So my experience with wow was that every since the 2000’s I enjoyed watching youtube videos about wow, but since my mother didn’t let me use her credit card I was never able to experience it. I remember briefly trying a 1 week demo and loving it. then every few years I got to try it again but in the 2010’s the game felt different and I didn’t like it.
When classic lunched I tried it up and loved it. Liked the leveling and the world, music, and feel of the game.
However, I know something in retail doesn’t feel right to me, and seeing a lot of people say that there was a change in direction in cata makes me wonder - what should I expect? what happened in cata that made it so infamous? what changes are the least well received?
Well, first of all there will be a ginat mad Dragon breaking through the crust of the world and ripping it apart.
With that, the whole surface of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms will be reshaped. (Basically to the form which is now retail, which is the first retaily point) This also allows flying mounts in the old continents (also retaily).
They will add transmogrification (very RP-friendly).
Also, with the Dragonsoul raid there was the first time the Raidfinder tool was introduced, which was a big step into retail mentality.
So there are many things that were more or less foundation for many things we know from retail. Despite all that, I liked the raids in Cataclaysm, I had a really good time back in the days. And I hope it will be at least close to that this time.
Honestly come to think of it they made all this work to tell a story through reshaping the old world for nothing, considering how much people scream about it despite the old World laying abandoned in favor of sitting in Dalaran. Could have saved themselves work and just do another 3-5 zone continent causing everyone to depopulate the previous zones. Cries about flying in old world have me chuckle a bit considering that at the point you unlock it you’d be leaving for Outlands anyway and would never set foot in old World anymore unless you’d do so to farm some achievements. Because spoiler you can’t fly during your initial questing from 1-60. That’s effectively unchanged.
As a solo player, if you play Wrath now and continue into Cata (I think already in the prepatch actualy), you’ll notice the leveling get a lot easier, both solo and dungeons, because Cata is where Blizz decided leveling should be piss-easy and the endgame is where the difficulty becomes non-trivial.
I was playing a disc priest when that patch hit, all of a sudden mana became a vast pool I couldn’t burn through fast if I tried, and wanding wasn’t a thing anymore since Blizz had a rotation in mind that always gave me something to cast and plenty of mana to cast it with. Consumables became a waste of time, leveling professions wasn’t rewarding before the endgame since none of it was helpful during leveling, and so on. Cata endgame was fun, but the leveling experience became trivialized, and this continues to this day in retail.
Modern retail if further away from what you said as Cata there is Chromie time content. It is closer to Legion than Cata as you can reach lvl cap 70 without visiting any Vanilla/Cata zones at all.
Illusion magic always existed in Warcraft lore, even in Vanilla.
Sadly yes it created low effort generation of WoW players. I mean the existed in Wrath allready in form of LFD Wrath babies, even I was casual back in 2005-2010 due to time restrains of studying and changing jobs back then.
You basically named no features of modern retail as there was complete rewamp in WoD and even more in Legion. BfA and SL were somewhat the same and controversial while copying same weak side of Legion like AP grind systemd of borrowed powers but in less polished ways. DF was a bit different though but lacked any gameplay features except some talent system borrowed from Diablo IV.
You can’t say Cata is model Retail as War Within and further trilogy can be called Retail 5.0 (Vanilla TBC Ulduar is 1.0, TOGC, ICC, Cata, Early MoP is 2.0, WoD is 3.0 Legion, BfA, SL, DF is 4,0).
I see it the other way around, before Cata, stuff like consumables, food and drink were relevant to the leveling experience, and you could die if you pulled too much or didn’t pay attention. It had a modicum of engagement. Cata broke all that in favor of “streamlining” the path to the “real game” (which is a rotten way to design a MMO imo, the leveling should be a core part of the experience and not something you’re supposed to speedrun).
Back in 2010 Cataclysm was very expected and wanted. Not only it offered new max level zones, two new races and class combinations, but it also revamped the Old World zones.
Revamping the Old World zones however was what was hated by most players and invoked feelings of nostalgia. Players wanted the old leveling back.
Why? There are several reasons.
Gone were the class-specific and group quests. When you start playing Cata, you’ll immediately notice that quests that were needed for warlock pets, paladin mounts etc are gone. All skills were trainable. Thus classes no longer felt unique - everything felt the same, you just had different spell animations.
You no longer had to group to kill difficult mobs like Hogger and Yowler. Everything was soloable. This destroyed the MMO feeling (alongside raid finder).
The storyline was awful. Cataclysm was advertised as an expansion in which Deathwing returned. In reality however, the Deathwing stuff was reserved only for end-game content. Majority of leveling content was dedicated to the new Alliance-Horde war.
And if you played as Alliance, the story was frankly depressing. Every single zone you went, with the exception of Swamps of Sorrows, had a story of loss against the Horde. Every. Single. One. You had cities constantly destroyed, starting from Southshore, then Andorhal, and finally shortly before MOP, you lost Theramore.
Back in 2011 and even during the whole course of Mists of Pandaria, there were a lot of angry Alliance players. They spent the whole Cataclysm expansion losing to the Horde, and then in MOP Chris Metzen promised the Alliance will have their “fist pumping moment”. In reality, that never happened. The so called “fist pumping moment” was supposed to be Siege of Orgrimmar, but you just went there to dethrone Garrosh (not kill him) without any reparations and land returned back to you.
To add further salt to the wound, the zones were full of obvious pop-culture references instead of serious storytelling. You have Rambo in Redridge, Horatio Caine in Westfall and even Indiana Jones in later Cataclysm zones.
Leveling was much more streamlined, with scripted events, phasing and videos. While this looked cool first time playing, it became awful on replays. Cataclysm got boring very fast, and the expansion gap between Dragon Soul raid and MOP was a whole year. During that time people leveled a lot of alts, and they ALL had to experience the same leveling content again. And again. The same scripted events. The same videos. The same line of Warlord Gromush telling Sylvanas she’s a b… (ok, that line was removed). It became boring and very annoying
Don’t want to be that guy but that was already happening with Wrath. As a Paladin the only skill I learned through quests was my out of battle res. Everything else including my mount was trainable. The same with Priest, druid still had quests for forms but those were at best side modes of transportation since with Wrath you learned to ride shortly after getting travel form and yeah the riding was faster. Maybe other classes retained their quests I dunno since I really only played those three.
And as far as I could tell from my leveling journeys 1-70 or even 1-80 doesn’t really matter in the long run. It was a Problem since TBC it’s even more prominent in Wrath - the endgame is all that matters. You’d barely find groups for dungeons in Old World, unless they were the few profitable fast dungeons with good exp yield like Scarlet Monastery ones. Those near the level 58? Forget about it and move to Outland you idiot. You’ll get better gear from basic quests there. And you won’t even need more than three zones in Outland either, hoped to see the story? Hahaha silly you, stop wasting time and get your rear to Northrend. That’s probably the longest stretch but even then all that matters is to hit 80 so you can gear up and try to do the endgame. Preferably with a guild willing to carry you or at least fat stack of money for some easier GDKPs so that you’re allowed in those that drop actual good stuff.
I don’t think I’m going to disagree - WOTLK is where Blizzard shot themselves in the foot. A lot of the features that people hate are not being implemented in Cata, but in Wrath. They say “LFR ruined the game in Cata”, but random dungeon tool already existed in Wrath - it just had to be extended to include raids too.
Likewise, quests, phasing and cinematics during leveling were introduced in Wrath (with DK experience and Angrathar the most prominent examples). Typical Forsaken architecture also appeared in WOTLK and was applied to the World in Cata.
This is EXACTLY why Blizzard may be reluctant to offer Wrath of BC era servers. BC and WOTLK are too focused on endgame. Only pure Vanilla is focused on leveling, which is why it makes sense to expand it with seasonal content (what Blizzard does). But once they begin releasing BC and WOTLK, there’s no reason to stop there - all expansions will be re-released now.
The best expansion WoW has ever made, dont listen to the classic zombies they be hatin anything that isnt vanilla tbc or wotlk they wanna play that for the rest of their miserble life pressing 1 button, so dw you will have the best time in Cata.