Cata was good in the beginning. It became dogpoop in the end.
1: Heroic dungeons on release were perfect. You could wipe. I remember wiping on stonecores first boss for an hour with a pug. And nobody left and nobody minded. People adjusted to the new difficulty over time and everything went alot smoother. But noooooooo Blizzard had to cater to those incapable of using their brains and rather want their loot upon dungeon enter. Actually scrap that, i deny the existence of a functioning brain within those.
2: Raid Tier 1 was good. Firelands was also good (and dubbed the " True final Raid of Cataclysm" for a reason). Dragon Soul was⌠wellâŚtrash.
3: Questing became too linear.
But the main reason why cataclysm flopped was Dragon Soul (the entire patch was trash) to be fair ontop of an aged game.
Oh and then there was PvP. Legendaries. Legendaries and Trinkets. On a new level. Oh the joy of Firelands staff players in BGs and Arenas. Or 4.3. The bane of everything. Rogues. Rogues everywhere. And nearly EVERONE (i used the gladi daggers. I refused to use the Tier 1-2 daggers) running around with the lego Daggers Tier 1 and 2 which were already broken by themself and laughable easy to obtain. And if you ever met a rogue with the final lego daggers you could just afk as you would get massacred. ONTOP of an already strong class in itself. Rogues had 100% crit during 4.3 as subtlety. Lego daggers or not.
But if people only started hating Cataclysm after 4.3 and Dragon Soul, then what about all the sub losses before then? Looking at the chart, it looks like a mostly linear, gradual decline. It wasnât like MoP which started with a massive dip and then the losses stopped (for the most part).
They wonât change and go back because like every company nowadays they too are unable to admit that they have made mistakes and hold on their decisions like their life was depends on those choices.
Cataclysm was ok as expansion but it came right after Wotlk, the expansion where WoW reached itâs peak and is still considered by most the best WoW expansion to this day.
Since it made me quit WoW (Got back halfway Legion)âŚ
The change of the world, I didnât like it for the most part. Just a little bit was better but most was done worse.
Story was badly done, too much meme crap on the foreground.
Some other stuff I canât remember but definitely not âDungeons being harderâ like most people like to scoff it away. I couldnât stay around for more than a few weeks (was also in Beta) and didnât experience a dungeon back then.
I didnt play cata long enough to form any opinion about it. I stopped playing mostly due to changes in RL that made it hard for me to find the time to commit. I was also quite burnt out after playing so much in BC and LKâŚ
In difficulty, and probably at style, yes, Cata was closer to TBC, but in many ways you can see the gradual change from TBC through WotlK to Cata. Especially in quest and zone design.
TBCâs idea was one big quest hub and you get tons of quests a the same time which send you all over the zone. Cata was the opposite, you only get a few quests at the same time which all send you to the same general area, you do them, then you get another set of quests which also send you to one area, and do on. WotlK was in-between.
You can see the same with the number of flight points. We went from 1, maybe 2 flights point per zone in Vanilla and TBC to 3+ in WotlKâs huge zones to 3+ in Cataâs much smaller zones, basically all settlements, no matter how small now also function as flight point.
In fact this is a good indicator of which zones were more revamped in Cata, and which were mostly unchanged. If thereâs only flight point, like Arathi Highlands, Winterpsring and Silithus, it means the zone saw very little update.
The removal of RP flavor inconveniences, like hunter ammo, rogue poisons, spell reagents, weapon skills, resistances, class quests, talent trees and visiting the trainer for spell, this was also a very gradual change that started with WotlK and ended with MoP.
It went sour when we got the Thrall questline which turned him from Moses to Jesus.
Then we got Dragon Souls which was mostly reused areas and enemies, a bad send off for one major villain âBenedictusâ and a meeh Send off for Deathwing, with us flailing at tentacles.
I donât really see how hunter ammo is a role play element. I think the Wod version was much more interactive when it comes to ammo.
Never got removed
As a DnD player iam pretty sure spell reagents are less there for RP , but more as a limiting resource. Which out site of soul stones , they werenât in WoW. You just had to buy them in masses. If they rework it , maybe it is a RP element , but how blizzard did it , it wasnât.
Still in the game , just not important anymore
In cata every class had a special quest for the legendary staff + rogue had their own quest
How were the talent trees more rp?
90% of the feral tree is useless before cata
True , but different. It makes no sense that you need a teacher for spell ranks instead of learning higher ranks by using them.
In DnD your spells improve with your level and itâs a RP game.
Also more spells should have been taught like the Druid forms
I quit in Cata so I have some perspective on this. I was also a Wrathbaby so it might be a unique perspective.
I had improved enough at the game that the improved difficulty of Heroics was welcomed, I rerolled from hunter/DK in wrath to a mage in Cata. The change in difficulty confused me, but I didnt actually notice it get much easier because I played with pugs for heroics anyway lol.
The change in the old world was fresh at first, I levelled 3 or 4 alts through it. Wasnt memorable though.
The reason I quit was mostly due to lack of enjoyment of classes and the idea of playing a subcription for a game I wasnt playing 4-8 hours a day every day seemed odd. I was only enjoying it enough to play a couple hours at most.
Edit: I quit in 4.1 and didnt look back at the game until Legion.
Edit 2: There was something unenjoyable about PvP too, instead of being a casual activity that rewarded me it became a grind that never rewarded me.
i dont liked it. It was
1st quest -> 2n quest -> 3rd quest. I had no joy in discovery environment.
It was FOR ME like to go on a escalator with trees around
The second half of Casterclysm is much more embedded in peopleâs memory than the first half.
The first half of Casterclysm was awesome; one of the best time Iâve ever had in WoW. Unfortunately, the second half was one of the worst; and thatâs what it is generally remembered for.
I hated Cata mostly cause I liked the old lvling zones. Wish there were chromies all over so you could choose if you want to lvl in the pre cata or post cata zone
Well to be fairly honest. The zone change didnât bother me when it was a current expansion. I found it refreshing.
What lead me to have a problem with cata thereafter, was that those zones stayed broken forever more. Like, how many years did it take to fix the statues, towers and park in SW?
Even today, zones both on Horde and Alliance is still broken. Thereâs still crushed villages, huts and hubs. As someone else pointed out, you donât even see through out the game that thereâs a war going on⌠because everything is frozen in cata
And frankly I also think itâs why people complain about not feeling immersed, or suggest that Blizzard should work on the all ready existing zones⌠instead of this âOh well, new expansionâ and then just discards everything lol.
I could write a wall on this topic, but this is about Cata so Iâll end it here.
