Cataclysm Classic - What changes would you want?

[Razorice]

I enjoyed Cata back in the day, but I wouldn't pay to play it again.
Pre-Nerd Heroics were cool, ZG/ZA pre-nerfs were great too!I enjoyed T11 and T12 (though Firelands could have been a bit bigger like) DS was shit. ah and Tol Barad was kinda fun too, at least for the first few months.

Cataclysm, i my opinion was the turning point from "Classic" feeling to a more modern feeling, so this is why I don't want to play it again.

[Donald Hellscream]

Idk, I was quite happy with cataclysm, the entire world changing didn't bother me, as I found leveling in vanilla zones fucking drab anyways.
The dungeon finder never bothered me because I hardly found whispering " inv " to someone looking for a tank to be a particularly engaging social interaction, not to mention I usually queue'd with a premade of guildies anyways, maybe the raid finder could be excluded? It never bothered me but dragon soul LFR was a dramafest of epic proportions due to the nature of loot, people needing on stuff they didn't need just to trade it to their friends, or for their " vendor spec " so either elect not to have dragon soul LFR or have it be personal loot rather than need or greed.

Oh and completely change the firelands tier set for dks, I have no idea what the fuck they were smoking when they designed that set, it has too few skulls for one, and really it looks like some dragon/butterfly hybrid.

[LionSinMaikeru]

How long do you have?

Cataclysm really was the beginning of the fall. It had so much cut content and half-arsing from Blizzard. They butchered the talent system, butchered the leveling system, got rid of a lot of iconic old world quest chains (and also removed access to numerous items that people enjoyed using), etc. etc.

So what changes would I want.

For starters, I'd want them to make it a 10 level expansion instead of a 5 level one. The "5 levels will FEEL like 10!" was typical Blizzard BS. It didn't. It was a breeze and you could easily hit multiple levels in a zone which meant several zones would go untouched or unneeded. So I'd make it 10 levels total.

I'd also add onto the talent tree NOT remove talents. Let people further specialize into their favorite tree OR give them more points to play around with. If Blizzard can't be arsed to add on to the talent trees, at least give each class ONE new ability for each tree + allow them a few more points to add elsewhere.

Add back in the content that was removed. The Abyssal Maw raid to tell us what happened to Neptulon, come back with the Path of Titans to let us customize our characters further, add in the War of Ancients raid, add back in the three BGs that were removed, etc.

Make it so there is a "Zidormi" in every zone / dungeon ravaged by the Cataclysm. If I want to do pre-Cata Un'goro to do the Marion/Luigin quests I should be able to do so. If I want to grind out past reps I should also be able to do so.

Fix the dungeon difficulty problem. Cata dungeons at launch were awful because Blizzard had no semblance of how to properly balance them. Dungeons were dirt easy and then Heroics ridiculously hard only to have Zandoms be easier in some cases than base heroics (yet Zandoms gave better gear???) etc. Making dungeons difficult again was a good idea but they needed to not give the monsters steroids and make it only harder on the healers/tanks.

No Dragon Soul for a stupid long amount of time. Make one of the cut raids a raid to bridge the gap between Cata and MoP.

Lastly, let Goblins and Worgen start at a higher level like allied races.

[Hambo94]

For me Cata classic would be the turning point where they consider focusing more on ideal changes rather than the previous classic view of only necessary changes. Cata was the last xpac that I played before I burned out and quit till late MoP sadly (missed most of MoP which seemed fucking great) but I did do all of cata start to finish at heroic so kinda experienced every single part..

1) Poll players on every zone in the game that got hit by the Cataclysm and ask them to rate the changes, for low scoring zones either revert or redo some of the changes. (Some zones just SUCKED after the Cataclysm, some were good)

2) Remove flying in the old world. - A lot of what makes classics world feel great is that it feels large and full of life, flying objectively destroys that.

3) Add some new out of end game content in the forms of grinds, more rep/factions that can provide some unique collectables (mounts etc), just random stuff that you might want to do since there wasnt much to do outside endgame.

4) Add more world bosses, like Mobus (and that we later saw a lot of in MoP), random mobs that spawn around the world, that are either very rare on slow timers (times lost protodrake style things that drop mounts/the WoD bird thing, the seahorse in vashjir), or again Mobus style mobs that require raid groups. Add more stuff like this, add more that drop mounts too.

5) Add QoL tools specifically for, but not limited to Vashj'ir. Ive always asked people why they didnt like Vashj'ir and I always heard that it was just confusing. Thematically its one of my favourite zones ever, but admittedly it was really confusing, especially when you couldnt tell when an item was above you, below you etc. Add questing tools like the 3d compass stuff to make that more clear.

6) Add a challenge mode style system for the dungeons, each patch when you meet the new timer requirements for gold/silver/bronze you get a variety of rewards. To be clear, not M+ which grants high ilvl gear, but rewards that are given for achieving certain goals throughout all the dungeons, mounts, maybe some good gear with some epic models/spell effects etc. Each tier update the requirements and give new rewards for achieving those new requirements.

7) Add more Worgen/Goblin storylines, IIRC they updated Gilneas in one of the more recent expansions and the zone is actually really cool. When Cata came out, Gilneas felt so uncomplete and uninspired. It was actually just lame as hell. Add way more storylines and the new city that was created more recently to replace the Cata version. Downgrade texture resolution/mesh LOD levels to make it fit the visual aesthetic of Cata at the time.

8) Remove raid finder. Literally just delete it.

9) Remove Reforging - It didnt really serve much purpose other than to be a gold sink and most people just used mr robot or whatever to sim their best reforge and press one button.

10) Remove Transmog as it currently exists. This is semi controversial I feel, I remember being so happy this feature came, but looking back we did pay a price for it. There was something to be said for seeing someone in heroic gear and knowing what level they were playing the game at instead of everyone looking weird or seeing the same iconic sets over and over again. Perhaps some sort of system where you can only see your friends transmogs, or even an option in the menu that simply allows you to disable transmog and renders peoples actual gear models. Id personally like to see what I just said, and then have items be able to override that menu option. So for example if they did add a challenge mode style thing for dungeons, which dropped transmog weapons and armour (which looked epic when they did MoP transmog challenge mode sets) then IF those items were transmogged, they would always be visible, because they are by definition there to show your skill level. So even though you might not equip the actual item and instead tmog to it, you're tmogging to it to look powerful in the same way wearing full heroic gear makes you look powerful.

11) Review 10/25 man balance. I personally miss the days when we could do 10 man heroic raids big time, I used to just raid with 10 irl friends. 20 in retail is too much effort to get together consistently. With 10 people you can usually find 10 close friends and agree to play within a week or so, but 20 takes significantly more effort, so I am happy to be able to do a 10 man heroic raid and then occasionally jump in for 25 man. But the balance was hella whack on some fights. I remember Hagara (DS) was WAY easier on 25 man, because of the electricity conduit mechanic where you have to get the electricity to jump player to player all the way around a room to light up all the electrical conduits, and that electricity hit HARD. On 25 man you could create a chain link of players close enough to effortlessly make the electricity arc, on 10 man sometimes you'd be 0.5 or 1 yard out of range and have to ride the electricity for a while and it made the fight a lot harder. Equally sometimes 10 man was way easier. I appreciate its harder to balance fights with 10/25 man rather than just one 20 man mode, but I think the benefits of ease of access to the content outweigh being able to have perfect balance. 25 man was always considered the true mode anyway.

12) Remake Dragonsoul. I appreciate this would be a significant undertaking by Blizzard but imo, if they really want to be serious about the future of classic with changes, they need to be prepared to put up the resources to fix their problems. Use hindsight to their advantage and turn an 'ok'/good expac into a great one. They already outright stated that Cata was when the team was significantly shrunk in size/resources and it hit them hard, we all saw it in this xpacs and coming xpacs, screwing up hubs/cities like gilneas and infamously the cut content in WoD are great examples of where they could have done with more investment into the games development. But in this case, just remake Dragonsoul. Ive seen a few people above suggesting reworking it, but for me personally, coming off the back of the first 3 raids (which imo were really fun/unique) with some cool mechanics/themes, then going into Firelands which is imo one of the best raids ever made. Going into Dragonsoul, I cannot understate how uninspiring it was. I honestly dont think a single boss was fun, or inspiring, and the location for the fights were clearly put together on a shoestring budget/timeline.

Literally chuck a boss infront of Wyrmrest temple, dig two big holes either side and chuck 2 more bosses in those, stick one on the top, create a random portal to another dimension for another boss (one of the better bosses ironically) then grab a gunship model and stick a boss on one of those, and then to be fair, I can see why they tried to do a spine of deathwing fight, I remember people talking about how cool it would be to fight on his back, but the fight was literally lame as hell, literally killing trash to tickle his scales, and then madness was, visually epic, but the fight was pretty average.

Id honestly keep madness, but make it 2nd to last boss fight, something happens after madness and he gets like part of his powers stripped from him into that orb thrall has or something, and shrinks slightly, and then we have a proper final boss fight where we actually fight him. I dont know, but then everything before madness, just needs to be remade. Honestly they could literally make a dungeon where we go to Wrymrest temple, start the raid, hop on a gunship which flies out to the 'maelstrom' and have the entire raid take place on like stormy rocky volcanic islands that have been created through all of this destruction and have the entire raid take place there, would be kinda like Firelands but instead of lava everywhere it would be like in the middle of a raging ocean storm.

[schwank05]

Please no

Correct me if wrong but...

Dont we have to pay money to keep our character in a "past" classic expansion that is not the current classic version?
Also arent we just splitting the playerbase across some dead classic servers eventually?

Better stop with classic Wrath IMO.

There is no permanent Classic TBC, and very very few people actually copied or kept playing Classic when TBCC was released hence the reason for the forced Wrath Move. Now If they did some sort of Classic+ with the Wrath Expansion I could see that being very popular where they release new content for WOTLK. I would play Cata Classic I loved that expansion especially the first Tier.

[shaunika123]

Heck nah...im not going to Cataclysm bruh...

Who in their right mind would do that? I think most players share this feeling of mine.

Blizzard would make millions and billions of dollars with that "copy your character" thing though.
How much was it? 25 dollars a pop?
Imagine entire community paying that

I definitely would...

one of the only 2 expansions that had 10 man raids at the endgame.
one of the best raid tiers ever (t11)
and both rogues and druids had one of their best versions (imho)

I'd quit before dragon soul though.
but I'd def play through t11 again

[Viikkis]

To "classicfy" Cataclysm I would:

-Keep RDF and LFR out.
I think adding these automated group finders would be against the classic feel of the game. Whether they are good features or not they're simply not part of classic in my opinion.

- Pre-nerfed heroics.
Probably won't be too hard for modern players anyway so no reason to nerf them really.

- Restrict flying in Azeroth to new 80+ zones (also worth to consider keeping the old world as it was and only introduce the new zones)
Flying makes the world feel a lot smaller than it is and makes ground mounts less important. Old world is a huge part of classic since it cannot be accessed in retail.

- Keep weapon skills
While it is annoying to level it up after getting a sweet weapon upgrade I do believe it adds to the RPG aspect of WoW. Wrath made leveling them faster already.

- Keep reagents relevant

Again, while it can be annoying it adds to the RPG feeling.

And last I would consider doing something about the talents. Maybe just keep adding them? It will be a long ass talent tree but it could work. But reworking talent trees would also mean re-balancing the game. Not sure if that is too much work for their resources.

There's probably more but these are my off the top of my head thoughts on how to make Cataclysm feel a bit more like classic WoW.

[Khaza-R]

I definitely would...

one of the only 2 expansions that had 10 man raids at the endgame.
one of the best raid tiers ever (t11)
and both rogues and druids had one of their best versions (imho)

I'd quit before dragon soul though.
but I'd def play through t11 again

I imagine most people who would even try Classic Cata will probably quit by Dragon Soul. That's rather the issue. The final tier should be the climax to keep people playing. Knowing how that expansion ends most people aren't even going to waste their time getting into it.

[Perkunas]

Do not equalize content between 10 and 25 man raiding this destroyed the raiding community and shattered hundreds of guilds. Blizzard knows they made a mistake when they did this the first time either keep progression as it is in Wrath Classic or fast forward to scaling normal and heroic and have mythics be 20. Also, never ever allow LFR, keep pre-nerf Heroic dungeons, don't turn Holy Paladins into Holy Radiance bots, I'd prefer they only allow flying in the newer zones but I don't think that's going to happen.

Better yet just skip to MoP.

[Hctaz]

I don't want it at all.

People thinking LFR is the only problem in Cata is quite frustrating and gives Blizzard the idea that removing LFR fixes the expac, because it was only introduced in 4.3.
Cata has many problems and many debateable ones. mainly it's just not Classic WoW anymore and is very much a proto retail with the world revamp, class changes, dumbed down talent trees/removal of glyphs as player power, flying in the world, transmog, etc.

This is my stance as well.

The old world revamp sucked, the class design and talent changes sucked (although I'm actually not a huge fan of Wrath's changes to the talent trees as well for other reasons), I don't necessarily mind flying everywhere and the revamp LOOK to the old world, but I would have much rather they stuck with the original designs and merely updated the world to incorporate flying.

There was a lot of cut content in Cata, and the raid difficulty was not my favorite either. The r



My honest opinion of the thing that SHOULD be done after Wrath is a Classic+ built off the back of Vanilla as starting point but incorporating new content and ideas from future expansions. I have an extremely lengthy write up for what could be done in this regard, but this isn't the place for that. The TL;DR of my idea is: If you can ask me a question or concern that you'd have with Classic+ starting from Vanilla, I've already thought of a solution and an answer.

Overall, I think that Cata Classic is a bad idea, especially since they've shown that they have no interest in allowing people to stay behind in the past. Classic Classic got this treatment, but TBC is getting left behind entirely. If Wrath gets the same treatment, then that will really suck.

[micwini]

Lfr Dragon Soul on Saturday afternoon is the worst WoW memory I have and making that possible to happen again is stupid beyond measure. Make Vanilla/BC/WotLK a season of classic for 6 years each season and let people relive that beginning with all its crazy fun until it is no longer profitable. Post Wrath has a ton of fun things to do but the poison was building up and I don't trust that current Blizzard can separate the poison from the great stuff.

They'll keep the poison and leave the great stuff out. I sure have faith in that.

[Etna-the-Undying]

I am not gonna play CATA. It was the expansion that made me quit 3 times and the 3rd time was the charm.

Nerfed 5man. Made me quit.
Nerfed raids and joke ZA/ZG 5man instead of Firelands made me quit.
Was quit upset with the cut raid but still stayed.
LFR made me quit. Cleared 5 bosses in HC mode and couldnt stand the fact that i had to run LFR to finish 4 set bonus on multiple characters

[Gimlix]

I like how many of you are against Cataclysm because it isn't classic yet Cataclysm was 12 years ago and is already and worth a classic version.
Even MoP deserves one, i would say that WoD is already too retail.

[Hambo94]

Do not equalize content between 10 and 25 man raiding this destroyed the raiding community and shattered hundreds of guilds. Blizzard knows they made a mistake when they did this the first time either keep progression as it is in Wrath Classic or fast forward to scaling normal and heroic and have mythics be 20. Also, never ever allow LFR, keep pre-nerf Heroic dungeons, don't turn Holy Paladins into Holy Radiance bots, I'd prefer they only allow flying in the newer zones but I don't think that's going to happen.

Better yet just skip to MoP.

Blizzard dosent know this, what do you mean. Ion literally said in an interview that he respects that they lost something when you could no longer do the equivalent of 10 man mythic as it was highly accessible. I know a lot of people who quit raiding mythic level because they could no longer play in 10 man guilds, myself included, so I could equally tell you that making mythic 20 man only raiding destroyed a lot of guilds.

Raiding is already struggling in retail, one reason being how inaccessible 20 man raiding is. There used to be way more 10 man guilds than 25 man guilds.

- - - Updated - - -

I like how many of you are against Cataclysm because it isn't classic yet Cataclysm was 12 years ago and is already and worth a classic version.
Even MoP deserves one, i would say that WoD is already too retail.

Yeah I dont understand the hate either, I never remember almost any negativity during cata until around DS when it went through the roof. And 99/100 people who say I hate cata, cata sucks, never say why. Most people say LFR. Ok? So get rid of LFR xD Flying ruined the old world. Ok, get rid of flying. The cataclysm damaging the old world is a bit trickier but yeah I agree, I think all the xpacs you mentioned are worthy of re-doing with fixes.

[kamuimac]

Title says it all, really.

Personally, aside from removing LFD, I wouldnt change much.

no changes. i want lfd and lfr in game

all classic crazies can stick forever in wolk which already got destroyed by not having lfd.

[Khaza-R]

Yeah I dont understand the hate either, I never remember almost any negativity during cata until around DS when it went through the roof. And 99/100 people who say I hate cata, cata sucks, never say why. Most people say LFR. Ok? So get rid of LFR xD Flying ruined the old world. Ok, get rid of flying. The cataclysm damaging the old world is a bit trickier but yeah I agree, I think all the xpacs you mentioned are worthy of re-doing with fixes.

There was certainly a lot of hate right at the beginning from the heroics. It was just from a different group of players then those who hated Dragon Soul and LFR. But tailing WotLK and how fairly casual friendly it was (compared to earlier version of the game) they made a massive pivot in difficulty. It was an expansion that managed to piss off different groups of players and that's why its not very fondly remembered by many.

[DarkAmbient]

Removing LFR achieves nothing except adding a barrier to accessing group content, so I wouldn't advocate for that. The "muh social aspect of spamming chat for groups" crowd can stay in vanilla. The only changes I'd make are to rebalance the dungeons.

[Hambo94]

There was certainly a lot of hate right at the beginning from the heroics. It was just from a different group of players then those who hated Dragon Soul and LFR. But tailing WotLK and how fairly casual friendly it was (compared to earlier version of the game) they made a massive pivot in difficulty. It was an expansion that managed to piss off different groups of players and that's why its not very fondly remembered by many.

I wouldnt call it hate, but I do remember what you're talking about, I remember especially complaints about Stonecore.

Honestly, I dont think its a problem being more difficult, the current crop of WOTLK players are already way better than they were back when WOTLK came out. Worst case just nerf stuff?

There was so much good content, I just dont get the hate. As I said in my earlier post, I outlined 12 points in detail that id change. Its not close to perfect, but it was still good and could be great if you just tweaked and changed a bunch of stuff.

Fair point though, I get what you're saying. But my counter would be, I feel like out of 100 people being questioned, a significant % of those would say it sucked, but not really be able to say why outside of like the obvious stuff, LFR, DS etc.

IMO 90% of the problem with that xpac was LFR, DS, Flying, the old world changes, and then maybe transmog was a very double edged sword. Very popular feature but had very negative impacts as well.

- - - Updated - - -

Removing LFR achieves nothing except adding a barrier to accessing group content, so I wouldn't advocate for that. The "muh social aspect of spamming chat for groups" crowd can stay in vanilla. The only changes I'd make are to rebalance the dungeons.

If you believe that fair enough, but just checking, you realise that you're definitely going to lose that battle right. Like if they removed looking for dungeon, you realise that LFR is going to get the sharpest guillotine in WoW history haha.

[Mustardisbad]

Cata would be too much work for it to be more liked. Just don't even bother with it, skip it and head to mop.

[DarkAmbient]

If you believe that fair enough, but just checking, you realise that you're definitely going to lose that battle right. Like if they removed looking for dungeon, you realise that LFR is going to get the sharpest guillotine in WoW history haha.

I'm not fighting a battle, I'm expressing my opinion about changes I would or wouldn't make to a video game. If Blizzard want to make it harder to access group content in an MMO that's their prerogative, I just won't play it.