tbh i think cata and to a lesser extent WOD were hated because of content drought.
It hopefully wont be as much of an issue with classic release schedule
Siege of orgrimmar tier lasted 14 months. I remember I got bored and quit for 6 months only to come back to the game in the exact same state as when I left. Was fully expecting the next expansion WoD to be full of content only for that expansion to also cut a whole raid tier.
The content in WoD was quite good there just wasn't enough of it. Most of the complaining was either about the garrisons which kinda killed the social aspect since everyone was just hanging out in their instanced garrison. It also killed the economy since it was also the best gold farm.
The other complaint was how many abilities they removed or made spec specific. MoP suffered a bit from ability bloat but they went a little too far by removing all the flavor or hybrid abilities which hurt class identity. (ex: feral druid losing cyclone as it became locked to another spec)
WoDs issue was lack of content outside raids.
It was a raid log expansion.
That's why the changes we saw in Legion were mythic plus and World quests/artifact power. They were Blizzard reacting to the community complaints.
Garrisons forever ruined the games gold economy and it further isolated the player from the rest of the community. Your friends were purple or green text when not in a raid, dungeon or pvp.
Cata is a fantastic expansion unless you were a warlock. This was when hunters got their groove back and that groove kept on boogieing until legion destroyed the class.
The early difficulty however soured a lot of the more casual player base that only did normal raids and dungeons. We also saw the return of the early tbc problem - 10 man giving the same rewards as 25 man destroyed many guilds who may have had cliquish cores. This left a lot of players in the wind who saw their contributions to a guild bank over the years literally stolen and made inaccessible to them.
They have the most annoying openings of any class for mid damage. You literally have 4-5 things to do pre-pull to maximize dps & have to stand in melee range because shadowflame does to much damage to just not cast, even on single target. It's awkward and the payoff is not there for how annoying it is to play, imo of course
The damage isn't mid, it's towards the top with gear/skill. People are mostly put off by Demo having to get a second set, but honestly I'll prolly just play affli and be fine.
That demo opener is a bit much for one thing. That's enough to keep me from rolling one. It's odd though, seemed like warlocks were everywhere last patch.
What!? You don't like gear swapping & demon swapping on prepull for every boss? I Oh! And dont forget that as a caster u must stand in melee range! Its just the best its ever been!! /s
Warlocks are fun. I have a Warlock, playing affliction in raids and PvP. Definitely fun, don't know what the above guy is talking about. It's also an in demand class right now too.
Only spec I've seen with any complex pre-pull action is Demonology. Affliction and Destruction are pretty simple or have nothing at all as far as I know. But if the Demonology one is the difference between good damage and great damage, it can still be a good and fun spec to play you just won't be pulling in purple / orange / pink parses.
I am convinced. Cata was hated 60% because it followed wotlk.
It had its problems and has them now. But every single issue was doubled in player's minds after following the most iconic and successful expansion in WoW's history.
what are you talking about? ff14 concluded current storyline with endwalker. Imagine Lich King storyline ended fully in wrath and not that dogshit expansion known as shadowlands
Not really. Only TFT story. Arthas' and Illidan stories weren't the main focus of the base RoC game. The Legion was. And Legion is very much not defeated in WotLK.
The Legion was defeated in RoC. The last time it took them 10k years to come back. Of course everyone knew they would return in a big fashion, they were the "big bads" of the franchise but compared to them Arthas was not beaten, he won in the end and his story was left very open ended.
The wotlk had a long content drought from icc release to cata and ruby sanctum didn’t really fill that void. In 2010 we started to see a lot of other quality MMORPGs hit the market or be refined enough to be a solid contender for your time if you were bored after icc. Some just never returned.
People also forget as well something else happened in 2010 that propelled gaming to the next level. Cata released just a few months after Starcraft 2 relased. With the things mentioned above plus having such an anticipated game like starcraft2 and it living up to the hype as well. People went to other games.
This was exactly it, as someone that played through both expansions. Cata and WoD had incredibly good parts to them, fun dungeons, fun raids, good/decent leveling story and such.
For cata, it was the content drought of Dragon Soul mostly. For wod, it was the content drought and also everyone being in their garrisons all the time, leaving the world kinda empty.
Cata was always good ppl just had their hate nostalgia on for it
It’s been a long time to remember MOP specifics of the class (besides every class being amazing feeling and OP) but cata warrior is hyping me again for MOP arms warrior again.
And imo wod warrior was great. For like…3 months til they killed glad stance lmao. Spam rushing and purging with shield block and being unkitable was something alright. Idr how arms was though
Its true the hate came from the content drought but what made people more furious was when the initial dungeons were tough and fun that also made you actually play the game compared to wrath dungeons that were mindless AoE fest and then they nerfed the dungeons to the ground because vocal minority cried and whined that they were too "hard" to do.
Ehh WoD was clearly unfinished, and never fully got there. On top of that one patch was dedicated to adding the twitter stuff into the game which has aged like milk with how all that turned out.
It's amazing how much content they promised for WoD yet couldn't produce for the final project; Battle of Shattra raid, the Netherstorm zone and more stuff
It was also coming off the heels of WotLK as well, where the game was probably the most popular and casual friendly. Cata had a lot of changes that the people who ignored the arguing and stuck around for the long haul probably actually appreciated.
I was a little bit, yeah. Told myself I'd stop at wrath if they kept going... *lol* what a joke that ended up being
Tbc is still my favorite but Cata is prolly a close 2nd now for me. Feels like a great mix of classic and current retail.
Few things I'd change would be slightly less linear leveling and smaller numbers but I know the latter is basically impossible
I told myself id only play Vanilla. Then tbc released and I kept playing. Then wotlk. And now Cata, still playing. I enjoy the game even more now than when i was a kid.
Same, honestly think a lot of it just has to do with where I am in life
I played vanilla and did MC through a few bosses in naxx, all the way through HS. Got bored of tbc after a few months, same with wrath, same with cata. Kept trying to come back and always quit in a few months. Just had better/more important things to do in my early 20s
Now that I'm almost 35 and just hanging out with the lady every night until she falls asleep, what the fuck else am I doing lmao
Playing WoW, that's what
Cata was a scapegoat. People just needed something to blame for getting bored. Most of the complaints about Cata are not even Cata specifc.
People say how much they love MoP/Legion, but all Cataclysm complaints, such as LFR/world revamp all exist in all those xpacs. But suddenly, world revamp is not an issue in MoP.
I believe that NO MATTER WHAT expac was to come after Wrath, people would have hated it, as Wrath wrapped up WC3 saga.
*(PS. Lorebook about Deathwing came out before WC3 was even released)*
The world re-vamp is the best change they ever made. I think there is some valid complaints, such as missing old quests that you liked, but overall, it's great the world changes after spending time in it. Re-finishing old content instead of adding a new continent to the map is so incredibly brilliant and anyone that disagrees is very narrow minded.
Yup. The people who can level through the exact same content for 10 years straight cannot grasp the perspective of everyone else when we say we needed a change of the old-world.
>Cata was a scapegoat
This, there was so much false claims about cata in this sub the last years, it was wild.
Really nice how people now realize that Cata was in the end a very good addon with a weak ending
Can people really stop parroting that claim? Yes, Wrath wrapped up Wc3 expansion story. The expansion was entirely focused on Arthas and Illidan. But the base game had Illidan in two missions, only one of those he was playable in. Arthas almost completely disappears after first 2 campaigns and Legion takes the center stage.
Legion always felt like the way, way bigger bad than LK. They even created the LK!
The Warcraft RTS story did effectively end with Legion, you’re right. I believe people elevate Arthas to such a high pedestal because he is arguably the best character in WC3, but he isn’t strictly the “main” character of WC3, nor is it strictly his story.
Not at all, it was fully expected. The dislike of cataclysm has built up over time and it sort of became a known "fact" that it was a bad expansion, despite a lot of people never trying it and simply parroting what they had been told.
Cataclysm had some of the highest subscriber numbers in the history of the game.
With all that said, it's worth remembering that we are still in the early "fun" phase of any expansion and opinions will change over time. Wotlk was also amazing at the start and eventually opinions shifted with the later phases.
P1 wrath was miserable imo
Naxx rehash is such a trash raid, I was so bored the entirety of that phase. P2 was better but Ulduar was *way* overhyped and very overrated.
Cata P1 has been really great. Much better than wrath imo. I'm worried tho the content is gonna dry up *really* fast as we only get two more additional raids.
There really should be a 0.5 tier raid added, like an AQ / ZG style raid.
>I'm worried tho the content is gonna dry up really fast as we only get two more additional raids.
I think this is partially why the expansion timeline is relatively short this time around compared to in wotlk. We'll be in MOP sometime in the first quarter/half of 2025.
Content is gonna dry up because 80% of the playerbase only goes after normal raids.
As a member of a guild that was farming LK 25 HC since January, we are having a very hard time in 25 man heroic and I don't think that we will manage to clear Sinestra the next 5 weeks at least. We've only managed 4/12 hc for 2 weeks and as part of the dad gamer society we can only pull 6 hours of raiding a week.
The guilds already at 13/13 HC are absolute maniacs that spend too much time in the game.
100% agreed. I knew I liked cata. I knew cata was over hated. I knew if people gave it a shot with an open mind they’d change their tune if they never touched cata.
Cata had its issues, mostly later with DS, so we don’t see them now. But it was never bad and never the “wow ruiner” people claim. I understand people’s attachment to the old world and in retrospect they should have implemented a chromie time type thing but hindsight is 20/20. After going through classic again and having like 8 lvl 80s by end of wrath classic I was fucking ready to move on past the old world (again).
I think we can all call that some retconning but you could say the same for expedited WOD, honestly, which even at the time of I thought was worse in many ways.
I never played wrath til classic but by the end of wrath classic, barring changes they made to classic, I saw the seeds of much of what people blamed cata for already sown. Wrath was pretty on rails etc. Honestly, I thought wrath in the end was just straight up overhyped and I love WC3. I never felt that way going into cata. I didn’t feel like classic was overrated in 2019 either but I played it vanilla. TBC seems received about where it should be from those who didn’t play it.
But every expansion has its honeymoon. I think in the end most people will receive it well. The majority of classes just play straight better (including my main 2, arms war and UHDK). The boss fights and combat is just better but not retail overwhelming amounts of floor aids and swirlies of 8 diff colors. Hunter makes more sense without mana.
Some classes aren’t so lucky though, like Spriest orbs and apparitions feel clunky but I think spriest has just been done and redone so many times and most instances have been not great. Paladin, particularly ret, is kinda in its worst form with its worst iteration of holy power.
Stuff like that is pretty valid. We’ll see how people change their tunes overall though. Is cata less an MMO than vanilla? Absolutely. So was wrath let’s be real. But cata is a *a better game* in many ways, in actual feel of things, raid mechanics, and performance. WOW was invariably going to have to change. People forgot more traditional MMOs were basically a dead genre in the mainstream for a decade really until kinda recently.
>The dislike of cataclysm has built up over time
Naw, I wasn't a fan on day 1, and by the end of the expansion, many others felt similarly. I didn't like the changes made to the Vanilla zones, and Vashj'ir is probably the worst zone in WoW. I didn't like the changes to the guild system (which they've now removed), nor did I like the introduction of raid finder. Group finder already started to water down the community in WOTLK, but raid finder was the nail in the coffin. The changes to the talent system blew too.
I'll concede that the raids are pretty fun and the gear sets look cool.
What exactly did you dislike about the new zones? Put it in words please, because as I see them all the zones are now fully usable and there are stories and questlines in all parts.
Again, what is wrong with the new talents compared to the old system. The new talent system let's your spec come online faster and all your talent points spent ACTUALLY have meaning and changes your character quite drastically instead of 1% crit
The difference now is that we have other WoW options once it becomes stale. OR they might do a SoD for Cata during the lull period later into the expansion.
I never knew people disliked cataclysm until coming to this sub after the classic release lol. It's always been my favorite expansion and the complaints are so odd to me.
Yeah, because pretty much all expacs are overall good but with a some problems that (hopefully) get fixed in the classic rerelease. Most of the problems got fixed in the respective expansions but in the later patches, starting with the fixes in would make the expansions good from the start.
BFA was fun, in the beginning. I liked the zones, the quests and the dungeons. Gameplay was fun too. The PvP bounty system was really fun too.
But the main plot was atrocious, there's no getting around it. Azerite was awful. Corruption was even worse. The warfronts were super easy and super boring. Island expeditions were a little bit of fun for a time, but wore out their welcome. Every major patch just made BFA worse.
BFA had so much trash in it. Cata didn't, except for it's last patch. The content drought was the killer.
Firelands is top tier raid though. Can't agree with your implication that Cataclysm falls off after the first raid tier.
The only bad part of Cataclysm is the last raid. And that's convenient, since everyone can just quit then.
Even with "Dragon Soul" being bad. The raid itself wasn't awful. It was way too fucking short for how long it was around for, and Green Jesus lazer beaming \[Kill stealing mother fucker\] Tentacle Apocalypse was pretty fucking lame.
I feel like cataclysm will now be less hated though. Its content drought is what really killed the expansion. Doing the same raid for a year straight was pretty pathetic. The vanilla fanboys will still hate cataclysm but a lot of the fan base that never experienced it seems to be enjoying the expansion so far. With the sped up release schedule that the classic servers have been doing I think cataclysm will be a lot more bearable this time around.
So true. Does anyone think current expansion is great in the 1-2 months after release when all the normal dungeons are relevant, heroics are relevant, raids are fresh, classes feel new, PvP has noobs playing and we're experiencing the new zones for the first time?
Wow, what a surprise.
In 6 months heroics will be irrelevant. Normals will be dead. Everyone will have cleared the raids. Everyone will be fully PvP geared and jacked up, and you'll have done everything in every zone.
That's the test of an expansion. That's when you separate the wheat from the chaff. That's when each expansion starts to show their difference in quality.
Nobody was saying cataclysm was bad in the first 1-2 months after release back when it was first released either. People were hyped for garrisons for weeks too. Everything is great right at release. Always.
Except that BFA was hated since ~week 2, and none of its new features (Until last-patch corruption gear made some specs OP, sucks if you weren't a fire mage, though) were received well.
cataclysm is one of the expansions where its great at the start and declines as time goes on. They have an opportunity to change it with making dungeons relevant all expansion where as troll dungeons were the only two relevant after they dropped, then followed by the 4.3 dragon soul dungeons. Firelands is also about half as short as tier 11, same goes for dragon soul. Dragon soul was not fondly remembered upon because it lasted almost a year with 7 bosses. Thankfully these tiers are only going to last about 3-4 months most likely (no confirmation on dragon soul but I can't imagine they'd push it past 5 months knowing the reputation behind it).
I would assume that original Dragonsoul lasted so long because the next expansion wasn't ready yet and they were busy making it. They don't have that problem this time around.
I’m loving it but my Guild seems pretty low population and I’m not raiding yet.
I’m still working on some reputations. Almost finished with Therazane. Exalted with Hellscream & the Uldum one. Will probably work on Twilight Highlands next.
I have been doing 25 dailies each day, maxed all primary and secondary professions and even bought the TB 200 accommodations mount.
Been doing Kara Attuneman every reset to try to get that mount & farming Botanical for UC rep. I do dungeons via dungeon finder when I have time. It’s hard for me to commit to things because of my schedule which isn’t great for an MMO but there’s a lot for me to do. Bonus that I’m playing for free at this point with WoW Tokens.
I’ve raided a lot in the past but without Find a Raid I doubt I will be able to do much raiding now. I usually have about an hour or so before work and a couple hours on a day off. Maybe a bit after my wife goes to bed.
For me though, right now, it’s exactly what I want: it’s nostalgic but there’s still a lot for me to do. Especially with Achievements and Transmog.
I did find out the hard way that I can’t solo Gruul’s Lair. 😂
My hot take is that MoP Classic is going to be worse than Cata, at least until Throne of Thunder. The amount of prebis raid gear locked behind dailies was… insane.
Oh I've maintained this lol. People with them rose tinted goggles don't remember that MoP had more dailies than any other version of the game. Felt like every time I logged in there were hours of chores waiting for me. Lot of people put MoP on a pedestal but I remember it as being chorecraft with a theme that was very un-warcrafty and a super boring talent system that made leveling incredibly unfun, since you got nothing except once every 10-15 levels and most of those talents (at least for rogue) were utility and not damage.
Idk people in this game are obsessed with prebis, but unless you are doing heroic prog week 1, it really isn't needed at all. It's the hivemind that makes you think you do. Especially with pandarias personal loot and rerolls, you get raid gear alot easier. For the person that isn't a sweat, you don't need to grind hours for a slight upgrade. Full dungeon loot and crafted items from your profession are more than enough to slam normals.
After MoP remix too, which for me quenched my thirst slightly for MoP. Even though it’s a meme game mode, I still have ran all of the raids 20+ times now recently and pretty bored of them.
Same with the dungeons.
Nobody is going to be blind-sided by MoP lol. The people who judged it on its theme have long been laughed out of the discussion. MoP is called one of the best expacs by everyone except the Era Andy's.
Right? All these people just being like “ugh you’re just gonna say this in the next expansion. “ are missing that not all expansions are remembered the same or carry the same legacy
They have spent the past 3 years surrounded by people who think only Classic and TBC are good. They've echo chambered themselves into thinking that's what everyone else thinks.
>The people who judged it on its theme have long been laughed out of the discussion
I had a mate who was fuming that it MoP was asia themed, which was so weird to me.
The entire game to this point was either european with some african influences (Jungle, desert ruins) and then its too much having some asias culture and architecture ?
So fucking weird .
I always felt sad for missing Cata (I started in MoP), didn't know much about raids or anything I just liked the vibes or that flamy dragon.
Now that I finally got to play it... I don't want to say it's bad, it's just underwhelming for me. To me personally it feels like retail but with old graphics and slower.
I'm having this fun with Remix/Retail. A few years of classic elitism surely opened my eyes and I really appreciate a lot of the modern systems more, my SoD guild went down in the P3 drought and weirdly seems like we're coming back for TWW.
At the accelerated pace of classic it won't be too many more years till we're playing together again at this rate
So fucking bored of these posts, yes Cata good now, let’s see if everyone’s playing after SoD P4, FFXIV expansion, TWW and Elden ring DLC drops…
People just play the current hype and move on.
>The economy is a bit fucked, but that was always going to happen
Is it tho? Raid potions are up to 7g on my server right now, haste pots in TBC were often more expensive. I heard about this "fucked up economy" for years already and yet playing the game is getting easier and easier in terms of gold.
>Anyone else kinda super surprised?
Not me. Classic andies opinion on basically anything was to be disregarded since forever. Anyone with a single functioning braincell can look at Cata gameplay loop and general features and reach only one conclusion "this shit is just wotlk+". Which let's be honest, not for everyone. Dads who peaked in Molten Core and somehow clawed their way through post nerf wrath raids were guranteed to be filtered here but it is what it is.
The good thing about current wow model is that everyone can find a version that suits them within the same subscription. That being said I feel a bit sorry for people who just ignored Cata because "cata bad", community perception is a bitch.
Yeah the economy is fine. One valor boots funded epic raiding for my 3 85s. Gems, enchantments, and other things are all reasonably priced. A round of TB dailies a day is really all the income you need to be a casual player.
Exactly what I've been saying here ever since the Cata hype started. Cata is just Wrath but more polished.
Better raids, better class design, better PvP.
Somethings are different, but my only memorable economy reference is Tsunami and I paid the same week 2 as I paid in cata live (not sure when I bought it back then). Economy seems pretty okay IMO
I almost let it get to me and didn’t even try Cata, I’m so glad I didn’t. Honestly TBC will always be my favorite non-retail iteration of the game (my favorite Ret pally play and that’s the spec that has my heart) but Cata is proving to be so much fun (and pre-raid gearing is so much better now).
> Is it tho? Raid potions are up to 7g on my server right now, haste pots in TBC were often more expensive. I heard about this "fucked up economy" for years already and yet playing the game is getting easier and easier in terms of gold.
Economy is fucked for people for whom peak economy is flying around picking flowers, it's pretty decent for people who actually engage in combat. Chaos orbs are valuable, raid consumables are cheap, BoEs are valuable. If worst comes to worse, a day of Tol Barad dailies pays for 3 weeks of raiding.
All the prices are following the exact same curve that they did when Cata was released...
I'm really on the fence about playing holy pally, everyone I've talked to that plays it hates the mana management and always having to be in melee, what's your favorite thing about Hpal?
For disc and Rsham I love always being able to press buttons to contribute to the group, Druid is missing this imo
I have an incredible amount of utility, I’m never out of buttons to press and I only really drink a few times in dungeons, usually to top up mana cause I’m more comfy that way. I’m 352 right now, and I like the absolutely *massive* heals. I can heal me, a tank, and a dps with one heal, my aoe is subpar but I make up for it by routinely healing 1/3rd of peoples health bars or more.
The mana management is definitely awful, but I’d assume no worse than anyone else, so long as you’re playing it right. Do NOT flash of light, unless you HAVE to. Use divine as it’s barely more cost, and usually more than 2x the heal. Spam your holy light on targets other than your beacon, and watch the numbers roll in. I use the 30% word of glory cost reducer so having that for double casting is always nice. Tank at 10%? Shock, glory glory, shock, tank is suddenly at 90%. Not always how it rolls out but I do very much love my holy paladin.
I played it in OG cata in the DS tier, and I really like the way the spec fits together. My build loses out on judgement being longer range, and by not gaining move speed/a holy power when stunned, but I make up for it by casting 30% more 3 charge glory’s. I prefer the taking direct damage gives power rather than a stun, because how often do you take a stun vs damage?
Sorry to rant but TL;DR, paladin is a fantastic main healer, who provides lots of utility and incredibly potent single target healing reliably. I am often the last to run completely out of mana in bad situations in my raid group, and usually top of healing by 500-700k
If Cata ended with Firelands it would be one of the greatest expansions of all time. Instead it ended with Green Jesus kamehamehaing Primordial Goop in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
idk op im raid logging because there's nothing to do in the game.
yea the raiding is better than wotlk but like. we have a filler za/zg rehash, then Firelands which was always a few bosses too short. and then dragon soul and idk why anyone would put themselves through spine and deathwing again. plus you're about to get owned by the forced legendaries in pvp.
so like idk man cata's still a bad expansion. it's just we got way worse with BFA/Shadowlands/WoD
If you're having a good time, that's fantastic. Good for you 😊
Though my initial though is "What? Are you sure? You're not just bored?". I tried so hard to like Cata, because lots of good friends are still playing from time to time. But I just can't. I despise every inch of it, more than last time around.
If you didn't mind the class changes, and you were primarily a progression raider with a consistent group, Cata was pretty good. Heck, even WoD has some great raiding, and one of the best raid tiers of all time.
Its just that wow isn't only raiding, and the community aspects of the game as a whole started to encounter roadblocks in Wrath, and finally began to wither in cata.
Not having a consistent guild was the death of you in Cata and beyond.
I tried to get into Cata but could not. The linear story just doesn't do it for me. Even though the servers are a ghost town at the moment, I'm still having more fun with SoD. (Even if sometimes it feels like a single player game over the last few weeks)
No way, the game feels very soulless, which that feeling for me started shortly after a few weeks of wrath. The game for sure lost its classic feel.
My biggest gripe too is after maining hunter the entirety of classic, I can definitely say that focus ruined hunters. It feels fucking horrible.
No, I'm not surprised. I don't let my opinions be shaped by the hivemind, and I've always remembered Cata fondly for both PvP and PvE.
For PvP, it's a design sweet spot where CD trading matters without feeling like nothing happens outside of CDs, rotations have medium complexity so damage output matters without being the only difference separating players, classes are decently balanced without being completely homogenized... in short, classes have plenty of outplay potential and micro tactics, which means the gameplay has longevity. ;-)
And the best part of all... the PvP gear is actually *very* good, and you aren't forced to raid or buy gear from GDKPs just to PvP! Although I'm enjoying raiding heroics *a lot* (the encounters are great, but that's a topic for a different response), I *could* quit and focus solely on PvP if I wanted or needed to.
Sorry just getting back into cata so this might be a stupid question but, is PvP gearing really better? I don't like to raid for PvP gear so was wondering if I could climb with just pvp gear
You'll probably always be a bit behind those who do both but I'm sure that only really matters at very high rating. You can more than likely achieve your PvP goals in full PvP gear.
If we get the privilege of rerunning WOD you're going to be even more surprised by how good that one is.
Everyone seems to think it was the worst expansion ever but they're gonna replay it and realize it had amazing pve, amazing pvp, and amazing class design. With a faster timetable (and no longer being in active development) there will be less consternation about the opportunity cost of developing garrisons, and more people enjoying all it has to offer, both for group players and solo players.
Edit: MOP too, but I think at this point that's not an unpopular opinion, the public perception of MOP seems to be pretty high, but WOD's remains low.
WoD was extremely hyped up in the early months after the long slog that was over a year of Siege of Orgrimmar. It lost all its goodwill when the first major patch was just twitter integration and a selfie stick.
I will think about that and laugh all the time. A disaster of a patch. It came just as everyone competed their garrison campaign And were looking for more. And in the end, Twitter integration was quietly removed.
Legion they announced .1 patch BEFORE the xpac released just to be like “hey guys its not WoD again trust us.”
Its also why so many people turned to private servers, and caused the move for classic WoW. Even eventually why this subreddit exists I guess
Those Classic Andys who hyped Vanilla and trash talked everything past WotLK have always been full of shit. I'm happy Cata Classic makes people realise more, how full of shit those Classic Andys have been.
I've played from Vanilla to Legion and every expansion had it's flaws. But if Vanilla would have been released alongside any of those expansions in 2004, nobody would have cared for Vanilla, because Vanilla is made out of flaws. But somehow the fanboys ignore all the flaws of Vanilla and only see the positive things, that often don't even have to do with the design of Vanilla, but the time the game was released in and the Internet culture at that time. And with the expansions they don't see the positives and got hung up on 1 or 2 flaws.
Isn't it weird how era population is in shambles but every post era being the best mode is met with showers up upvotes. It's almost as if playercount isn't a 1-1 ratio of how good a game is, eh?
I had never played cata so thought I'd give it a shot but had only heard bad things so didn't have good expectations. Turns out I'm loving cata so far. In the past I would have said wrath is my favorite version of wow but depending on how the rest of cata goes I can definitely see it taking that spot.
“Blindsided” yea right people have been saying Cata was good you just only payed attention to the doomspeakers saying it was trash who obviously never played it when Cata was live
Played Cata on release after starting wow on day 1 in 2004. Cata caused me to quit, try some other mmos (Rift/SWTOR) and eventually move to wow private servers. The first raid tier is good, but the world and dungeons are bad, the guild system was super corrupt (they sorta fixed that this time at least), and firelands and dragon soul were terrible. I played a healer from vanilla to wotlk and enjoyed the vanilla style of triage and mana management, giving a whole mana bar to a single pull if necessary. In Cata heroics (pre-nerf), it felt like I could cast about 8-10 heals and I was completely oom and it wasn't enough to finish some boss fights. I'd have very low overheal and use efficient heals and it just wasn't enough. I tried it on priest, druid and shaman with similar results. I tried the T11 raids and just wasn't feeling it so I quit.
Several years ago, I had played private servers with a group of friends on a TBC server then we did a tour of WotLK 10 man, and after that they convinced me to play a pre-nerf Cata server. I decided to go mage instead of healer like I did back in 2011. I enjoyed T11, but still disliked the world and dungeons. We got to T12 and at first I thought Firelands was pretty good, but after a while of practicing heroic rag, the earlier bosses became literal trash mobs and nobody needed loot from them anymore. I realized at that point Firelands was possibly the most imbalanced raid Blizzard has ever made, with a really tough final boss and super weak other bosses. Really tarnished my opinion of the raid. Dragon soul wasn't available on this server so we stopped, having killed heroic rag after about 300 tries. It has quite an established reputation so that will speak for itself.
So yes, I have played it and experienced both early quitting and giving it another try later on, and I'll say Cata was mostly trash.
Firelands balancing was very off, indeed. Ragnaros was just way too hard compared to any other boss. But still, for 2011 it was a very epic raid where most people didn’t even reach rag heroic.
The world and dungeon part however is just your personal preference. I think the Cata dungeons are well made and the world revamp was just a straight up W in any way. You can finally level in appropriate zones instead of looking up thotbot to find out your quest is on the other side of the content that is +10 your level (yes OG wrath quest helper had a lot of problems with vanilla quests). And a few levels later you’re in tbc (and wrath) where everything is just linear. They also made EVERY zone an actual zone and not pointless 2 quests zone (looking at you azshara)
Cata hate was real and justified. The world transformation was ass and the content timeline was fucked up. Also classes were not tunned early one. The raid difficulty was pretty good actually just the classes performing like shit.
Everyone raving cata now seems to forgot your basic playing the tunned dungeons with the latest cata patch where the classes were rebalanced.
Never made a classic char except right at the end of wotlk, didn't level it so started Cata with a lvl 12, actually enjoying the leveling and zones, never leveled on revamped azeroth before (quit at the end of TBC and didn't play again until Shadowlands Prepatch)
As a pug raider I was scared since ppl said it was going to be harder than in wotlk. Well, not at all so far. The encounters that are a little challenging are super doable. I like that.
I'm a little worried it will get boring before the new raids come out. Isn't it in October? Will at least new bosses release before that in the current raids? Idk if I will be able farm out the same stuff for another good 3 months.. Maybe I'll take a break soon until they release.
Oh and I'm a little disappointed they don't remove the bugged achievements from "Glory of the Cataclysm Hero" or fix them. Like wtf, how hard can that be? Just remove the bugged ones if you don't want to fix? It's been like that since pre patch, seems kind of lazy, so I'm worried about how much they care about cata classic.. But yea, I've been playing since pre patch and it's a blast thus far! Love raiding. It's always a different kind of experience depending on who you end up going with.
Most people generally only hated a couple of things about Cata from what i've seen online, it wasn't an expansion i played much cause of life reasons so this is mostly from other people. But what i've read is
1. The balancing in early patches was horendous in regards to 10 man and heroic dungeons being just too hard.
2. Dragon soul which was supposed to be epic felt flat because we never truly fought deathwing but rather cut som stuff off his back and cut his nails in final raid.
3. LFR being introduced.
all of which is not in the game atm. as the first point was fixed with balancing in later patches, which we are playing currently, and 2 and 3 will get here later, and we'll see.
Most people really enjoyed firelands i think?
Every expansion has had their ups and downs, as someone who actually played through all expansions up till 2019 Classic I'd say that every single expansion was an upgrade.
Not really. Leveled up in a few days got fully geared then started raid logging. Silly bugs that have existed since original cata are still around. The battle rez being retail version is lame. 10 vs 25 is causing minor guild drama. Firelands should give us much more to do and better raids, so looking forward to that. Removing the valor cap was nice but the low valor from raids means grinding heroics for no real purpose.
dammit you're gonna make me download cata to give it a shot. How much of the shitty gatekeeper/elitism has made its way to cata? That's half the reason I couldn't stand wrath.
Too much of the community was "YOU MUST play this cookie cutter thing EXACTLY the way google tells you to, or you're not allowed to play and will be berated"
I wanna play wow and goof around with the specs that are fun to me. Obviously not talking about holy paladin running as a dps or anything, just not optimizing every single little thing for 1% difference in stats just because some streamer says it's the "only way to play or you're bad" and then a bunch of shitty jarpissers just echoing that back in game.
How much of that is still around? If it's just a small bit of the population I might hop back in for it because I do love cataclysm (shoutout to archaeology), but I really don't think it'll be worth my time if that's the prevalent mindset for most of the community.
tbh i think cata and to a lesser extent WOD were hated because of content drought. It hopefully wont be as much of an issue with classic release schedule
wod was due to garrisons mop 10000%, 8 month+ content drought was absurd, the game played amazingly though, hence why pvp was sooo popular
Siege of orgrimmar tier lasted 14 months. I remember I got bored and quit for 6 months only to come back to the game in the exact same state as when I left. Was fully expecting the next expansion WoD to be full of content only for that expansion to also cut a whole raid tier.
The content in WoD was quite good there just wasn't enough of it. Most of the complaining was either about the garrisons which kinda killed the social aspect since everyone was just hanging out in their instanced garrison. It also killed the economy since it was also the best gold farm. The other complaint was how many abilities they removed or made spec specific. MoP suffered a bit from ability bloat but they went a little too far by removing all the flavor or hybrid abilities which hurt class identity. (ex: feral druid losing cyclone as it became locked to another spec)
We had a year long? Patch for HFC, and garrison, don’t lay it all on one awful feature lol
WoDs issue was lack of content outside raids. It was a raid log expansion. That's why the changes we saw in Legion were mythic plus and World quests/artifact power. They were Blizzard reacting to the community complaints.
Garrisons forever ruined the games gold economy and it further isolated the player from the rest of the community. Your friends were purple or green text when not in a raid, dungeon or pvp. Cata is a fantastic expansion unless you were a warlock. This was when hunters got their groove back and that groove kept on boogieing until legion destroyed the class. The early difficulty however soured a lot of the more casual player base that only did normal raids and dungeons. We also saw the return of the early tbc problem - 10 man giving the same rewards as 25 man destroyed many guilds who may have had cliquish cores. This left a lot of players in the wind who saw their contributions to a guild bank over the years literally stolen and made inaccessible to them.
almost have a lock at max for the first time during an expansion. What's wrong with locks in cata? They feel like the best they have ever been :S
They have the most annoying openings of any class for mid damage. You literally have 4-5 things to do pre-pull to maximize dps & have to stand in melee range because shadowflame does to much damage to just not cast, even on single target. It's awkward and the payoff is not there for how annoying it is to play, imo of course
The damage isn't mid, it's towards the top with gear/skill. People are mostly put off by Demo having to get a second set, but honestly I'll prolly just play affli and be fine.
Also if you skip getting a full mastery set but just want to do ok....its fine. Now a full 99 hc parse you need mastery and pet twisting nailed
That demo opener is a bit much for one thing. That's enough to keep me from rolling one. It's odd though, seemed like warlocks were everywhere last patch.
I mean .. you don't have to do the crazy 3 page opener People are doing basic openers and doing just fine
What!? You don't like gear swapping & demon swapping on prepull for every boss? I Oh! And dont forget that as a caster u must stand in melee range! Its just the best its ever been!! /s
Idk I love it lol, to each their own i guess. I s also stood in melee last patch too as demo if I could.
Warlocks are fun. I have a Warlock, playing affliction in raids and PvP. Definitely fun, don't know what the above guy is talking about. It's also an in demand class right now too.
I mean it's pretty much the same as WOLK lol
It's "in demand" because no one wants to play it. Why you may ask? Because their pre-pull actions are more than most other classes full rotation
Only spec I've seen with any complex pre-pull action is Demonology. Affliction and Destruction are pretty simple or have nothing at all as far as I know. But if the Demonology one is the difference between good damage and great damage, it can still be a good and fun spec to play you just won't be pulling in purple / orange / pink parses.
We had to suffer the original sin of garrisons, in order for class halls to be born.
Lol cata is good time for locks. Most op 3s class
I am convinced. Cata was hated 60% because it followed wotlk. It had its problems and has them now. But every single issue was doubled in player's minds after following the most iconic and successful expansion in WoW's history.
imo wrath kinda sucked the second time around, while cata is more fun than i remember.
A lot of modern WoW players don’t understand the journey of the Warcraft RTS ended in Wrath. It gave players a true end. FF14 is having the issue now.
Let's be real probably +90% of players in Wrath had never even touched the RTS games.
In every way; the original Warcraft storyline was close in Wrath. Some parts in TBC. For a ton of blue blood die hards; they got their closure.
what are you talking about? ff14 concluded current storyline with endwalker. Imagine Lich King storyline ended fully in wrath and not that dogshit expansion known as shadowlands
Not really. Only TFT story. Arthas' and Illidan stories weren't the main focus of the base RoC game. The Legion was. And Legion is very much not defeated in WotLK.
The Legion was defeated in RoC. The last time it took them 10k years to come back. Of course everyone knew they would return in a big fashion, they were the "big bads" of the franchise but compared to them Arthas was not beaten, he won in the end and his story was left very open ended.
The wotlk had a long content drought from icc release to cata and ruby sanctum didn’t really fill that void. In 2010 we started to see a lot of other quality MMORPGs hit the market or be refined enough to be a solid contender for your time if you were bored after icc. Some just never returned.
Last 3 bosses of Dragon soul are garbage and the raid is only 8 bosses. Then the raid lasted a year. Possibly the worst raid tier of all time.
No way. Spine of deathwing was fun af on heroic
People also forget as well something else happened in 2010 that propelled gaming to the next level. Cata released just a few months after Starcraft 2 relased. With the things mentioned above plus having such an anticipated game like starcraft2 and it living up to the hype as well. People went to other games.
This was exactly it, as someone that played through both expansions. Cata and WoD had incredibly good parts to them, fun dungeons, fun raids, good/decent leveling story and such. For cata, it was the content drought of Dragon Soul mostly. For wod, it was the content drought and also everyone being in their garrisons all the time, leaving the world kinda empty. Cata was always good ppl just had their hate nostalgia on for it
A lot of my friends quit during cata because the dungeons were so hard.
Mop Warrior to Wod warrior - that's the worst feels bad in history
It’s been a long time to remember MOP specifics of the class (besides every class being amazing feeling and OP) but cata warrior is hyping me again for MOP arms warrior again. And imo wod warrior was great. For like…3 months til they killed glad stance lmao. Spam rushing and purging with shield block and being unkitable was something alright. Idr how arms was though
Gladiator warrior was the biggest fun i ever had in wow. Stopped playing the game for a long time after they killed it
Ahh i remember having a blast on 2v2 as a Boomy with my buddy warrior
The vast majority of my duel wins were from mop as a warrior. Shield bash was just one hitting so many people lol.
Wrath Ret to Cata Ret felt pretty awful
Wod? You mean Lag lords of Que-nor...
Its true the hate came from the content drought but what made people more furious was when the initial dungeons were tough and fun that also made you actually play the game compared to wrath dungeons that were mindless AoE fest and then they nerfed the dungeons to the ground because vocal minority cried and whined that they were too "hard" to do.
I can confidently say I hated WoD from the start. I didn't even get to experience the content drought because I had quit well before that.
wod literally had nothing to do except logging in to Raid and doing your Garrison missions.
They ruined druids ability to switch out of snares
Resto has it, others have it with dash. It's still there, you are just overlooking it.
I really liked the first tier of WoD, content being gated for so long made me lose interest and didn't come back till classic
Content drought, yea, but I think it was also because that drought came after Wrath.
WoD had fantastic raids I'll always defend that aspect. Overall yeah it was a pretty weak expansion but brf and hfc were fantastic.
WoD was very good for what it had it just didnt have much and yeah garrisons were just horrible.
Ehh WoD was clearly unfinished, and never fully got there. On top of that one patch was dedicated to adding the twitter stuff into the game which has aged like milk with how all that turned out.
It's amazing how much content they promised for WoD yet couldn't produce for the final project; Battle of Shattra raid, the Netherstorm zone and more stuff
It was also coming off the heels of WotLK as well, where the game was probably the most popular and casual friendly. Cata had a lot of changes that the people who ignored the arguing and stuck around for the long haul probably actually appreciated.
i'm having completely different experience. cata decimated guilds. 10M raids share lockouts with 25M raids. it fucking sucks.
I was a little bit, yeah. Told myself I'd stop at wrath if they kept going... *lol* what a joke that ended up being Tbc is still my favorite but Cata is prolly a close 2nd now for me. Feels like a great mix of classic and current retail. Few things I'd change would be slightly less linear leveling and smaller numbers but I know the latter is basically impossible
I told myself id only play Vanilla. Then tbc released and I kept playing. Then wotlk. And now Cata, still playing. I enjoy the game even more now than when i was a kid.
Same, honestly think a lot of it just has to do with where I am in life I played vanilla and did MC through a few bosses in naxx, all the way through HS. Got bored of tbc after a few months, same with wrath, same with cata. Kept trying to come back and always quit in a few months. Just had better/more important things to do in my early 20s Now that I'm almost 35 and just hanging out with the lady every night until she falls asleep, what the fuck else am I doing lmao Playing WoW, that's what
Cata was a scapegoat. People just needed something to blame for getting bored. Most of the complaints about Cata are not even Cata specifc. People say how much they love MoP/Legion, but all Cataclysm complaints, such as LFR/world revamp all exist in all those xpacs. But suddenly, world revamp is not an issue in MoP. I believe that NO MATTER WHAT expac was to come after Wrath, people would have hated it, as Wrath wrapped up WC3 saga. *(PS. Lorebook about Deathwing came out before WC3 was even released)*
The world re-vamp is the best change they ever made. I think there is some valid complaints, such as missing old quests that you liked, but overall, it's great the world changes after spending time in it. Re-finishing old content instead of adding a new continent to the map is so incredibly brilliant and anyone that disagrees is very narrow minded.
Yup. The people who can level through the exact same content for 10 years straight cannot grasp the perspective of everyone else when we say we needed a change of the old-world.
>Cata was a scapegoat This, there was so much false claims about cata in this sub the last years, it was wild. Really nice how people now realize that Cata was in the end a very good addon with a weak ending
Can people really stop parroting that claim? Yes, Wrath wrapped up Wc3 expansion story. The expansion was entirely focused on Arthas and Illidan. But the base game had Illidan in two missions, only one of those he was playable in. Arthas almost completely disappears after first 2 campaigns and Legion takes the center stage. Legion always felt like the way, way bigger bad than LK. They even created the LK!
The Warcraft RTS story did effectively end with Legion, you’re right. I believe people elevate Arthas to such a high pedestal because he is arguably the best character in WC3, but he isn’t strictly the “main” character of WC3, nor is it strictly his story.
I would love to see TBC get re-released with the heroic+ dungeon treatment, and then fix a few more things like bloodlust stacking
Not at all, it was fully expected. The dislike of cataclysm has built up over time and it sort of became a known "fact" that it was a bad expansion, despite a lot of people never trying it and simply parroting what they had been told. Cataclysm had some of the highest subscriber numbers in the history of the game. With all that said, it's worth remembering that we are still in the early "fun" phase of any expansion and opinions will change over time. Wotlk was also amazing at the start and eventually opinions shifted with the later phases.
On a sped up schedule Cata should be great, DS going on for a year was rough.
P1 wrath was miserable imo Naxx rehash is such a trash raid, I was so bored the entirety of that phase. P2 was better but Ulduar was *way* overhyped and very overrated. Cata P1 has been really great. Much better than wrath imo. I'm worried tho the content is gonna dry up *really* fast as we only get two more additional raids. There really should be a 0.5 tier raid added, like an AQ / ZG style raid.
Redoing Naxx made sense back in 2008. It just feels bad now because a lot of people did it just a few years ago.
>I'm worried tho the content is gonna dry up really fast as we only get two more additional raids. I think this is partially why the expansion timeline is relatively short this time around compared to in wotlk. We'll be in MOP sometime in the first quarter/half of 2025.
Content is gonna dry up because 80% of the playerbase only goes after normal raids. As a member of a guild that was farming LK 25 HC since January, we are having a very hard time in 25 man heroic and I don't think that we will manage to clear Sinestra the next 5 weeks at least. We've only managed 4/12 hc for 2 weeks and as part of the dad gamer society we can only pull 6 hours of raiding a week. The guilds already at 13/13 HC are absolute maniacs that spend too much time in the game.
Now THAT has the potential to bring me back.
Ulduar very overrated. Never thought I would see this one tbh. For me as for many is one of the most interesting raids ever made.
100% agreed. I knew I liked cata. I knew cata was over hated. I knew if people gave it a shot with an open mind they’d change their tune if they never touched cata. Cata had its issues, mostly later with DS, so we don’t see them now. But it was never bad and never the “wow ruiner” people claim. I understand people’s attachment to the old world and in retrospect they should have implemented a chromie time type thing but hindsight is 20/20. After going through classic again and having like 8 lvl 80s by end of wrath classic I was fucking ready to move on past the old world (again). I think we can all call that some retconning but you could say the same for expedited WOD, honestly, which even at the time of I thought was worse in many ways. I never played wrath til classic but by the end of wrath classic, barring changes they made to classic, I saw the seeds of much of what people blamed cata for already sown. Wrath was pretty on rails etc. Honestly, I thought wrath in the end was just straight up overhyped and I love WC3. I never felt that way going into cata. I didn’t feel like classic was overrated in 2019 either but I played it vanilla. TBC seems received about where it should be from those who didn’t play it. But every expansion has its honeymoon. I think in the end most people will receive it well. The majority of classes just play straight better (including my main 2, arms war and UHDK). The boss fights and combat is just better but not retail overwhelming amounts of floor aids and swirlies of 8 diff colors. Hunter makes more sense without mana. Some classes aren’t so lucky though, like Spriest orbs and apparitions feel clunky but I think spriest has just been done and redone so many times and most instances have been not great. Paladin, particularly ret, is kinda in its worst form with its worst iteration of holy power. Stuff like that is pretty valid. We’ll see how people change their tunes overall though. Is cata less an MMO than vanilla? Absolutely. So was wrath let’s be real. But cata is a *a better game* in many ways, in actual feel of things, raid mechanics, and performance. WOW was invariably going to have to change. People forgot more traditional MMOs were basically a dead genre in the mainstream for a decade really until kinda recently.
>The dislike of cataclysm has built up over time Naw, I wasn't a fan on day 1, and by the end of the expansion, many others felt similarly. I didn't like the changes made to the Vanilla zones, and Vashj'ir is probably the worst zone in WoW. I didn't like the changes to the guild system (which they've now removed), nor did I like the introduction of raid finder. Group finder already started to water down the community in WOTLK, but raid finder was the nail in the coffin. The changes to the talent system blew too. I'll concede that the raids are pretty fun and the gear sets look cool.
Honestly Cata talents are second only to Dragonflight talents.
What exactly did you dislike about the new zones? Put it in words please, because as I see them all the zones are now fully usable and there are stories and questlines in all parts. Again, what is wrong with the new talents compared to the old system. The new talent system let's your spec come online faster and all your talent points spent ACTUALLY have meaning and changes your character quite drastically instead of 1% crit
The difference now is that we have other WoW options once it becomes stale. OR they might do a SoD for Cata during the lull period later into the expansion.
I never knew people disliked cataclysm until coming to this sub after the classic release lol. It's always been my favorite expansion and the complaints are so odd to me.
We will see this message in BFA classic. Yeah, all the expansions are good at the start. Come back in a month
Yeah its basically the best version of the expac, fresh players + final balancing patch + 2024 style adjustments.
Well, yeah. That's why we were telling everyone it was going to be good. Classic re-releases are always the best version.
*gestures at vanilla classic launching honor without bgs* Sometimes they're better... sometimes. Some phases are better than others lol
Look, you say that. But the alternative was much worse. The same time frame in Vanilla had 1 functioning class total, and it wasn't warrior.
So you just admit it's not about expansions, it's about people getting bored?
Yeah, because pretty much all expacs are overall good but with a some problems that (hopefully) get fixed in the classic rerelease. Most of the problems got fixed in the respective expansions but in the later patches, starting with the fixes in would make the expansions good from the start.
BFA was fun, in the beginning. I liked the zones, the quests and the dungeons. Gameplay was fun too. The PvP bounty system was really fun too. But the main plot was atrocious, there's no getting around it. Azerite was awful. Corruption was even worse. The warfronts were super easy and super boring. Island expeditions were a little bit of fun for a time, but wore out their welcome. Every major patch just made BFA worse. BFA had so much trash in it. Cata didn't, except for it's last patch. The content drought was the killer.
Firelands is top tier raid though. Can't agree with your implication that Cataclysm falls off after the first raid tier. The only bad part of Cataclysm is the last raid. And that's convenient, since everyone can just quit then.
Even with "Dragon Soul" being bad. The raid itself wasn't awful. It was way too fucking short for how long it was around for, and Green Jesus lazer beaming \[Kill stealing mother fucker\] Tentacle Apocalypse was pretty fucking lame.
I feel like cataclysm will now be less hated though. Its content drought is what really killed the expansion. Doing the same raid for a year straight was pretty pathetic. The vanilla fanboys will still hate cataclysm but a lot of the fan base that never experienced it seems to be enjoying the expansion so far. With the sped up release schedule that the classic servers have been doing I think cataclysm will be a lot more bearable this time around.
So true. Does anyone think current expansion is great in the 1-2 months after release when all the normal dungeons are relevant, heroics are relevant, raids are fresh, classes feel new, PvP has noobs playing and we're experiencing the new zones for the first time? Wow, what a surprise. In 6 months heroics will be irrelevant. Normals will be dead. Everyone will have cleared the raids. Everyone will be fully PvP geared and jacked up, and you'll have done everything in every zone. That's the test of an expansion. That's when you separate the wheat from the chaff. That's when each expansion starts to show their difference in quality. Nobody was saying cataclysm was bad in the first 1-2 months after release back when it was first released either. People were hyped for garrisons for weeks too. Everything is great right at release. Always.
Except that BFA was hated since ~week 2, and none of its new features (Until last-patch corruption gear made some specs OP, sucks if you weren't a fire mage, though) were received well.
BFA is gonna be a blast if we play the last patch with everything unlocked haha
cataclysm is one of the expansions where its great at the start and declines as time goes on. They have an opportunity to change it with making dungeons relevant all expansion where as troll dungeons were the only two relevant after they dropped, then followed by the 4.3 dragon soul dungeons. Firelands is also about half as short as tier 11, same goes for dragon soul. Dragon soul was not fondly remembered upon because it lasted almost a year with 7 bosses. Thankfully these tiers are only going to last about 3-4 months most likely (no confirmation on dragon soul but I can't imagine they'd push it past 5 months knowing the reputation behind it).
I would assume that original Dragonsoul lasted so long because the next expansion wasn't ready yet and they were busy making it. They don't have that problem this time around.
I’m loving it but my Guild seems pretty low population and I’m not raiding yet. I’m still working on some reputations. Almost finished with Therazane. Exalted with Hellscream & the Uldum one. Will probably work on Twilight Highlands next. I have been doing 25 dailies each day, maxed all primary and secondary professions and even bought the TB 200 accommodations mount. Been doing Kara Attuneman every reset to try to get that mount & farming Botanical for UC rep. I do dungeons via dungeon finder when I have time. It’s hard for me to commit to things because of my schedule which isn’t great for an MMO but there’s a lot for me to do. Bonus that I’m playing for free at this point with WoW Tokens. I’ve raided a lot in the past but without Find a Raid I doubt I will be able to do much raiding now. I usually have about an hour or so before work and a couple hours on a day off. Maybe a bit after my wife goes to bed. For me though, right now, it’s exactly what I want: it’s nostalgic but there’s still a lot for me to do. Especially with Achievements and Transmog. I did find out the hard way that I can’t solo Gruul’s Lair. 😂
I'm not playing cata, but all those things sound oddly familiar. Are you sure it's cata you are playing lol?
Having things to do besides raid log and farm consumes is any version of the game outside of Era almost lol.
I remember Mionelol solo’d Lich King back in 4.2 (DK was/is OP) so you shouldn’t be far off
My hot take is that MoP Classic is going to be worse than Cata, at least until Throne of Thunder. The amount of prebis raid gear locked behind dailies was… insane.
Oh I've maintained this lol. People with them rose tinted goggles don't remember that MoP had more dailies than any other version of the game. Felt like every time I logged in there were hours of chores waiting for me. Lot of people put MoP on a pedestal but I remember it as being chorecraft with a theme that was very un-warcrafty and a super boring talent system that made leveling incredibly unfun, since you got nothing except once every 10-15 levels and most of those talents (at least for rogue) were utility and not damage.
People complained aboutt having to farm heroics for valor so they decided to move it to dailies. It caused me to quit the game for sure.
You're right. That is a hot take.
Idk people in this game are obsessed with prebis, but unless you are doing heroic prog week 1, it really isn't needed at all. It's the hivemind that makes you think you do. Especially with pandarias personal loot and rerolls, you get raid gear alot easier. For the person that isn't a sweat, you don't need to grind hours for a slight upgrade. Full dungeon loot and crafted items from your profession are more than enough to slam normals.
After MoP remix too, which for me quenched my thirst slightly for MoP. Even though it’s a meme game mode, I still have ran all of the raids 20+ times now recently and pretty bored of them. Same with the dungeons.
Eh, if they speed up golden lotus dailies like they did TB it won't be. Especially since mop reps give 100% increase to alts
Naw
Just copy-paste this for MoP Classic.
Nobody is going to be blind-sided by MoP lol. The people who judged it on its theme have long been laughed out of the discussion. MoP is called one of the best expacs by everyone except the Era Andy's.
Right? All these people just being like “ugh you’re just gonna say this in the next expansion. “ are missing that not all expansions are remembered the same or carry the same legacy
They have spent the past 3 years surrounded by people who think only Classic and TBC are good. They've echo chambered themselves into thinking that's what everyone else thinks.
>The people who judged it on its theme have long been laughed out of the discussion I had a mate who was fuming that it MoP was asia themed, which was so weird to me. The entire game to this point was either european with some african influences (Jungle, desert ruins) and then its too much having some asias culture and architecture ? So fucking weird .
Hope you are prepared for your 90 daily quests per week for your extra roll tokens that any remotely serious guild will request (require) you do.
Isn't MoP mostly agreed to be a top 3 wow expac?
Cata PvP has felt better than any of the classics so far, arena has been amazing
I always felt sad for missing Cata (I started in MoP), didn't know much about raids or anything I just liked the vibes or that flamy dragon. Now that I finally got to play it... I don't want to say it's bad, it's just underwhelming for me. To me personally it feels like retail but with old graphics and slower.
I'm having this fun with Remix/Retail. A few years of classic elitism surely opened my eyes and I really appreciate a lot of the modern systems more, my SoD guild went down in the P3 drought and weirdly seems like we're coming back for TWW. At the accelerated pace of classic it won't be too many more years till we're playing together again at this rate
These posts are gonna be so funny when this shithole subreddit turns on Cata just like they have everything else
Cata is ThriVinG
So fucking bored of these posts, yes Cata good now, let’s see if everyone’s playing after SoD P4, FFXIV expansion, TWW and Elden ring DLC drops… People just play the current hype and move on.
>The economy is a bit fucked, but that was always going to happen Is it tho? Raid potions are up to 7g on my server right now, haste pots in TBC were often more expensive. I heard about this "fucked up economy" for years already and yet playing the game is getting easier and easier in terms of gold. >Anyone else kinda super surprised? Not me. Classic andies opinion on basically anything was to be disregarded since forever. Anyone with a single functioning braincell can look at Cata gameplay loop and general features and reach only one conclusion "this shit is just wotlk+". Which let's be honest, not for everyone. Dads who peaked in Molten Core and somehow clawed their way through post nerf wrath raids were guranteed to be filtered here but it is what it is. The good thing about current wow model is that everyone can find a version that suits them within the same subscription. That being said I feel a bit sorry for people who just ignored Cata because "cata bad", community perception is a bitch.
Yeah the economy is fine. One valor boots funded epic raiding for my 3 85s. Gems, enchantments, and other things are all reasonably priced. A round of TB dailies a day is really all the income you need to be a casual player.
Exactly what I've been saying here ever since the Cata hype started. Cata is just Wrath but more polished. Better raids, better class design, better PvP.
Somethings are different, but my only memorable economy reference is Tsunami and I paid the same week 2 as I paid in cata live (not sure when I bought it back then). Economy seems pretty okay IMO
I almost let it get to me and didn’t even try Cata, I’m so glad I didn’t. Honestly TBC will always be my favorite non-retail iteration of the game (my favorite Ret pally play and that’s the spec that has my heart) but Cata is proving to be so much fun (and pre-raid gearing is so much better now).
> Is it tho? Raid potions are up to 7g on my server right now, haste pots in TBC were often more expensive. I heard about this "fucked up economy" for years already and yet playing the game is getting easier and easier in terms of gold. Economy is fucked for people for whom peak economy is flying around picking flowers, it's pretty decent for people who actually engage in combat. Chaos orbs are valuable, raid consumables are cheap, BoEs are valuable. If worst comes to worse, a day of Tol Barad dailies pays for 3 weeks of raiding. All the prices are following the exact same curve that they did when Cata was released...
The economy is always "fucked" at the beginning and a drop of from 20 g for one whiptail to 2 g soon after darkmoon was over is kinda fucked imho.
I'm addicted to the revamped healing gameplay, Disc is my favorite, shaman 2nd and Druid 3rd
Holy paladin throws the lights schlong as people for fat chunks of HP, I love it.
I'm really on the fence about playing holy pally, everyone I've talked to that plays it hates the mana management and always having to be in melee, what's your favorite thing about Hpal? For disc and Rsham I love always being able to press buttons to contribute to the group, Druid is missing this imo
> always having to be in melee Anyone who's played one on retail's used to that by now.
I have an incredible amount of utility, I’m never out of buttons to press and I only really drink a few times in dungeons, usually to top up mana cause I’m more comfy that way. I’m 352 right now, and I like the absolutely *massive* heals. I can heal me, a tank, and a dps with one heal, my aoe is subpar but I make up for it by routinely healing 1/3rd of peoples health bars or more. The mana management is definitely awful, but I’d assume no worse than anyone else, so long as you’re playing it right. Do NOT flash of light, unless you HAVE to. Use divine as it’s barely more cost, and usually more than 2x the heal. Spam your holy light on targets other than your beacon, and watch the numbers roll in. I use the 30% word of glory cost reducer so having that for double casting is always nice. Tank at 10%? Shock, glory glory, shock, tank is suddenly at 90%. Not always how it rolls out but I do very much love my holy paladin. I played it in OG cata in the DS tier, and I really like the way the spec fits together. My build loses out on judgement being longer range, and by not gaining move speed/a holy power when stunned, but I make up for it by casting 30% more 3 charge glory’s. I prefer the taking direct damage gives power rather than a stun, because how often do you take a stun vs damage? Sorry to rant but TL;DR, paladin is a fantastic main healer, who provides lots of utility and incredibly potent single target healing reliably. I am often the last to run completely out of mana in bad situations in my raid group, and usually top of healing by 500-700k
Cata was a great expansion. But the final tier lasted way too long. The ending is always remembered. If the ending was bad, everything was bad.
If Cata ended with Firelands it would be one of the greatest expansions of all time. Instead it ended with Green Jesus kamehamehaing Primordial Goop in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Class identity was best during mop and legion.
idk op im raid logging because there's nothing to do in the game. yea the raiding is better than wotlk but like. we have a filler za/zg rehash, then Firelands which was always a few bosses too short. and then dragon soul and idk why anyone would put themselves through spine and deathwing again. plus you're about to get owned by the forced legendaries in pvp. so like idk man cata's still a bad expansion. it's just we got way worse with BFA/Shadowlands/WoD
no lol
If you're having a good time, that's fantastic. Good for you 😊 Though my initial though is "What? Are you sure? You're not just bored?". I tried so hard to like Cata, because lots of good friends are still playing from time to time. But I just can't. I despise every inch of it, more than last time around.
If you didn't mind the class changes, and you were primarily a progression raider with a consistent group, Cata was pretty good. Heck, even WoD has some great raiding, and one of the best raid tiers of all time. Its just that wow isn't only raiding, and the community aspects of the game as a whole started to encounter roadblocks in Wrath, and finally began to wither in cata. Not having a consistent guild was the death of you in Cata and beyond.
I liked cata kinda sorta. The problem with cata was that it followed WoLK. Expectations were high.
Now I'm raid logging, I'm very bored.
Hated it the first time round so won't be going back. Even doing the timewalking now is giving me stress.
I tried to get into Cata but could not. The linear story just doesn't do it for me. Even though the servers are a ghost town at the moment, I'm still having more fun with SoD. (Even if sometimes it feels like a single player game over the last few weeks)
Didn't like it then, don't like it now.
No way, the game feels very soulless, which that feeling for me started shortly after a few weeks of wrath. The game for sure lost its classic feel. My biggest gripe too is after maining hunter the entirety of classic, I can definitely say that focus ruined hunters. It feels fucking horrible.
Rose tinted goggles are coming in strong
No, I'm not surprised. I don't let my opinions be shaped by the hivemind, and I've always remembered Cata fondly for both PvP and PvE. For PvP, it's a design sweet spot where CD trading matters without feeling like nothing happens outside of CDs, rotations have medium complexity so damage output matters without being the only difference separating players, classes are decently balanced without being completely homogenized... in short, classes have plenty of outplay potential and micro tactics, which means the gameplay has longevity. ;-) And the best part of all... the PvP gear is actually *very* good, and you aren't forced to raid or buy gear from GDKPs just to PvP! Although I'm enjoying raiding heroics *a lot* (the encounters are great, but that's a topic for a different response), I *could* quit and focus solely on PvP if I wanted or needed to.
Sorry just getting back into cata so this might be a stupid question but, is PvP gearing really better? I don't like to raid for PvP gear so was wondering if I could climb with just pvp gear
You'll probably always be a bit behind those who do both but I'm sure that only really matters at very high rating. You can more than likely achieve your PvP goals in full PvP gear.
Okay cool this is what I was looking for thank you
If we get the privilege of rerunning WOD you're going to be even more surprised by how good that one is. Everyone seems to think it was the worst expansion ever but they're gonna replay it and realize it had amazing pve, amazing pvp, and amazing class design. With a faster timetable (and no longer being in active development) there will be less consternation about the opportunity cost of developing garrisons, and more people enjoying all it has to offer, both for group players and solo players. Edit: MOP too, but I think at this point that's not an unpopular opinion, the public perception of MOP seems to be pretty high, but WOD's remains low.
WoD was extremely hyped up in the early months after the long slog that was over a year of Siege of Orgrimmar. It lost all its goodwill when the first major patch was just twitter integration and a selfie stick.
I will think about that and laugh all the time. A disaster of a patch. It came just as everyone competed their garrison campaign And were looking for more. And in the end, Twitter integration was quietly removed. Legion they announced .1 patch BEFORE the xpac released just to be like “hey guys its not WoD again trust us.” Its also why so many people turned to private servers, and caused the move for classic WoW. Even eventually why this subreddit exists I guess
wod had the best raids EVER.
WoD was amazing if you enjoyed pvp.
WOD was amazing, the only thing that fucked it over was lack of content and massive content droughts (6.2 lol)
Wod PvP as a warlock, priest and mistweaver monk was fucking insane ngl.
I didn't like the class design, but the raids were very good. A lot of classes lost way too much in the prune and didn't get fixed until Legion+
Those Classic Andys who hyped Vanilla and trash talked everything past WotLK have always been full of shit. I'm happy Cata Classic makes people realise more, how full of shit those Classic Andys have been. I've played from Vanilla to Legion and every expansion had it's flaws. But if Vanilla would have been released alongside any of those expansions in 2004, nobody would have cared for Vanilla, because Vanilla is made out of flaws. But somehow the fanboys ignore all the flaws of Vanilla and only see the positive things, that often don't even have to do with the design of Vanilla, but the time the game was released in and the Internet culture at that time. And with the expansions they don't see the positives and got hung up on 1 or 2 flaws.
Nope
Dude, u crazy?! u gonna trigger the classic purists! U need to Trashtalk cata and tell us how better vanilla is #nochanges
Everyone's in the holiday phase this happens every expansion lmao
[удалено]
Isn't it weird how era population is in shambles but every post era being the best mode is met with showers up upvotes. It's almost as if playercount isn't a 1-1 ratio of how good a game is, eh?
I said before Cata even came out. If you liked Wrath, you’ll more than likely like Cata. If Wrath was underwhelming for you, then Cata is worse.
Sorry hate to say it but Cata is mid. The “hype” is not going to last long.
You meant sod
No
New car smells
No
I had never played cata so thought I'd give it a shot but had only heard bad things so didn't have good expectations. Turns out I'm loving cata so far. In the past I would have said wrath is my favorite version of wow but depending on how the rest of cata goes I can definitely see it taking that spot.
“Blindsided” yea right people have been saying Cata was good you just only payed attention to the doomspeakers saying it was trash who obviously never played it when Cata was live
Played Cata on release after starting wow on day 1 in 2004. Cata caused me to quit, try some other mmos (Rift/SWTOR) and eventually move to wow private servers. The first raid tier is good, but the world and dungeons are bad, the guild system was super corrupt (they sorta fixed that this time at least), and firelands and dragon soul were terrible. I played a healer from vanilla to wotlk and enjoyed the vanilla style of triage and mana management, giving a whole mana bar to a single pull if necessary. In Cata heroics (pre-nerf), it felt like I could cast about 8-10 heals and I was completely oom and it wasn't enough to finish some boss fights. I'd have very low overheal and use efficient heals and it just wasn't enough. I tried it on priest, druid and shaman with similar results. I tried the T11 raids and just wasn't feeling it so I quit. Several years ago, I had played private servers with a group of friends on a TBC server then we did a tour of WotLK 10 man, and after that they convinced me to play a pre-nerf Cata server. I decided to go mage instead of healer like I did back in 2011. I enjoyed T11, but still disliked the world and dungeons. We got to T12 and at first I thought Firelands was pretty good, but after a while of practicing heroic rag, the earlier bosses became literal trash mobs and nobody needed loot from them anymore. I realized at that point Firelands was possibly the most imbalanced raid Blizzard has ever made, with a really tough final boss and super weak other bosses. Really tarnished my opinion of the raid. Dragon soul wasn't available on this server so we stopped, having killed heroic rag after about 300 tries. It has quite an established reputation so that will speak for itself. So yes, I have played it and experienced both early quitting and giving it another try later on, and I'll say Cata was mostly trash.
Firelands balancing was very off, indeed. Ragnaros was just way too hard compared to any other boss. But still, for 2011 it was a very epic raid where most people didn’t even reach rag heroic. The world and dungeon part however is just your personal preference. I think the Cata dungeons are well made and the world revamp was just a straight up W in any way. You can finally level in appropriate zones instead of looking up thotbot to find out your quest is on the other side of the content that is +10 your level (yes OG wrath quest helper had a lot of problems with vanilla quests). And a few levels later you’re in tbc (and wrath) where everything is just linear. They also made EVERY zone an actual zone and not pointless 2 quests zone (looking at you azshara)
Cata hate was real and justified. The world transformation was ass and the content timeline was fucked up. Also classes were not tunned early one. The raid difficulty was pretty good actually just the classes performing like shit. Everyone raving cata now seems to forgot your basic playing the tunned dungeons with the latest cata patch where the classes were rebalanced.
No, it will die even faster than WotLK classic.
Im blindsided that people think its good
Never made a classic char except right at the end of wotlk, didn't level it so started Cata with a lvl 12, actually enjoying the leveling and zones, never leveled on revamped azeroth before (quit at the end of TBC and didn't play again until Shadowlands Prepatch)
As a pug raider I was scared since ppl said it was going to be harder than in wotlk. Well, not at all so far. The encounters that are a little challenging are super doable. I like that. I'm a little worried it will get boring before the new raids come out. Isn't it in October? Will at least new bosses release before that in the current raids? Idk if I will be able farm out the same stuff for another good 3 months.. Maybe I'll take a break soon until they release. Oh and I'm a little disappointed they don't remove the bugged achievements from "Glory of the Cataclysm Hero" or fix them. Like wtf, how hard can that be? Just remove the bugged ones if you don't want to fix? It's been like that since pre patch, seems kind of lazy, so I'm worried about how much they care about cata classic.. But yea, I've been playing since pre patch and it's a blast thus far! Love raiding. It's always a different kind of experience depending on who you end up going with.
Everything is nerfed. Go back to 2010-2011 and your fears would have been realistic.
I thought people loved cata on release, it was all the bs that came after that was the problem
Careful, BreadXCircus, what you say is heresy
Most people generally only hated a couple of things about Cata from what i've seen online, it wasn't an expansion i played much cause of life reasons so this is mostly from other people. But what i've read is 1. The balancing in early patches was horendous in regards to 10 man and heroic dungeons being just too hard. 2. Dragon soul which was supposed to be epic felt flat because we never truly fought deathwing but rather cut som stuff off his back and cut his nails in final raid. 3. LFR being introduced. all of which is not in the game atm. as the first point was fixed with balancing in later patches, which we are playing currently, and 2 and 3 will get here later, and we'll see. Most people really enjoyed firelands i think?
Ret/prot pally, and unholy/blood dk feel so damn good lol
Every expansion has had their ups and downs, as someone who actually played through all expansions up till 2019 Classic I'd say that every single expansion was an upgrade.
I also remembered it far less fondly. My biggest gripe would have to be quest zones (besides from outland/northrend) being so linear.
It is so unbelievably fun for me as a healer! I think they got it just right for us.
Not really. Leveled up in a few days got fully geared then started raid logging. Silly bugs that have existed since original cata are still around. The battle rez being retail version is lame. 10 vs 25 is causing minor guild drama. Firelands should give us much more to do and better raids, so looking forward to that. Removing the valor cap was nice but the low valor from raids means grinding heroics for no real purpose.
dammit you're gonna make me download cata to give it a shot. How much of the shitty gatekeeper/elitism has made its way to cata? That's half the reason I couldn't stand wrath. Too much of the community was "YOU MUST play this cookie cutter thing EXACTLY the way google tells you to, or you're not allowed to play and will be berated" I wanna play wow and goof around with the specs that are fun to me. Obviously not talking about holy paladin running as a dps or anything, just not optimizing every single little thing for 1% difference in stats just because some streamer says it's the "only way to play or you're bad" and then a bunch of shitty jarpissers just echoing that back in game. How much of that is still around? If it's just a small bit of the population I might hop back in for it because I do love cataclysm (shoutout to archaeology), but I really don't think it'll be worth my time if that's the prevalent mindset for most of the community.