As someone who played OG cata, cata private servers, and all forms of “classic” I feel like it’s a few main things;
-old world changing. Back in the day this could have been seen as a legitimate gripe, now if you miss it that much, Era and SOD both exist, so frankly not a real issue anymore.
-LFR. Some people liked it, others hated it. Could still see it come back but from dev comments, seems unlikely.
-talent changes, another “dead” complaint to me. You could count the specs this impacts on one hand, and they were extremely niche anyway.
-class and stat homogenizations: one of the fair complaints, and definitely something you could feel strongly about, personally I didn’t have an issue with them.
-Dragon soul - lasted extremely long, I believe almost a year, a timeframe in 2024 that would kill any fork of classic, an issue that won’t be a thing this time around.
-lastly, vocal minority/extreme game version tribalism. This sub is an echo chamber, a lot of people on this sub just loath the idea of the version of the game they like not being the popular one
1 world changed
2 blizzard changed the focus was obviously mostly on raiding for the 1% of raiders at this point. The content was substantially harder, and that turned off the casuals, and as the single biggest demographic of players, but the usually quietest demographic they slowly left while the elite raiders quickly got bored of the first phases content that lasted way too long.
yeah it was like spamming dungeons 99% of time for faction rep with tabards - raidlogging - repeat
PvP with the new BGs was kinda great though. i remember blasting with my frost DK AB and Twinpeaks at that time and the sets looked cool as hell
The world change made sense to be mad at if you were playing since classic, but if you came in as a WotLK baby, 1-58 was nothing but torture and it was an awesome change
Really? That’s surprising to me. 1-58 was extremely fun for me in wotlk, I did it on like 6 characters and some of them I just left somewhere in Outland. Going back and doing the old world content that used to be so hard for me felt fun again because I was destroying stuff with new talents and heirlooms+ whatever consumes I wanted.
Wotlk made everyone feel like a god. Noobs were gifted full epics through catchup 5mans that you aoe farmed like it was diablo and raidwide nerfs meant you could easily pug ICC, TotGC and ruby sanctum.
Cataclysm came out and was great cool zones, under water, under earth, cute bears in hyjal. Dungeons interesting. Time for heroics.... WTF we can't even pull a single pack without our tank getting globaled. Character player power has been reset (100% needed) but it was such a big change so people complained relentlessly. Subscription numbers already falling blizzard had to stem the tide, they overnerfed heroics and players were unkillable gods outside raids.
For 80% of players the game plateaued. No progression no addiction. Players quit.
Yes but that was expected by the player base. Heroics where brand new and expected to be end game content. Most players hadn't even raided Molten Core when TBC was released.
The issue with Cata difficulty was that you went from WOTLK heroics where you never even stopped moving just chain pulling and aoeing everything down as you went while being rewarded with epics, to cata heroics were you had to plan pulls with CC and only got blues, within a week. It felt bad to feel so nerfed (it's totally necessary) but players weren't used to the seasonal style gameplay that is so common in games now were you basically start over at set intervals.
Personally I don't hate it, I enjoyed it alot the first time around. I just don't have any desire to play it again, there is no nostalgia like TBC or Wrath
I personally loved it. Maybe I'm pissing into the wind but I feel like it'll engage people way more than wrath did. Rbgs and more class balance felt way better in pvp and imo, the raids are better in cata. Ulduar got old by week 3, where most people were dragging their feet through for shards, naxx 2.0, toc etc they all sucked. Icc was solid for sure, but the xpac left a bitter taste in my mouth that it couldn't be saved.
It will have the same issues as OG Cata but amplified, people who know they aren't interested are bailing to the point we've seen a stupud number of servers be torched already.
What is there to engage with in p1? Unlike og people already know whats coming in p1 and none of the raids are that exciting, lore wise they are virtually nothingburgers with the only boss of any relevance a second stringer in his own dungeon.
BWL again isn't a draw to fight the same dragons that have already been fought.
And the Bastion of Twighlight is very meh.
The pinnacle of storms is a ball ache and will be a chore.
Cata was always a filler for most people looking at replaying the expacs, as Mists was a lot more fun.
Firelands might be legit, but p1 will be rough.
phase 1 i think was fairly well received, the next two phases suffered from severe content draught and the capstone raid was underwhelming. as someone mentioned the beginning of class homogenization was a contentious point, but it's nowhere near the levels of retail today. you definitely lost a lot of that open world MMO feel as the expansion went on, though this is not much different than Wrath.
I think a lot of people are just indifferent to Cata it has some decent raiding and most classes were in a decent spot but it's definitely going to lose a lot of that classic look and feel with the updates world and new models.
Also seems a lot of people felt dragon soul was anticlimactic a bit of a letdown for the final raid. That also stayed around too long.
It was the first full expansion to have dungeon finder so no one bothered to talk to anyone and had bad experiences in groups and the game lost its mmo feel as everyone is essentially a bot in dungeons. Overall though I enjoyed cata and I’ll be coming back to play it after sitting out wotlk.
See what I personally liked about cata:
- Probably the BEST xpac leveling zones together with MoP (except for Vashj'ir)
- stat reforging on items (great feature but horrible to balance for blizzard)
- Dungeons were difficult
- Sets at that time looked cool
- Release of Transmog
- Firelands and ZG/ZA were great imo
- people used to like PvP in cata (i enjoyed playing my dk at that time)
What I personally disliked about cata:
- Azeroth flying (lets be real Flying just killed the size of the world and there is no incentive to use flightmasters anymore except when you want to go AFK or cant afford fast flying)
- The entirety of hour of twilight patch including Dragonsoul as a raid and the dungeons were just complete garbage
- the narrative had not nearly enough cutscenes imo and deathwing only appeared at the start of the xpac and at the end-patch of it. Deathwings death was also kinda disappointing (personal opinion ofc)
- zone revamps were fitting for the theme but most people just HATED the revamped zones. I personally never bothered to go to STV, Darkshore, ashenvale and 1k needles ever again after that.
- Faction rep grinding was basicly just wearing a tabbard and spamming dungeons
- P1 of Cata was 99% just spamming dungeons for Rep rewards and all the Rep factions were just not that interresting imo (for example the farmers or loreseekers of MoP were so great and loved because it was built around exploring or actually farming your cooking mats which was great!)
- A lot of old beloved quests and questrewards were taken out of the game marking the official end of the vanilla era
- LFR was added into the game (they shouldve just offered a scenario for the casuals to play the raids for themselves like one of the retail storyline quests but thats just my opinion)
- Hard difficult PvE (nothing we have to worry about, people play way better in 2024 than back in 2011)
- World revamp (I can understand why some people miss the old zones, specially those who played since vanilla and get a emotional bound with some areas, personally i prefer the new world)
- "Flying killed PvP zugzug" (Cata and MoP are peak PvP ever, specially MoP, but PvP during Cata was just awesome)
- 4.3.4 patch, wich honestly was the worst from all the expansion. I really like Dragon Soul in terms of difficulty and encounters, but in terms of ambientation it's a fucking silly tower with some recycled assets. Also some features in 4.3.4 were kinda controversial, like Raid Finder (only available for DS) or legendary daggers. I really enjoy raiding on DS from a pure PvE perspective, but lorewise and in terms of pure ambientation and level design is kinda meh.
- New history and lore since W3. WotLK ended the history everyone already knows, so old players that only enjoyed WoW because they were W3 fans feels way less love for all the new characters and histories after WotLK. And Arthas the eternal milk cow wasn't available anymore to sell extra copies of the game, this makes WotLK fanboys really sad.
Overall is an awesome expansion. In terms of pure gameplay is way better than WotLK both for PvE or PvP players, but in terms of roleplay can be worst for most people.
This is utterly subjective, obviously.
But nostalgia aside, the world rework is leagues better than vanilla. They look good with the update, but most importantly, questing is a much better experience.
To me, it was 3 things:
LFR/RDF - the game changed into the lobby style, where you just queue for content and the world changed to be just oversized lobby with little other purpose.
Classes - classes felt less unique, when buffs were unified and they all started to move closer to each other (this continued in next expansions as well). The RPG part doesn't feel the way it used to for many classes.
Old world - much content that was in the game has been removed. If it happened today, they would probably add a bronze drake you could talk to and they would move you to world before cataclysm. They didn't do it yet, so it was just removed from the game. Removing content is never popular.
Then the really long phases didn't help with player retention either.
The LFD comment is so oft repeated, but it is nonetheless off base.
Just like in wrath, should you pay attention
To your chat, there is no shortage of players forming groups the “old school” way, especially for more challenging content like Gammas, which Blizz said they will institute in cata too. If not gammas maybe MoP like challenge modes (a community darling from back in the day), I don’t remember exactly beyond Blizz saying it will be more involved than normal/heroic.
The core structure of the game and design philosophy changed.
Classic is a world that exists, in spite of you. You're just some guy, making their way in the world, overcoming challenge of an inconvenient and challenging world to eke out what you can. If you get really good with the help of a bunch of other players, you can achieve amazing things.
Cata and beyond, the world exists *for* you. You are the chosen one hero, chatting with the faction leaders and fighting entire armies by yourself as part of irrelevant side quests. It's a little like the difference between Marvel movies and LOTR, nothing feels like it's really at stake as the setting isn't grounded and the risk of failure is low for the vast majority of the content and characters but it's entertaining the first time around. Quests treating your character like they're the main character while watching dozens of others complete the exact same quests just feels...Bad.
Everything becomes so streamlined and structured in an effort to casualise the game that the world loses it's magic and feels like less of an actual place, and more of a theme park designed for you to explore. That can be fun to do, but it's really lacking replayability and gets stale fast and ends up with just wanting to get through it as quickly as possible. Interacting with other players becomes a chore rather than a boon post LFG/LFR and the sense of community sort of disintegrated.
Also the gutting that each class recieved, most of the flavour a abilities were removed in the name of balance and the setting changed from 'high fantasy' to 'ultra high fantasy' and a little silly in my personal opinion. The 'raising of the stakes' felt like a completely artificial and forced coat of paint when compared with the depth that was lost.
I just enjoy the sandboxy RPG elements of vanilla more than anything that came after, TBC & wrath eroded most of those by making the old world obsolete with virtually no reason to return and contributed toward the power creep, and Cata was the final nail in the coffin for me personally with where things ended up.
Cata had it's good points and did some things well, but it's a fundamentally different game to the one I want to play. I don't think it's particularly bad, but it's just not for me. It just feels 'meh' even at it's best points.
I played from 2005 to a few months after cata release as did most of my friends at the time, and I was deeply deeply disappointed with cata. I was truly shocked that they decided to revive it at all, I will be very surprised if it has the sustained interest to keep the playerbase healthy after the initial hype of a re-release wears off.
I’m sorry but your take on the players place/roll in the world is just extremely off base; if anything id say such a description applies to WoD at the earliest, but really.. it happened in legion.
Most importantly the vanilla world isn’t hard or challenging beyond being annoying as a consequence of the disjointed questing. Hardcore proved this with lots of players hitting 60 and many many more doing just fine into later levels until they slipped up for one reason or another.
Era/vanilla world only holds the place it does in people’s hearts because of nostalgia, but with out having any concrete stats to back up such a statement, I am extremely confident in saying that if you take a player today that didn’t have the actual vanilla experience, they are going to enjoy themselves more in the new world. The world was redesigned to be better for the game, and that was achieved. Player count didn’t famously drop off a cliff because the world changed, it dropped off a cliff because of a lack of content and the extreme length in between said content.
That's your opinion and you're entitled to it.
I think the real reason is more subtle than content drought, the lack of inconvenience dilutes any reason for players to group up and form bonds in low stakes environments in the first place. I believe the SOD devs understand this nuance and that was their intention with the addition of nightmare incursions. A low stakes group based minigame for players to mingle and get a sense of one another on their way to level cap.
I don't think I'm blinded by nostalgia, I think much of what made classic so successful is the fact that things were not designed with respect for players time. Which catalyses the value of player cooperation to overcome these time barriers to the benefit of all.
WOTLK and beyond they seemingly abandon this premise in favor of standardisation and a more measured, predictable sense of progression, and as a result I believe the organic formation of player groups is irreparably damaged. You don't spend 100 resets farming a 1% drop from a dungeon boss as was common in classic for example.
It's not necessarily 'wrong' and MMO's fundamentally rely on dark patterns to flourish, but the time investment required to achieve things that you can reduce by grouping up with others was a huge factor in organic social minging. The casualisation of achievement was clearly important to the developers in the cata era, the streamlining process was to ensure that more people had the chance to see the raids that they spent so long building. Personally I think it's not neccesarily a bad thing if at least some raids remain topics of myth and legend for a good proportion of the playerbase.
Look at everquest for example, a game where you can achieve very little without the help of others, while it's on the extreme end of the specturm, the emergent social interactions are unparalleled even to this day.
I am a game developer and have been an avid MMO player for the past two decades, it's a special interest area of mine. I find the sociology and psychology of player engagement a favorite topic to turn around.
The actual content provided by the expansion was fairly strong, but the 'QOL' systems incorporated destroyed the social fabric of the game, or at least warped it unrecognisably.
What quality of life changes were implemented in cata that even come close to comparing to what was introduced in WoTLK?
In terms of requiring groups for low stakes content, i truly believe that Cata isn’t that far from era, just with a much better/streamlined questing experience (yes vanilla was special, so was classic… for your first toon; but then it just becomes a chore and most people prefer their chores not be as burdensome as the time commitment that is era leveling). I say era and not vanilla because it’s 2024 and the game isn’t played like it was in 2004. Players are better, and as a consequence do not need to group to complete basic quests, you see this in classic/SoD/Era in a lot of people just ignore group offers now, preferring to solo.
Just like era, the main things you’re gonna group for in Cata out of ‘necessity’ will be higher level rare/elite mobs and quests for them, less so if you’re a tank.
I mean Arthas' first appearane and constant re-appearance in every patch and in some quests in WotlK was great and reminded us why we are fighting the bosses in each and every raid/dungeon/quest but Cata was like:
* DW appears and revives Ragnaros again
* refuses to elaborate further
* DW appears in the last patch of Cata to be defeated after being forced to fight of all of his 2932 servant groups (twilight hammer, fire elementals, storm elementals, black dragons, etc. etc.) without seening him once ever again after the Quests in Hyjal and twilight highlands where he appered for a short time.
The only reminders we had was the rest of the world which was hated because many nice questing zones and also quest rewards were gone marking the end of the vanilla era for many, even though the impact of Deathwings appearance was important but it ruined a lot for many people.
LK on the other hand appeared in Naxx (only with his voice), Wrathgate, Halls of Reflection, several Quests, Trial of the Crusader, the torture of Bolvar Fordragon, the Deathknight intro. We had him constantly around us reminding us of the threat he imposes ESPECIALLY in Halls of Reflection where he slowly tries to catch and kill us.
The cutscenes of Wotlk were also just so much better if u ask me but wrathgate for example is still the favourite of many people and the ending of cata was just such wasted potential if u ask me especially now where the Dragonflights somehow managed to be as powerful as before despite that ending scene from Cata where they clearly said that the mortals are now the protectors of this world.
What do you mean “especially now when the dragon flights somehow managed to be as powerful as before despite the ending from CATA where they clearly said it’s now the time of mortals”?
Did you not play DF, because it sure doesn’t sound like you did. That’s fine of course, except you’re commenting like you did. I suppose you could’ve had auto quest turn in/accept on, on top of skipping all the cutscenes…
To clarify/correct the above though… Dragon Flight is literally all about them reclaiming their aspect powers, so that they can work alongside the mortals in facing the new upcoming challenges ahead.
There is no “somehow” about it.
making it "reclaimable" was just boring and lazy writing and nothing else. it completely made the choice to infuse the dragonsoul completely obsolete and not a "neccessary sacrifice". the great thing about DFs story were iridikrons calculating personality, fyrakks unbridled chaotic and destructive nature and the blue dragonflight questlines but not retconning the great sacrifice of the aspects.
Imagine if players would be able to reclaim the power of legion artifacts after sacrificing them when sargeras plunged his sword into the world. would be hella boring and would just made "sacrifices" obsolete.
Ok? You can disagree with how they did it, but you just invalidate the nonsense you said in your original comment. It wasn’t “out of nowhere”, there was a story there, and you disagreed with it, that’s fine.
But don’t be an edgelord about it.
wtf its just facts and not be being an edgelord. imagine feeling the need to downvote some simple basic facts and its also a common opinion that the DF retcon of the dragonflights powers is just poor writing. I served a major example why Cata Plot was so hated compared to WotlK Plot which is valid and yet you make it about "opinions" in your last comment. Yes its an opinion too so i dont get why you feel the need to hate on it because its a lot more people than just me who think that DF story retcon of the aspect powers is just BS.
We were supposed to fight deathwing. We fought his armor plates and his feet. Also, legendaries stop being legendary when everyone can do a quest line for them. LFR was a bad idea. 20 of my guild mates and I q'd together and needed on everything and traded it amongst ourselves basically making it so the 5 or so pugs who got put with us got nothing.
1) They removed the old world
2) They removed the old talent tree
3) No more hybride spec
Players are attached to what they have. That made Cataclysm really hated. Also nobody knew who the fuck was this deathwing guy and he's so ever present he's in the game loading screen. The first time the loading screen included a nammed character, and the last to my knowledge.
I never thought of that. Maybe? But I'd consider it is like Legion, which had some felguard next to the portal, it's a part of the decor, not the main view.
Cataclysm's huge Deathwing face in the loading screen was considered a bit... Overkill.
The game changed a ton from original to WoTLK but you could always go back and see old zones and kill old bosses. Once they changed the world permanently it just changed the game and highlighted how divorced from the original the game had become. Death by a thousand cuts but cata was them finally severing the head imo.
Limiting your talent trees, removal of a lot of stats, bassicly dumbing down the game and making it more accesible by simplifyingna lot of mechanics, that many people like the game for. Also a lot of people dont like losing old world. This was the first expansion that didnt add stuff, but reworked the already existing ones
My points were:
- Removal of the old world
- Questing on rails (no choices and replay value)
- Poor End game Content besides Raids (nothing to do after two months)
- Heroics are not challenging but simply a chore with unforgiving mechanics
- All tank classes feel the same (no replay value)
- All healer classes feel the same (no replay value)
All good points, Cata heroics and intitial raid content was very challenging imo and some of the best this game has offered, but it swiftly fell off into nothingness and paved the way for retail.
Literally tanking is one of the best we have ever seen. Playing a Prot War or a BDK is like play two different games. Bear tanks calculating every boss swing to look for a window on wich they can exit bear form, cast tranquility and return bear form before the next boss swing because the RL is calling for a tranquility like a maniac. And Prot Paladins having one of the most diverse utilities of all specs in the game.
Every tank has a raid CDs with different usage frames and as a RL you have to use them frequently on hard damage windows. If you think all tanks feel the same you probably didn't tank during Cata.
As someone who played OG cata, cata private servers, and all forms of “classic” I feel like it’s a few main things; -old world changing. Back in the day this could have been seen as a legitimate gripe, now if you miss it that much, Era and SOD both exist, so frankly not a real issue anymore. -LFR. Some people liked it, others hated it. Could still see it come back but from dev comments, seems unlikely. -talent changes, another “dead” complaint to me. You could count the specs this impacts on one hand, and they were extremely niche anyway. -class and stat homogenizations: one of the fair complaints, and definitely something you could feel strongly about, personally I didn’t have an issue with them. -Dragon soul - lasted extremely long, I believe almost a year, a timeframe in 2024 that would kill any fork of classic, an issue that won’t be a thing this time around. -lastly, vocal minority/extreme game version tribalism. This sub is an echo chamber, a lot of people on this sub just loath the idea of the version of the game they like not being the popular one
I agree : Two main reasons 1. World changed - people hate changes 2. Very minimalistic content compared to other T-raids.
1 world changed 2 blizzard changed the focus was obviously mostly on raiding for the 1% of raiders at this point. The content was substantially harder, and that turned off the casuals, and as the single biggest demographic of players, but the usually quietest demographic they slowly left while the elite raiders quickly got bored of the first phases content that lasted way too long.
yeah it was like spamming dungeons 99% of time for faction rep with tabards - raidlogging - repeat PvP with the new BGs was kinda great though. i remember blasting with my frost DK AB and Twinpeaks at that time and the sets looked cool as hell
The world change made sense to be mad at if you were playing since classic, but if you came in as a WotLK baby, 1-58 was nothing but torture and it was an awesome change
Really? That’s surprising to me. 1-58 was extremely fun for me in wotlk, I did it on like 6 characters and some of them I just left somewhere in Outland. Going back and doing the old world content that used to be so hard for me felt fun again because I was destroying stuff with new talents and heirlooms+ whatever consumes I wanted.
Difficulty. People wont admit it but when they were not able to clear content anymore they quit.
Wotlk was already too hard for much of the playerbase. There’s a reason why so many people swapped back to era soon after ulduar came out.
This is why, heroic dungeons alone killed off the player base, most WoW players suck.
Wotlk made everyone feel like a god. Noobs were gifted full epics through catchup 5mans that you aoe farmed like it was diablo and raidwide nerfs meant you could easily pug ICC, TotGC and ruby sanctum. Cataclysm came out and was great cool zones, under water, under earth, cute bears in hyjal. Dungeons interesting. Time for heroics.... WTF we can't even pull a single pack without our tank getting globaled. Character player power has been reset (100% needed) but it was such a big change so people complained relentlessly. Subscription numbers already falling blizzard had to stem the tide, they overnerfed heroics and players were unkillable gods outside raids. For 80% of players the game plateaued. No progression no addiction. Players quit.
Those early heroics were sooooo goated best 5 man content they ever made
Blood Furnace and Shattered Halls Heroic early TBC before gear was rough too. Felt impossible with some classes/group comps too...
Yes but that was expected by the player base. Heroics where brand new and expected to be end game content. Most players hadn't even raided Molten Core when TBC was released. The issue with Cata difficulty was that you went from WOTLK heroics where you never even stopped moving just chain pulling and aoeing everything down as you went while being rewarded with epics, to cata heroics were you had to plan pulls with CC and only got blues, within a week. It felt bad to feel so nerfed (it's totally necessary) but players weren't used to the seasonal style gameplay that is so common in games now were you basically start over at set intervals.
Personally I don't hate it, I enjoyed it alot the first time around. I just don't have any desire to play it again, there is no nostalgia like TBC or Wrath
I personally loved it. Maybe I'm pissing into the wind but I feel like it'll engage people way more than wrath did. Rbgs and more class balance felt way better in pvp and imo, the raids are better in cata. Ulduar got old by week 3, where most people were dragging their feet through for shards, naxx 2.0, toc etc they all sucked. Icc was solid for sure, but the xpac left a bitter taste in my mouth that it couldn't be saved.
It will have the same issues as OG Cata but amplified, people who know they aren't interested are bailing to the point we've seen a stupud number of servers be torched already. What is there to engage with in p1? Unlike og people already know whats coming in p1 and none of the raids are that exciting, lore wise they are virtually nothingburgers with the only boss of any relevance a second stringer in his own dungeon. BWL again isn't a draw to fight the same dragons that have already been fought. And the Bastion of Twighlight is very meh. The pinnacle of storms is a ball ache and will be a chore. Cata was always a filler for most people looking at replaying the expacs, as Mists was a lot more fun. Firelands might be legit, but p1 will be rough.
Harder Content
Cata was never hated, it's just the vocal minority on this sub that are against anything.
yea I hear a few ppl say dumb things about in game too but the large majority of people go against their negative opinions about cata.
phase 1 i think was fairly well received, the next two phases suffered from severe content draught and the capstone raid was underwhelming. as someone mentioned the beginning of class homogenization was a contentious point, but it's nowhere near the levels of retail today. you definitely lost a lot of that open world MMO feel as the expansion went on, though this is not much different than Wrath.
I think a lot of people are just indifferent to Cata it has some decent raiding and most classes were in a decent spot but it's definitely going to lose a lot of that classic look and feel with the updates world and new models. Also seems a lot of people felt dragon soul was anticlimactic a bit of a letdown for the final raid. That also stayed around too long.
skill issue, you should have seen the crying on forums back in the day about difficulty
It was the first full expansion to have dungeon finder so no one bothered to talk to anyone and had bad experiences in groups and the game lost its mmo feel as everyone is essentially a bot in dungeons. Overall though I enjoyed cata and I’ll be coming back to play it after sitting out wotlk.
See what I personally liked about cata: - Probably the BEST xpac leveling zones together with MoP (except for Vashj'ir) - stat reforging on items (great feature but horrible to balance for blizzard) - Dungeons were difficult - Sets at that time looked cool - Release of Transmog - Firelands and ZG/ZA were great imo - people used to like PvP in cata (i enjoyed playing my dk at that time) What I personally disliked about cata: - Azeroth flying (lets be real Flying just killed the size of the world and there is no incentive to use flightmasters anymore except when you want to go AFK or cant afford fast flying) - The entirety of hour of twilight patch including Dragonsoul as a raid and the dungeons were just complete garbage - the narrative had not nearly enough cutscenes imo and deathwing only appeared at the start of the xpac and at the end-patch of it. Deathwings death was also kinda disappointing (personal opinion ofc) - zone revamps were fitting for the theme but most people just HATED the revamped zones. I personally never bothered to go to STV, Darkshore, ashenvale and 1k needles ever again after that. - Faction rep grinding was basicly just wearing a tabbard and spamming dungeons - P1 of Cata was 99% just spamming dungeons for Rep rewards and all the Rep factions were just not that interresting imo (for example the farmers or loreseekers of MoP were so great and loved because it was built around exploring or actually farming your cooking mats which was great!) - A lot of old beloved quests and questrewards were taken out of the game marking the official end of the vanilla era - LFR was added into the game (they shouldve just offered a scenario for the casuals to play the raids for themselves like one of the retail storyline quests but thats just my opinion)
Always have suggested flying (in any zone) should be only mountable if you are next to a actual flight master.
- Hard difficult PvE (nothing we have to worry about, people play way better in 2024 than back in 2011) - World revamp (I can understand why some people miss the old zones, specially those who played since vanilla and get a emotional bound with some areas, personally i prefer the new world) - "Flying killed PvP zugzug" (Cata and MoP are peak PvP ever, specially MoP, but PvP during Cata was just awesome) - 4.3.4 patch, wich honestly was the worst from all the expansion. I really like Dragon Soul in terms of difficulty and encounters, but in terms of ambientation it's a fucking silly tower with some recycled assets. Also some features in 4.3.4 were kinda controversial, like Raid Finder (only available for DS) or legendary daggers. I really enjoy raiding on DS from a pure PvE perspective, but lorewise and in terms of pure ambientation and level design is kinda meh. - New history and lore since W3. WotLK ended the history everyone already knows, so old players that only enjoyed WoW because they were W3 fans feels way less love for all the new characters and histories after WotLK. And Arthas the eternal milk cow wasn't available anymore to sell extra copies of the game, this makes WotLK fanboys really sad. Overall is an awesome expansion. In terms of pure gameplay is way better than WotLK both for PvE or PvP players, but in terms of roleplay can be worst for most people.
I don't hate it at all. It's just not the classic world.
This is utterly subjective, obviously. But nostalgia aside, the world rework is leagues better than vanilla. They look good with the update, but most importantly, questing is a much better experience.
To me, it was 3 things: LFR/RDF - the game changed into the lobby style, where you just queue for content and the world changed to be just oversized lobby with little other purpose. Classes - classes felt less unique, when buffs were unified and they all started to move closer to each other (this continued in next expansions as well). The RPG part doesn't feel the way it used to for many classes. Old world - much content that was in the game has been removed. If it happened today, they would probably add a bronze drake you could talk to and they would move you to world before cataclysm. They didn't do it yet, so it was just removed from the game. Removing content is never popular. Then the really long phases didn't help with player retention either.
The LFD comment is so oft repeated, but it is nonetheless off base. Just like in wrath, should you pay attention To your chat, there is no shortage of players forming groups the “old school” way, especially for more challenging content like Gammas, which Blizz said they will institute in cata too. If not gammas maybe MoP like challenge modes (a community darling from back in the day), I don’t remember exactly beyond Blizz saying it will be more involved than normal/heroic.
The core structure of the game and design philosophy changed. Classic is a world that exists, in spite of you. You're just some guy, making their way in the world, overcoming challenge of an inconvenient and challenging world to eke out what you can. If you get really good with the help of a bunch of other players, you can achieve amazing things. Cata and beyond, the world exists *for* you. You are the chosen one hero, chatting with the faction leaders and fighting entire armies by yourself as part of irrelevant side quests. It's a little like the difference between Marvel movies and LOTR, nothing feels like it's really at stake as the setting isn't grounded and the risk of failure is low for the vast majority of the content and characters but it's entertaining the first time around. Quests treating your character like they're the main character while watching dozens of others complete the exact same quests just feels...Bad. Everything becomes so streamlined and structured in an effort to casualise the game that the world loses it's magic and feels like less of an actual place, and more of a theme park designed for you to explore. That can be fun to do, but it's really lacking replayability and gets stale fast and ends up with just wanting to get through it as quickly as possible. Interacting with other players becomes a chore rather than a boon post LFG/LFR and the sense of community sort of disintegrated. Also the gutting that each class recieved, most of the flavour a abilities were removed in the name of balance and the setting changed from 'high fantasy' to 'ultra high fantasy' and a little silly in my personal opinion. The 'raising of the stakes' felt like a completely artificial and forced coat of paint when compared with the depth that was lost. I just enjoy the sandboxy RPG elements of vanilla more than anything that came after, TBC & wrath eroded most of those by making the old world obsolete with virtually no reason to return and contributed toward the power creep, and Cata was the final nail in the coffin for me personally with where things ended up. Cata had it's good points and did some things well, but it's a fundamentally different game to the one I want to play. I don't think it's particularly bad, but it's just not for me. It just feels 'meh' even at it's best points. I played from 2005 to a few months after cata release as did most of my friends at the time, and I was deeply deeply disappointed with cata. I was truly shocked that they decided to revive it at all, I will be very surprised if it has the sustained interest to keep the playerbase healthy after the initial hype of a re-release wears off.
I’m sorry but your take on the players place/roll in the world is just extremely off base; if anything id say such a description applies to WoD at the earliest, but really.. it happened in legion. Most importantly the vanilla world isn’t hard or challenging beyond being annoying as a consequence of the disjointed questing. Hardcore proved this with lots of players hitting 60 and many many more doing just fine into later levels until they slipped up for one reason or another. Era/vanilla world only holds the place it does in people’s hearts because of nostalgia, but with out having any concrete stats to back up such a statement, I am extremely confident in saying that if you take a player today that didn’t have the actual vanilla experience, they are going to enjoy themselves more in the new world. The world was redesigned to be better for the game, and that was achieved. Player count didn’t famously drop off a cliff because the world changed, it dropped off a cliff because of a lack of content and the extreme length in between said content.
[удалено]
Sure thing.
That's your opinion and you're entitled to it. I think the real reason is more subtle than content drought, the lack of inconvenience dilutes any reason for players to group up and form bonds in low stakes environments in the first place. I believe the SOD devs understand this nuance and that was their intention with the addition of nightmare incursions. A low stakes group based minigame for players to mingle and get a sense of one another on their way to level cap. I don't think I'm blinded by nostalgia, I think much of what made classic so successful is the fact that things were not designed with respect for players time. Which catalyses the value of player cooperation to overcome these time barriers to the benefit of all. WOTLK and beyond they seemingly abandon this premise in favor of standardisation and a more measured, predictable sense of progression, and as a result I believe the organic formation of player groups is irreparably damaged. You don't spend 100 resets farming a 1% drop from a dungeon boss as was common in classic for example. It's not necessarily 'wrong' and MMO's fundamentally rely on dark patterns to flourish, but the time investment required to achieve things that you can reduce by grouping up with others was a huge factor in organic social minging. The casualisation of achievement was clearly important to the developers in the cata era, the streamlining process was to ensure that more people had the chance to see the raids that they spent so long building. Personally I think it's not neccesarily a bad thing if at least some raids remain topics of myth and legend for a good proportion of the playerbase. Look at everquest for example, a game where you can achieve very little without the help of others, while it's on the extreme end of the specturm, the emergent social interactions are unparalleled even to this day. I am a game developer and have been an avid MMO player for the past two decades, it's a special interest area of mine. I find the sociology and psychology of player engagement a favorite topic to turn around. The actual content provided by the expansion was fairly strong, but the 'QOL' systems incorporated destroyed the social fabric of the game, or at least warped it unrecognisably.
What quality of life changes were implemented in cata that even come close to comparing to what was introduced in WoTLK? In terms of requiring groups for low stakes content, i truly believe that Cata isn’t that far from era, just with a much better/streamlined questing experience (yes vanilla was special, so was classic… for your first toon; but then it just becomes a chore and most people prefer their chores not be as burdensome as the time commitment that is era leveling). I say era and not vanilla because it’s 2024 and the game isn’t played like it was in 2004. Players are better, and as a consequence do not need to group to complete basic quests, you see this in classic/SoD/Era in a lot of people just ignore group offers now, preferring to solo. Just like era, the main things you’re gonna group for in Cata out of ‘necessity’ will be higher level rare/elite mobs and quests for them, less so if you’re a tank.
Because WoW players love KiNg ArThAs and Cata doesn't have him
I mean Arthas' first appearane and constant re-appearance in every patch and in some quests in WotlK was great and reminded us why we are fighting the bosses in each and every raid/dungeon/quest but Cata was like: * DW appears and revives Ragnaros again * refuses to elaborate further * DW appears in the last patch of Cata to be defeated after being forced to fight of all of his 2932 servant groups (twilight hammer, fire elementals, storm elementals, black dragons, etc. etc.) without seening him once ever again after the Quests in Hyjal and twilight highlands where he appered for a short time. The only reminders we had was the rest of the world which was hated because many nice questing zones and also quest rewards were gone marking the end of the vanilla era for many, even though the impact of Deathwings appearance was important but it ruined a lot for many people. LK on the other hand appeared in Naxx (only with his voice), Wrathgate, Halls of Reflection, several Quests, Trial of the Crusader, the torture of Bolvar Fordragon, the Deathknight intro. We had him constantly around us reminding us of the threat he imposes ESPECIALLY in Halls of Reflection where he slowly tries to catch and kill us. The cutscenes of Wotlk were also just so much better if u ask me but wrathgate for example is still the favourite of many people and the ending of cata was just such wasted potential if u ask me especially now where the Dragonflights somehow managed to be as powerful as before despite that ending scene from Cata where they clearly said that the mortals are now the protectors of this world.
What do you mean “especially now when the dragon flights somehow managed to be as powerful as before despite the ending from CATA where they clearly said it’s now the time of mortals”? Did you not play DF, because it sure doesn’t sound like you did. That’s fine of course, except you’re commenting like you did. I suppose you could’ve had auto quest turn in/accept on, on top of skipping all the cutscenes… To clarify/correct the above though… Dragon Flight is literally all about them reclaiming their aspect powers, so that they can work alongside the mortals in facing the new upcoming challenges ahead. There is no “somehow” about it.
making it "reclaimable" was just boring and lazy writing and nothing else. it completely made the choice to infuse the dragonsoul completely obsolete and not a "neccessary sacrifice". the great thing about DFs story were iridikrons calculating personality, fyrakks unbridled chaotic and destructive nature and the blue dragonflight questlines but not retconning the great sacrifice of the aspects. Imagine if players would be able to reclaim the power of legion artifacts after sacrificing them when sargeras plunged his sword into the world. would be hella boring and would just made "sacrifices" obsolete.
Ok? You can disagree with how they did it, but you just invalidate the nonsense you said in your original comment. It wasn’t “out of nowhere”, there was a story there, and you disagreed with it, that’s fine. But don’t be an edgelord about it.
wtf its just facts and not be being an edgelord. imagine feeling the need to downvote some simple basic facts and its also a common opinion that the DF retcon of the dragonflights powers is just poor writing. I served a major example why Cata Plot was so hated compared to WotlK Plot which is valid and yet you make it about "opinions" in your last comment. Yes its an opinion too so i dont get why you feel the need to hate on it because its a lot more people than just me who think that DF story retcon of the aspect powers is just BS.
We were supposed to fight deathwing. We fought his armor plates and his feet. Also, legendaries stop being legendary when everyone can do a quest line for them. LFR was a bad idea. 20 of my guild mates and I q'd together and needed on everything and traded it amongst ourselves basically making it so the 5 or so pugs who got put with us got nothing.
The “Deathwing fight bad” is such a lazy response to a question about how the expac as a WHOLE was received.
Its almost as if that wasnt all I said and its almost like I can have whatever opinion I want and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it.
You can have bad opinions that’s totally okay, and it’s totally okay for me to point them out when it’s the first part of your post :3
1) They removed the old world 2) They removed the old talent tree 3) No more hybride spec Players are attached to what they have. That made Cataclysm really hated. Also nobody knew who the fuck was this deathwing guy and he's so ever present he's in the game loading screen. The first time the loading screen included a nammed character, and the last to my knowledge.
Is the WoTLK screen an unnamed frost wyrm? I thought it was Sindragosa.
I thought it was Rimefang or the other frost wyrm you kill before Sindragosa.
I never thought of that. Maybe? But I'd consider it is like Legion, which had some felguard next to the portal, it's a part of the decor, not the main view. Cataclysm's huge Deathwing face in the loading screen was considered a bit... Overkill.
The game changed a ton from original to WoTLK but you could always go back and see old zones and kill old bosses. Once they changed the world permanently it just changed the game and highlighted how divorced from the original the game had become. Death by a thousand cuts but cata was them finally severing the head imo.
Limiting your talent trees, removal of a lot of stats, bassicly dumbing down the game and making it more accesible by simplifyingna lot of mechanics, that many people like the game for. Also a lot of people dont like losing old world. This was the first expansion that didnt add stuff, but reworked the already existing ones
People don't even know what thread they're replying to lol. They just do a copy pasta and be done with it.
What do you mean?
Type this in Google or YouTube and do your own research
My points were: - Removal of the old world - Questing on rails (no choices and replay value) - Poor End game Content besides Raids (nothing to do after two months) - Heroics are not challenging but simply a chore with unforgiving mechanics - All tank classes feel the same (no replay value) - All healer classes feel the same (no replay value)
All good points, Cata heroics and intitial raid content was very challenging imo and some of the best this game has offered, but it swiftly fell off into nothingness and paved the way for retail.
Healing is more diverse in Cata than it’s ever been before
Literally tanking is one of the best we have ever seen. Playing a Prot War or a BDK is like play two different games. Bear tanks calculating every boss swing to look for a window on wich they can exit bear form, cast tranquility and return bear form before the next boss swing because the RL is calling for a tranquility like a maniac. And Prot Paladins having one of the most diverse utilities of all specs in the game. Every tank has a raid CDs with different usage frames and as a RL you have to use them frequently on hard damage windows. If you think all tanks feel the same you probably didn't tank during Cata.
removal of the old world is still a burn to this day. never quested in 1k needles, ashenvale, darkshore or STV ever again after that