haven’t hit max level on cata yet as i was on vacation, but assuming it’s like live was, & like wrath was, it’s not as big a deal as people are making it out to be until s11 (and dragonwrath ig but if you’re not a caster that’s not your problem) & streamers are no-life min-maxers. It’s your choice if you need an extra few % stat. It wont stop you from hitting 2k, 2400.
But, as always. Gear / gearing is an important part of the game & if the style it’s acquired in cata bugs you then that’s your choice.
So in spite of any other issues in cata your real gripe is not having people to play with? That’s valid tbh.
As someone that played season 10-11 as arms war when it was live, I remember absolutely hating it (didn’t do pve so had no pve gear). In fact, it was the only time i quit playing for almost a year ( I think season 11 was like a year long) and I’ve been playing since BC. The general consensus from pvp’ers at the time was that Wrath was MUCH better.
This is exactly why I can’t get into classic. It’s treated like its own entire game instead of a side game of retail. If it had transmog plus faster rates for leveling I’d be down.
It was lol. IMO at least. But I think literally every expansion has had “previous expansion was better for pvp” reaction except bfa and maybe consequently SL.
Wrath players praised the old days when it was live and bemoaned DK’s and seasonal balance changes. Replace DK there and you’ve got every patch of every season to date. PvP players have almost never universally praised the state of the game.
MoP was absolutely hated until s15, s14. S14 was i think the same balance patch of s15 but the general opinion I don’t remember seeing shift until we settled into the relative normalcy of 15. & It was still pretty debated while live until WoD Dropped and suddenly mop was the untouchable peak of pvp due to how badly WoD soiled the sheets.
I’d still take Cata over MoP. But not before Wotlk / TBC. And I’d take MoP over wod & anything after it. It’s just the ugly middle child.
I agree that there was usually a “rose tinted goggles” viewpoint when it came to previous seasons. I also remember everyone complaining how BC was better during S5, but S6 and s7 were generally thought of as good, and even more so after they were over. S8 was shadowmourne BS. Come to think of it, there were a lot of seasons that would have otherwise been thought of positively if not for the crazy pve gear that existed during the time.
Cataclysm continued the pve trend if I remember correctly, while Mists was generally praised if for no other reason than for the equalization of gear and easy gearing process. It started to become very bloated if I remember correctly though, and everything became instant cast. I think the actual gameplay was decent though.
WoD stripped the F out of everything and gameplay was a bit barebones, (played warrior and remember hitting whirlwind 30000 times), however…probably the best gearing the game ever had. The rest of the expansion besides questing was pretty well disliked though.
Legion was pretty good, but templates were kinda dumb and sometimes unfair and didn’t allow much player choice/agency. Artifacts also made balance a bit tougher I think…but they did look awesome! PVP had its highs and lows, but overall class balance/gameplay I think was pretty good. The expansion as a whole was pretty awesome too.
BFA was pretty well disliked even when it was live, that includes gearing process, gameplay, pace of arena, handling of nzoth and raids etc.
Shadowlands pvp wise wasn’t too bad, but the change in dmg definitely surprised people and scared them away initially i think (although it was the right move). The gearing process in becoming optimal was a nightmare though and there was just so much busywork. Didn’t help that the overall expansion was a mess.
Almost. That’s kinda where s14 and s15 come in. S12 was just a mess due to bad design, and classes that were just insane. Like zoo hunter prenerf, HFB stacking warrior prenerf, demolock prenerf, etc. But then s13 the resilience change showed it’s obvious consequences & more importantly ToTT came out & we saw possibly more offensive PvE gear abuse than even cata had in Dragon Soul. procs that gave 16k to primary stat etc. just absolutely disgusting season lol. Idr if they hotfixed it at the end or halfway through the season but it was a mess.
S14 had it fixed so the pve gear was worse than pvp gear again, idr what they changed but it worked, excluding some stuff that stuck around for niche comps. Like the stat redistrubution trinket from Lei Shen, and Legendary Meta gems from the cloak questline for rshams. I think they used the tank meta for more survivability or something. I think s15 had CDR trinket from SoO among others but generally pve wasn’t required just you could find a few upgrades if you wanted them.
yeah wod had hands down the best gearing to date.
Yeah. I had a great time ganking while questing but after hitting max level I think i quit the expansion until the middle of wild season to try out Tanaan. Overall not a lot of good memories.
For me class design is everything so I simply can’t agree here for my own subjective views of what make the classes I enjoy fun. But I imagine if i had enjoyed the changes I would’ve loved legion.
This is a great call out. People aren’t going to enjoy mop when it comes out and every warrior is 5 stack TFB one shotting you. Or double hunter zoo ending a game in 30s. Symbiosis rdruid getting block and deter making it an invalid target too.
Yep
Agreed. People seem to forget having to get honor levels to even unlock their talents. It was so fun being honor level 0 and having to get to what? 30? To get grounding totem? So fun.
Tl;dr no expac re-released is going to feel skillful, games been beat, everyone knows what’s good instead of it being a few people. Everyone has addons etc.
Doesn’t every classic expansion come out in the final version of class balance? If so this won’t be a thing.
I actually can’t wait for mop… Every class felt great to play. Only reason I’m playing cata. Ps cata isn’t that bad right now. It’ll get worse when the pve gear becomes common.
it won’t be. just like every other version of classic it’ll start on an edited final patch. so, that’s good i think lol. But that’s not why I don’t enjoy mop. I just don’t like class design changes going even that far back lol.
my subjective views on class design are irrelevant to seasonal balance though, I was just detailing for posterity.
I’m just saying that content is being released like crazy on multiple forefronts. If a new update/patch/expansion is released on a version of WoW, the others will take a hit in participation.
This is regardless of how fun/good/stale the version we’re playing currently is. I’m sure less would flock to Cata or SoD Phase4 if PvP was better in retail, but people bounce around regardless. I’m a Retail main and do the same.
seems like they got most classes balanced i cant think of anything broken…i wish they would buff a few specs, too many game modes has the player base split but my q times havent been terrible