of kicks though, which did mean having classes that could interrupt, or working round the lack by having pallies stun stuff as an 'interrupt' and then burning it down before it could cast again (which didn't work on bosses, of course).

The thing that made LK heroics 'easy' (they weren't really until Tier 8 (Ulduar) was that even Naxx had two tiers of gear, and Ulduar had 2-1/2 (allowing for hard modes), and the heroics were tuned to do doable without needing even full Naxx-10 gear. BC heroics, when they were new were sometimes rougher than Kara, and rewarded worse gear. The end result was that by the time TotC came along the original LC heroics were as badly out-geared as BC heroics were by people in full sunwell gear, and hadn't been tuned as hard to start with. Also, those LK dungeons that were hard were mostly hard in ways that gear would fix, whereas BC dungeons were hard in ways that it took a lot of gear to fix, like pulls that unless they were cc'd properly would have you running all over the dungeon in fear, and so on.

Wrath was by far the best the game has ever been, even with its hiccups. Every aspect of the game, in my opinion, was better than anything we've had since. I really enjoyed Cata.. I dont understand where all the cata hate in the community comes from.. Maybe its nostalgia due to the community i was a part of at that time, more so than the actual game.. Im not sure.

I suspect it has a lot to do with the class you played, and the guild you were in.

Early Cata raids were a lot rougher to get into than early LK raids, and because they decided 10 and 25 man would be worth the same, with the same loot, they tuned the 10 mans higher than they had been in LK. In fact, they tuned some of the fights harder than they were for 25 man raids. Also, they made the lockouts shared. This made things a lot harder for smaller and more casual guilds, and the shared lockouts made alt raids harder to do and pretty much killed the PUG raid communities on many servers. So what sort of guild you were in would colour your memory of (early) Cata. Dragon soul and LFR finished the killing of PUG raid groups.

Then there was what class(es) you played. The first tier of raids were not melee friendly. The class balance was terrible. Some specs plain didn't work. This was fixed, but the first tier wasn't a lot of fun for Ret Pallies (and Holy had issues too), and Shamans.

Cataclysm leveling was difficult? Are you kidding me? I literally had every class at 85 (except DK cause i was still bitter) by like 2 months in.. lmao. Easiest leveling wow has EVER had. BY FAR.

The first toon I levelled in Cata was (as always) my Paladin. At the middle of the levelling I moved to Vashj'ir (so the second starting zone) and swapped to Prot because Ret was proving so slow. My next was my Elemental Shaman, which was better. I didn't level my other alts until Firelands, and by then things had been greatly cleaned up and it wasn't so bad, but those first two were awful. The best levelling I've seen was WoD.

Im guessing the hate youre speaking of on forums and wherever else, came from the extreme casuals of that time who were able to make some progress in wrath because trivial content was trivial. Its crazy.. I remember people being extremely happy that Cata dungeons were a bit more difficult.. I remember my friends saying: "oh wow, i actually have to interrupt mobs? amazing", "oh we cant pull all 10 of these and kill them? we have to sheep something? Awesome" etc.
If people were complaining about dungeon complexity... lol i dont even know what to say... especially if they were blaming their bitterness on a past expansion.

It was good in guild groups, but bad for pugging. And again, early on you'd find yourself saying "Sorry but I can't heal [X dungeon heroic] unless everyone is geared and on their A game" because your healer was the wrong class, which sort of sucked. At least my Pally had an interrupt for the first time ever.