Whenever people discuss the worst expansion ever, people talk a lot about Shadowlands and WoD, but to me Cata was worst.
Gameplay-wise, I remember Zul’Again as the worst time I’ve ever had in WoW. As a non-Raider, the only way for me to cap Valor Points was by doing the Zul’Again queue 7 times a week. That queue only had 2 (TWO) dungeons. Both of them were enormous and brutally hard. Wipes were frequent. Tanks and Healers had instant queues, so they would quit at first wipe. But DPS queues were hours-long. So if you were unlucky a single dungeon could take the whole afternoon. It was repetitive, time-consuming and miserable.
Story-wise, this is the expansion where Thrall was holding the planet together, then he decided to get married, then the Fire Druids crashed the wedding and split him into four elemental Thralls, then the player and Thrall’s wife rescued the Thralls and fused them back together, and through pure Deus Ex Machina the essence of Azeroth got mixed with Thrall so he got the exact same powers as Deathwing, which allowed the Dragon Aspects to put Deathwing’s powers into the Dragon Soul, which made it the only weapon that could kill Deathwing, so we killed Deathwing, and then the Aspects lose their powers for reasons and then the story ends with a pregnancy reveal. IMHO nothing in Shadowlands compares to this level of terribad lol
So like… is it me? Am I weird? Or has it been so long that people forgot how bad Cataclysm was?
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I thoroughly enjoyed Cata, it was a time when all my old friends and guildies still played and the general vibe of the expansion was great. Loved the FL raid, fire druid staff (I mained feral before monk) and the rogue legendary quest line. I loved Hyjal and flying in the old zones. But again, the best part was the players and community. Was a lot of fun for me.
The worst for me is still SL. It’s the only one I would say I don’t like.
Oh and to answer your question: you are weird, and you know that! 
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Awesome Bear Tier set from Cata. Cast Frenzied Regeneration, heals the whole freaking raid. Use a glyph that changes it to increased healing received, best support ability paired with another healer’s raid wide heal.
Also got a PC upgrade during that time, went from 30 FPS to 100 FPS, I got mesmerized by Deathwing’s swinging head at how smooth the movement was I wiped the raid… watching.
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The dragons: We must pour all our power into the Dragon Soul.
Luxuria: It’s a mystery how they lost all their power.
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Everybody else just gets their powers back after resting.
Like, when a Mage runs out of Mana, they don’t stay out of Mana until 6 expansions later lol
That’s assuming the powers always regenerate. Obviously Dragon Aspect powers don’t work that way.
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Ok, let’s assume that the Dragon Aspects just spent all the power that the Titans gave them, and they were always supposed to be finite powers.
Why did that cause Dragons (not just the Aspects) to also lose the ability to reproduce?
I enjoyed Cata, especially the Uldum quests with Bud, and Harrison Jones.
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Cata was one of my favorites. Best iteration of Disc Priest, good legendary questlines, still had a semi-decent talent system, I enjoyed the original Heroic difficulty of dungeons, their mechanics, the raids, the profession perks and the guild perks. Also did a LOT of roleplaying and the storylines and zone revamps were great for that. Also liked the more streamlined zones.
It was a great time for the guild.
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Dragons are not a naturally occurring species. They exist because the Keeper Tyr took one look at proto-drakes and decided that making even bigger fire-breathing lizards was a great idea.
I fear my cataclysm experience was tainted by my noobish ignorance of how classes functioned on a basic level and not handing my first new expansion class upheaval well. It led to cases of not including core abilities in my rotation all the way through levelling or having my pets not use growl to pull aggro from my unable-to-function-in-melee hunter.
I didn’t like it either. Found the story dull.
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No, i wasnt a fan either. First time i took a break from the game. So much that I bypassed mop as well.
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Logistically? I’m sure there’s a % who think it is, objectively? WoD and SL had far worse numbers.
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It’s the expansion all of my friends from vanilla-wrath stopped playing, though some left at the tail-end of wrath. Game fatigue and the massive changes were most of the reasons they dropped off. I stopped playing a few months into Cata and didn’t come back until DF launch.
It didn’t help that the lead dev was more antagonistic than any of the most blatant trolls on this forum today.
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You’re not.
But you are all wrong.
I’m not sure if it was the worst, but I did hate how it changed the philosophy of heroic dungeons coming out of Lich King. Harder, slower-paced, and more strategic wasn’t what I was looking for - but Ghostcrawler made the bed and forced everyone to sleep in it.
Dungeons haven’t ever been the same for me since. I miss the endless low-stress grind of Lich dungeons (which still allowed me to collect some decent gear).
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For me it was WOD because of the Orc oversaturation and way too much cut content including the main cities and entire zones.
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Cata most certainly had its problems.
And a lot of what you mention I don’t disagree with. Despite that I still enjoyed most of it.
Goblins instantly became my new favorite race. Questing got a needed update, even if it was a bit “on rails”. And the old world just got more fleshed out and streamlined.
I like Cata. I don’t love it, but I like it.
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Anyone who thinks ANYTHING other than Warlords of Draenor was the WORST. EXPANSION. IN. HISTORY. definitely needs to check themselves in for help and a med check. Cataclysm (aside from Dragon Soul Raid) was probably one of the more interesting expansions, even if it is not in anyon’e top 5. You had:
- Flying immediately on the entire planet
- Multiple new zones that took you everywhere and got you out of the city
- New questing and leveling experiences
- New Race/Class unlocks
- Worgen and Goblins were added
- Vial of the Sands gave us our first “turn into a dragon with a passenger” mount
- Uldum with the Harrison Jones questline was a blast
- Each zone was unique with its own art and style
- Travel options were greatly improved
- We saw the Atari version of Joust added in as a questline
- Druids and Shaman were finally made powerful
Plus, tons of other things not even mentioned. WoD gave us ORCS, a Twitter feed, and a SELFIE camera toy. Plus they witheld flying from us til near the end of the expansion. And God forbid you had RareScanner or SilverDragon installed and flew through Tanaan Jungle since there was a “Rare” every 50 feet. Not really rare if you ask me.
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