Heroic dungeons were fun when it first came out.
Both of these are inaccurate.
The majority of players who hated Cata hated it because of the changes made to old zones, especially when it resulted in them losing their favorite questlines.
The change to Thousand Needles was especially criticized.
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I got the Legendary staff in Cata!
It was a terrible experience because the guild opted for me to be the first one to get it, and not this other mage who played Fire. The Fire Mage got pretty toxic about it and they were eventually guild kicked because of it. Kind of put a damper on it⌠I didnt do any progression raiding after Firelands until Shadowlands.
Fast forward to Dragonflight and the staff gave me the use effect as cool mount so I guess it all worked out in the end. Hopefully Tarcegosaâs Form will have Dynamic Flight in 11.0
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I started in Cata. It was a whole new world for me, as I had only ever played First Person Shooters before that point.
Cataclysm opened my mind to every genre of game, literally. I had thought MMOs and RPGs were just âright click, watch your guy axe something for 1 damage for 5 minutesâ.
Now, I have played every genre under the sun, from roguelites to souls likes to MMOs and isometrics like Diablo.
I was in a tight knit 10 man raiding guild pushing heroics for about 90% of Cata so it was a really fun raiding experience on my end despite it being a mediocre expansion as a whole.
Cataclysm was my favorite expansion. I loved the dungeons, the aesthetic of the gear, the lore, the world, the guild system and reforging.
I hope people who hate Cataclysm give it another try, because the content that did come with it was actually quite good, even if there wasnât as much of it.
You are quite right, I could have sworn it was Cata, but it was in the very early 5.0.4 MoP patch. Maybe they talked about it in the content release info during Cata and I thought it was from there.
My friends still played WoW then.
Thereâs that toy from Azshara that turns you into a night elf ghost. You can go into cat form without the buff falling off. So you can run around as crazy elf just clawing stuff with her bare hands. Which I think is neat.
The starting zones for Gilneans and Goblins were awesome!
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I wonât be playing it, so thatâs nice.
Firelands and BWL were fun.
I liked the classes, it was the last time we had proper talent trees until DF.
I actually liked the hard heroics, they were a lot of fun at the start but people got super toxic and salty over having to actually do mechanics. That was a drag.
My mother taught me to not say anything if I didnât have something nice to sayâŚ
mrhuhmfph
Uldum.
I really enjoyed questing in uldum. The story was a bit disjointed, but the moment to moment feeling it gave was really unique. I still think back on some of that zones quests fondly.
It introduced me and my guild to many of WoWâs impressive competitors at the time. We wouldnât have gotten to experience RIFT, GW2, SWTOR, LOTRO, FFXIV, The Secret World, Tera, or Neverwinter Online, without Cataclysm telling my circle of friends that we werenât serious enough about âperformanceâ to play WoW, and wouldnât have had the enjoyable, newly enriched and genre-educated homecoming at Legionâs Announcement (highlighting accessible and approachable open world content that mirrored a lot of what weâd enjoyed in our time away) if weâd never taken that break!
Thank you, Cataclysm, for encouraging us to explore our options, and thank you Legion for winning us back!
It was the most courageous Blizzard has ever been in setting goals for an expansion. It was the first and only time Blizzard attempted to completely remake the old world, and even though it wasnât perfect, it was hugely successful in getting across a feeling of change and development in the world. You could tell time had passed from when you first started playing in vanilla, and zones showed how stories and plot hooks had progressed.
For example, the forest blooming in the center of Desolace, and the druidsâ dreams leaking out of the Wailing Caverns and manifesting right in the middle of the Barrens, turning the whole area lush and green. Seeing Theramore develop from an isolated port on the edge of a swampy peninsula to a major hub of military operations against the horde, after having built a paved superhighway straight through the swamp onto the hordeâs doorstep. Starting areas being wrecked by the elements or flooded by the oceans. Thousand Needles/The Shimmering Flats ending up COMPLETELY submerged and turned into a wildly different zone. These massive changes were all over the place, and really made it feel for a while like the world was alive and in flux.
It was also the only time that all the new expansion zones were spread out from each other across the world, instead of all next to each other in a coherent âexpansion continent.â I feel like this didnât work out as well, but I applaud that they were willing to try it. Also, some of the new zones were really cool. I loved Deepholm, and even though it was just a big crater with a skybox like all other zones, it FELT like an underground zone (the first in the game). And I may be the only one, but I loved Vashjâir, and all the questing in the zone. It felt alien in a way I hadnât seen since some of the BC zones, like I was really exploring the unknown. The shelf that dropped off into the Abyss was super intimidating. The zone was huge and the subzones in it diverse. You got to go inside a giant sea creature and quest inside its body. It was wild and an amazing experience. To top it off, if you got on a flying mount and just went up up up, you could pop out of the water and find yourself in this big empty expanse of water with one tiny chain of abandoned islands. I thought it was surreal how, from a normal surface-worlder perspective the area could seem so barren, but just below the waves it was teeming with activity.
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You misspelled Shadowlands
Same⌠I really enjoyed Cata and I am leveling a druid to raid with in it right now.
Cata had the full scale use of blizzards phasing for the first time. Which made the game a lot more immersive IMHO.
Watching an area change after completing a quest was honestly an excellent addition to WoW retail.
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