Yeah same. I’ve been a Ret pala main since TBC, well, with the exception of Cata. Ended up rerolling to a hunter only a couple of weeks into Cata because i couldn’t stand Ret. But that didn’t last either and led to me taking a break from the game until late MoP.
ICC was quite literally time gated. The raid itself. Heroic attempts also being timegated for Algalon and Arthas. Algalon had a 1hr timer per week and Arthas a 50 pull counter. Tournament Grounds was also timegated through rep. And as mentioned we had timegating in Vanilla and TBC as well.
I actually enjoyed how Dungeons had Raid level mechanics, before they were nerfed… I strongly believe Instances and the open world feeling dangerous, adds to immersion…that said, the Xpac was kinda 50/50 hit and miss overall.
I loved the Indiana Jones vibe in Uldum…and although Vash’jir was frustrating at first, because of mastering the underwater movement mechanics (at the same time as all your existing gear being nerfed into the ground) I ended up liking it a lot…non-scuba divers mileage will vary.
Honourable mentions: Fire kitteh Druid form and the suicide run, Hunter kitteh pet.
Dishonourable mentions: Trying to do Molten Front, on a PVP realm with imbalanced Factions was quite simply impossible.
i was like 12 when cata came out so i might get something wrong here but i remember liking:
-the difficulty of hc at the beginning
-molten front dailies
-the raids in general (minus dragon soul)
-the transmog system
-the legendary weapons quest lines
-LOVED vashj’ir and i still think it’s one of the best zones they have ever made
-i thought that the valor and justice points system was an improvement over badges
what i didn’t like
-LFR
-nerfed hc dungeons
-tol’barad
-i might be in the minority but i liked going back to the trainer to train spells and ranks so i missed that when cata came out
-revamped zones
that’s all that comes to mind really, never understood the hate that cata received and still receives to this day personally
you know? i was thinkin about this lately. it wasnt so bad… there was a reason to find the nearest trainer, to visit the other cities… ofc it was annoyin if you were in the middle of somthin but there were other things to change ingame imho.
good point wouldnt mind getting this back in retail
with people having plenty of gold on retail and the price of said abilities/rank upgrades
not being expensive i mean probably 25/50 gold
wont be a problem at all
aye vashjir did it with chromie time on my dk when it was my new alt
still have a purple version of the kvaldir battle standard trinket in bank
the last quest/battle? was good and the battlemaiden quest chain also good
curious if i start it with a lvl 60(get first quest get to the zone and do the rest)
i can one shot that elite ?? level patrolling shark yes
but tbh i enjoyed twilight highlands/mount hyjal quest chains better
blue weapon crucible of carnage arena group quests same
including the molten front story(far from finished)
Cataclysm had: very good 5ppl dungeons, very good raids (except DS), very good class balance and fun pvp gameplay.
Only “bad” things about Cata is awful last raid design wise - zone is reused and every boss is basicly just a mob, nothing unique and new leveling zones (while good) being disconnected.
Major drop of playerbase was caused by difficulty of the dungeon and raids, timing (many good games released relatively at the same time) and people just took a break from the game because they played since Vanilla-TBC.
I only have good memories of Cataclysm. I was finally able to level by myself. Doing Classic now, I am immensely proud to have gotten to 40 with a Hunter and maybe later I will try another class - but the hand holding through zone to zone and clear story telling shift in Cata is my most favourite change.
I loved going through all the low level zones to find the changes, enjoyed most of the high level zones (Hyjal and Uldum in particular) and the dungeons, once they were tweaked I am guessing, honestly can’t remember the big hoohah about that. Mind if there is no LFG in a Cata Classic as well, I won’t be doing them.
They hit very hard at the start and in ‘no gear just dinged’ characters it could take a while to get through them.
It wasn’t really a mechanical issue, once you worked out what you needed to do that part was simple, it was just that the dungeons were overtuned. A portion of players always love overtuned content and they were sad to see heroic dungeons normalised.
It was time-gated by patch too. As I recall 3.1 was the construction and 3.2 was the tournament to prepare for 3.3.
The argent tournament was exactly the same as the molten front, you has to collect two sets of seals, or something ,to get to the next stage for your race and then repeat for each other race.
I liked the new zones at first, a lot of fresh fun new quest lines and it was cool to see that time had moved on. Some of the new zones were pretty great too, especially Vashj’ir.
However. the new more linear questing experience did not lend itself so well to repetition and things got a bit stale when they were repeated again and again.
And then there’s the worgen, which is still my favorite race.
It was also around this time when I first encountered some seriously toxic players for the first time…
.