People are remarkably adept at black and white thinking.
Really? Nothing that happened in TBC or WLK had a detrimental effect on the overall game?
I think Cataclysm did many things well. It also did many things poorly. Its end game was, however, much superior to that of Wrath. I don’t like the brain dead AoE zerg gameplay of Wrath, and anyone who feels that way will prefer the end game of Cataclysm.
I also detest the idea of gear advantage in pvp, and both TBC and WLK were bad in that regard. You had to play the arena in order to not have a disadvantage. In Cataclysm you could unlock the best available pvp gear through regular BGs alone, and the grind was quite fast. This meant that the pvp was much more of a level playing field. This is an enormous plus in my books. I have struggled to get engaged in pvp in both TBC and Wrath, but I may get into it in Cata (esp. if rated BGs prove to be fun).
In spite of these positives, I am also very much on board with those that think that Cataclysm diminished many of the roleplaying aspects of the game. Everyone being able to mass resurrect is … convenient. And wholly immersion-breaking. It’s one of those things that stand out to me as being very anti-Classic. The charm of vanilla was that each class brought its own utility, and Cataclysm continued the very bad trend set by WLK; the homogenization – “bring the player not the class”.
So it’s a mixed bag but overall, Cata > WLK.