Was Cataclysm the best expansion?

[huth]

FFS one in every fucking group. It started with wrath, tEcHnIcAlLy, because it couldn't go any higher. So yeah, you WOULD see a flatline. Cata was shit, and people left in droves because it was shit, and by every objective metric it was bottom-tier as an xpac.

The decline started before it flatlined. Flatlining means that gains and losses are equal. Before that, gains where higher than losses. You cannot get a flatline if it isn't already declining. People where already leaving before Cata was even released, and there wasn't a significant downward spike with Cata contrary to what people claim.

[Afrospinach]

FFS one in every fucking group. It started with wrath, tEcHnIcAlLy, because it couldn't go any higher. So yeah, you WOULD see a flatline. Cata was shit, and people left in droves because it was shit, and by every objective metric it was bottom-tier as an xpac.

I am pretty sure WoD lost the most subscribers by far, it also had a phenomenal sub spike on launch.

We will never really know for sure just with sub numbers as I have said before on this website. There is no way to discern subscriber churn just with the numbers alone. I bet you more people played wow vanilla than any other phase of the game by far, just lots and lots of people would leave at that time as well because it was new. WotLK iirc also had a massive ad campaign - maybe it was losing people in droves. Who can be sure?

There were definitely a lot of things wrong with both WoD and BFA, but for me WoD pulls ahead by having superior raids.

I only got to see the WoD raids in LFR which was unfortunate. I have to say that was probably the only time I do remember having fun in LFR.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Cata was when Blizzard went full on memecraft because of wannabe-rockstar mentality. So no.

[huth]

I am pretty sure WoD lost the most subscribers by far, it also had a phenomenal sub spike on launch.

We will never really know for sure just with sub numbers as I have said before on this website. There is no way to discern subscriber churn just with the numbers alone. I bet you more people played wow vanilla than any other phase of the game by far, just lots and lots of people would leave at that time as well because it was new. WotLK iirc also had a massive ad campaign - maybe it was losing people in droves. Who can be sure?

Wouldn't be surprised if Vanilla and TBC each lost more players than WoD did, including the short-term spike at the beginning of the expansion.

[Wadrak]

Cata added Worgen to alliance I really didnt like that as alliance player at the time. Ruined the soul of alliance.

Goblins were pretty cool though.

Like the "secret locations", Grim Batol, Twilight Highlands, Mount Hyjal, Gilneas, I don't think the way they were used did justice for making them secret.

I like how they revamped Westfall added the whirpool thing. But some other zones like flooding the Thousand Needles I didnt like that, feels like too much of a change.

Also removing all the stats like hit rating, expertise rating, defense rating and others I didnt like when it was announced but it turned out it wasnt so bad in practice. But I liked the fact you need to have "cap" on these stats and balance your gear arround it.

Raids were pretty good. And dungeons too.

Actually im in minority but I liked Dragon Soul, the fact it was in Wyrmrest temple and the way story was told since I played wotlk a lot. But Deathwing fight I didnt like still.

So for me this wasnt a best expansion by far, many good things but many bad things too.

[Hitei]

FFS one in every fucking group. It started with wrath, tEcHnIcAlLy, because it couldn't go any higher. So yeah, you WOULD see a flatline. Cata was shit, and people left in droves because it was shit, and by every objective metric it was bottom-tier as an xpac.

Of course it could go higher. The sub count is, and has always been the result of everyone who has tried the game minus everyone who has quit. If Wrath had been good enough, you'd have very few people quitting and more people joining/coming back, resulting the same growth that happened all the way up until Wrath.

Instead, it was the first point where the number of people quitting the game (read: leaving in droves) became equal to the number of people joining, and the sub count stagnated. It did not cap, it stalled the growth.

[Cosmic Janitor]

The decline started before it flatlined. Flatlining means that gains and losses are equal. Before that, gains where higher than losses. You cannot get a flatline if it isn't already declining. People where already leaving before Cata was even released, and there wasn't a significant downward spike with Cata contrary to what people claim.

While I generally agree and this is a valid interpretation (one that I share), sadly we have no idea what the actual growth and shrink rates were back then. We only know that (x+y)*t=sub_count with no real clue as to what x and y are. The best we have is some vague guesswork based on their "100 million accounts made" milestone back then, which implies that they churned through way more people than they actually could keep.

[Skildar]

I wasn't playing the game competitively at the time, so I can only talk about my casual experience : it was the worst expansion.

They approached the world revamp in an unorganized way, it wasn't an easy task but the stories they told broke a lot of the world exploration experience. Some of them have a strong narrative, some other are big parodies, some just plain goofy and you're lost in there not knowing what you should expect of the game. Is it a serious piece or just a fanart?

The new zones are physically separated but they all stick to the same theme: twilight hammer is going crazy. But... the expanson was about deathwing, was it not? It's not. He's somewhere, maybe, but he's not even plotting as he's not the deathwing you've read about. He's the smash-break-hit version.

The story is full of plot points that you don't follow because characters shouldn't go for what they do.
Old gods shouldn't remove the curse of flesh in uldum, druids shouldn't be the first lane against fire elementals, thrall shouldn't invite players to witness his union with aggra, dragons shouldn't try and change the past to retrieve the dragon's soul artefact (I'm sure we could find a better solution than breaking time continuity...), Deathwing you shouldn't practise necromancy on his children because... well because I'm not sure he did and if he did well he's not supposed to know how... is he? Well why didn't he before then?!

Anyway add to this, the storylines that bored me because I had no clue why I should be invested in it, Benedictus, who the hell are you? Are you suppose to matter? oops too late, you're dead...

Trolls are back! Who cares, they are a couple of tribes with no global threat and we are currently being threatened by a world breaking dragon... can we get our priorities checked?!

It was a mess that moved narration to a very low quality fantasy. I was very invested in the story and thankfully Mist of Pandaria saved it the following expansion.

[huth]

While I generally agree and this is a valid interpretation (one that I share), sadly we have no idea what the actual growth and shrink rates were back then. We only know that x+y=sub_count with no real clue as to what x and y are. The best we have is some vague guesswork based on their "100 million accounts made" milestone back then, which implies that they churned through way more people than they actually could keep.

Well, we do know that in WotLK, losses exceeded gains. What we don't know is whether this happened because losses increased, gains dropped, or both. But that doesn't actually matter here, since any of those would result in a decline.

[Swnem]

Wow... well... at least it did less damage to the game than others.
That's about the most positive thing i can say about it.

[Souflikar]

Not the best but compared to recent expansions, it’s no longer the worst.

[Wadrak]

Wow... well... at least it did less damage to the game than others.
That's about the most positive thing i can say about it.

Really ? Im not so sure about that I think it did a lot damage ... if you read my other post in this thread.

[Inexorability]

At the beginning Cataclysm felt fresh and it felt like WoW was moving into new territory and opening new storylines. It was the first time they started using the new art style. I spent a lot of time playing through the revamped zones and there was a lot of story content there that I enjoyed.

One downside was that everything was a reference to something. Playing through Uldum (which I liked overall) frustrated me a little. First it was like: Hey! It’s Indiana Jones! Then: Oh hey. It’s Indiana Jones. And then: Okay, so we’re literally just doing the exact plot of Indiana Jones.

I will also put in a good word for Vashj'ir. I know a lot of people didn’t like it, but I think it’s still my favorite zone in the game. It was so creative and (honestly, no pun intended) immersive. The art for both the creatures and environment was unique and colorful. There were zones inside ancient shelled creatures and ruined underwater cities. I often spent time just looking at things. The zone felt like it was actually a place, rather than an amusement ride, shuttling you efficiently from one scene to the next. It is to date the only really 3D zone in WoW (and I think that’s what frustrated people who didn’t like it) and all three dimensions were filled. By contrast, when I leveled my Druid through Hyjal, it just felt generic.

[Relapses]

One downside was that everything was a reference to something. Playing through Uldum (which I liked overall) frustrated me a little. First it was like: Hey! It’s Indiana Jones! Then: Oh hey. It’s Indiana Jones. And then: Okay, so we’re literally just doing the exact plot of Indiana Jones.

You say this like it's a bad thing. (Although maybe I just have a really soft spot having grown up practically raised by Indiana Jones VHS tapes.)

[Biomega]

Cataclysm isn't "the best" expansion, but it's a lot better than people like to give it credit for.

Dragon Soul definitely tainted the reception - if the final raid sucks, people will remember the entire expansion badly. But while DS really did kinda suck, it also had some decent stuff in it. The last boss was a major problem, of course; giving a major major MAJOR lore character the ex-machina treatment isn't great and making the fight kind of bland and too easy doesn't help. But the earlier bosses were mostly fine. It's just all overshadowed by how badly put together it all felt, and how long it lasted as a tier.

This has to be said, though: Cataclysm had arguably the single best starting tier in all of WoW raiding. Both Bastion and BWD were phenomenal raids, for being entry-level content.

The old world revamp is a bit of an ambiguous change. On the one hand, the world was in DIRE need of update - on the other hand, so much energy was put into redoing things that didn't matter to many active players at the time. Many people felt like this was wasted resources, and that the endgame content suffered for the low-level experience. Looking back, I think it's one of the best things the game has ever done; and something it needs to do again.

Lastly, the heroic dungeon thing. Cataclysm heroics were fantastic. The problem was, they were marketed poorly, and they came off of WotLK's zerg-fest dungeons - both of which conspired to make the whole idea feel elitist and discriminatory, when really that wasn't the case at all. I kind of wish they had stuck to their guns here, and maybe a few months down the line people would have gotten used to having to actually think in dungeons rather than mindlessly pull all packs at once. But we'll never know; maybe they were right, and people didn't want that level of challenge.

[schwarzkopf]

Cataclysm was the second worst expansion being just better than BC.

[cparle87]

Cata was when Blizzard went full on memecraft because of wannabe-rockstar mentality. So no.

And Arthas showing up in every zone to threaten you for killing his dude, or to even kill his dude himself for failing to kill you wasn't Saturday morning cartoon-y?

[Wadrak]

Cataclysm was the second worst expansion being just better than BC.

And you judge that by your experience playing BC when it first launched or by playing Classic BC ?

[cparle87]

The old world revamp is a bit of an ambiguous change. On the one hand, the world was in DIRE need of update - on the other hand, so much energy was put into redoing things that didn't matter to many active players at the time. Many people felt like this was wasted resources, and that the endgame content suffered for the low-level experience. Looking back, I think it's one of the best things the game has ever done; and something it needs to do again.

Kinda this. I had my max level druid when Cata prepatch came out. And I had some pretty cool 2 weeks or so going through all the EK/Kalim zones again seeing the new questing stuff. Had it all done before the xpac came out.

[Stormdash]

Cata was probably the best talent/player power design overall. The best of the old bits and the new. I think the minor (cosmetic)/major (utility)/prime (throughput) glyphs system was better than basically anything they've used in its place since, and while the "old" talent system may have been 'illusion of choice', so it turns out have the MOP-and-after talent rows. There's always just two choices, meta and off-meta. The old way felt more rewarding on a level by level basis and Cata just condensed away the tedium of getting your 5% of crit a point at a time, and instead getting it 3/2 or such.

Still had tier sets and the batched tokens. Still had the "teamwork-makes-the-dreamwork" legendary design that made legendaries feel genuinely special even when it was your buddies helping you get them as old content.

The story and the content weren't the best, but the user experience might have been as good as they've ever done.