Why bash Cata?

[Zoma]

Because it was a boring expansion. The beginning was pretty good, especially if you liked leveling alts, but about 2 weeks into the expansion I found myself sitting in Orgrimmar with nothing to do.

The raids were alright until DS. The patch content was pretty boring. The only thing I remember liking was the daily hub that was released during Firelands.

[Wilian]

Lack of non-raid end content for half a year and then Firelands was nothing but a 20 minutes bullshit / day. Doesn't need more than that. There simply wasn't anything to do in the end.

[SL1200]

Generally I don't like underwater zones, but Vash'jir was pretty fun. I felt like i was questing in an aquarium. It was a nice twist that you were able to breathe and move fast at the bottom of the ocean unlike most games where underwater means you move slow.

[Necrolepsy]

It just felt really uninspired and scattered story wise.

[Mormolyce]

DS gets way more hate than it deserves. Maybe because it was the first ever LFR raid (paradoxical, thousands of people who couldn't raid before got to raid DS and all they could do is bitch about it).

It was a little short, had a couple of filler fights and didn't make the most out of Deathwing. That's all.

[KrazyK923]

Cata was the worst expansion of them all!
Just like Wrath was the worst expansion of them all during Cata!
Just like BC was the worst expansion of them all during Wrath!
Just like Vanilla was terrible compared to BC!

[Realsykes]

Dragon Soul raid.

Yeah....

Really underwhelming.

[Mormolyce]

So, basically, cata was LOST(series) for many players?

Lost was a pretty steady decline from the end of the first season.

Personally I thought it was borderline right from the start.

[Arbs]

Cataclysm was gutted at the beginning cause of all the whining & it was all downhill from there & they just wanted to get it over with.

[turboether]

Dragon Soul for so long is going to leave a much bigger impression than anything that came before it. Firelands was also extremely lopsided in difficulty curve. While the bosses were inventive and there were some cool mechanics they ended up being speedbumps on the way to the Mt Everest that was Rag. T11 was really good though, imo.

[ringpriest]

Portals everywhere. Least immersion of any expansion. Uldum... good jokes have a punchline, and then they end. Uldum was like a SNL skit that goes on too long and then cuts to commercial well after it runs out of punchline. Questing in every zones was a linear railroad, which made your brain leak out your ears if you leveled alts via questing. Vash'jir's plotline just faded out, never to be addressed again. Professions seemed abandoned after launch, just like the rotting corpse of Gilneas. LFR introduced via the worst large raid Blizzard has ever done, Dragon Soul. As an end of expansion raid, DS was pathetic; recycling everywhere and (after an almost trash-free instance) an "epic" final boss fight where you repeatedly battle a combination of trash and Deathwing's immobile toenails.

[Volitar]

Cata wasn't bad. DragonSoul and rehash ZG/ZA were bad. BWD/BOT/Firelands were fucking amazing raids. (Nef/Cho'gall/Sinestra/Ragnaros!)

[Jawless Jones]

removed too much older content without adding enough good new content

dragon soul, T11 had ALOT of things wrong with it, like how certain bosses didn't scale appropriately between 10 man and 25 man (with some bosses in 25 man being impossible to complete in 10 man)

personally i didnt like the new music they put in the revamped zones, much preferred the old music (thank god for epicmusicplayer)

i personally thing the whole stamina scaling increase contributed to how terribly unbalanced PvP was, and started the sharp incline of damage numbers caused by players damage needing to scale with other players rapidly increasing healthpools, leading to an arms race between DPS and healers.

Thankfully the upcoming item squish will alleviate this problem somewhat, of course, if they hadn't fucked around with stamina scaling (and the resulting rapid dps scaling) they wouldn't have needed an item squish for at least another expansion

[xezar]

Cata was the worst expansion of them all!
Just like Wrath was the worst expansion of them all during Cata!
Just like BC was the worst expansion of them all during Wrath!
Just like Vanilla was terrible compared to BC!

Cata makes WotLK look like the gold standard, even if BC was a bit better. I'd probably bump even MoP over Cata since it at least tried.

[nyc81991]

The beginning of Cata wasn't too bad. It's just after that things got drastically worse.

Most of the content was in the form of revamping the world and changing the quests. While that took a lot of work it didn't really add anything for people who were already max level. And even with the changed look of the world, it was still similar enough that once you got use to being able to fly around it got old fast. LFR was also released which further diminished the need to go anywhere other than your main city.

[Kinferatu]

It was good at the beginning, loved BWD and BOT raids, Tot4W was a bit 'meh' though.

Started going downhill in 4.1, why make Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub into dungeons? And no purpose in Cataclysm whatsoever, when I saw those I thought there was going to be a troll raid after that... nope.

When 4.2 hit, Firelands was decent, but Abyssal Maw was scrapped, I was looking forward to that.

Got even worse when 4.3 hit, Dragon Soul being the worst raid I've done, and Well of Eternity being a dungeon and sucking (should've been a raid).

The only GOOD thing in Cata was... Transmog. ;p

[Penguintamer]

Hnnngh, oh god no.

[Thelxi]

I think that the hate started when Blizzard canceled 4.1 as a raid patch and instead threw 2 5man dungeons at us and called it a day.

Blizzard had tried to sell us the same old marketing story of more content faster, less time waiting between patches etc.. so 4.1 really did not sit well with people. DS was also a complete disaster, everything about it was just cheap.

Ironically launch and t11 were actually well received by most of the community.

[Toiran]

Cata's ridiculous linear questing was and still is, horrible.

Seriously, if you haven't quested there for months/years, go back and level an alt, it's awful, especially deepholm, lets follow the circle.

One of the worst things they have ever done.

+ Dragon Soul.

Cata over all, sucked, and won't be remembered warmly by a lot of people.

TBC, Wotlk and MoP are so far ahead of Cata it's insane.

1-60 improves were over all, a massive improvement though, just the rest of the expansion was terrible, i.e, end game, which is what really mattered after the hype of new 1-60 wore off after you made a new alt once.

[Ihnasir]

For me, it was due to the many open ends of the stories. What happened to Neptulon? Why scrap the Abyssal Maw? There was so little content spread over such a large amount of time. Cataclysm was great at the start, but it died off pretty quickly. Dragon Soul being the worst example. 12 months of ICC was hell, but at least there were 12 bosses and not 8. Blizzard knows they fucked up on that one.

A lot of my other frustrations with Cataclysm were self-made. I had just transferred servers and was looking for a fresh start, and the guild leveling process screwed over any hope of me getting started on anything with more than a handful of friends. Many of the people I transferred over to play with quit at the time (way before Firelands). I was able to join a guild that was casual, but also really bad. Our progression was horrible and I knew I could do better, but I was still unfamiliar with where I could go.