What was “hard” was healers were radically changed to the triage healing model and had very poor base regen and a playerbase who got lazy with easymode dungeons.
Wrath dungeons were notably hard at Wrath release…for a long time (maybe even to Ulduar), Loken had more player deaths than any Naxx boss.
Cata dungeons were pretty easy once you stopped trying to AOE tank it in greens and went back to CCing some stuff…also it was mainly Grim Batol that gave people problems because the dragons didn’t practically wipe out the entire trash packs. Once people got familiar with the bosses (this includes all Cata bosses) and geared up a bit, they weren’t that bad.
That said, a Cata or MoP classic is about the only one I’d seriously consider actively playing.
Should there be? No. Will there be? Probably. Apparently people play old games for nostalgia and the older you get the more disposable income you have for these things. Why not take advantage of that for profit.
If they do another total revamp of the base-world leveling, quests, and zone aesthetics? Yeah. Given the situation of how profitable the Classic servers are compared to how much they need to develop for them? It’s also pretty feasible.
I liked Cataclysm, for what that’s worth. Some of my best memories were from Cataclysm.
That right there is why there shouldn’t be a Cata-Classic. The changes wrought in that xpac are still with us in retail today (along with all the changes by subsequent xpacs). A flooded Thousand Needles will NEVER compare favorably with the original Thousand Needles, the race track, and all the quests there before the Cata tsunami rolled in and never rolled out. Same “sinking” feeling with the split Barrens, the flooded Durotar … too many watery graves (so to speak) to bring Cata back as “classic.”
And riddle me this Cataclysm “event” – Thousand Needles flooded, a good chunk of Darkshore with flooded canyons, a sizable part of Tanaris gone, a GIGANTIC maelstrom sucking water from Azeroth’s oceans down into Deepholme (that never seems to flood), but the water levels in Thousand Needles, Darkshore, and Tanaris NEVER go down. How is that possible … so much water being taken out, but flood levels never recede.
Maybe. I remember my old 10 man early Cata team well…holy paladin, resto shaman, and holy priest (my gf at the time)…she refused to even try disc because “that’s a PvP spec”. She had physical issues and struggled really bad with heroics and the raid to the point I actually made up strats just to minimize movement from her as much as I could. We all did what we could so she’d not feel like an anchor. Didn’t work out (in a lot of ways) but definitely a very noteworthy time.
She missed out! Disc was spectacular for dungeons and raids. I thought I was pretty good, but then our other Disc Priest wanted to show me up and he solo healed Heroic Morchok. LOL
It was quite fun to have tanks yell at me for doing more DPS than the DPS and scream “STOP DPSING AND HEAL!” I’d just link the Atonement passive and the group would laugh. No one took damage, Divine Aegis was fantastic, I still had PoH and normal heals, while also doing a boatload of healing through an Atonement passive that wasn’t a buff with a short duration. So much fun! I miss it.
Should do MoP and stop there, though. Or maybe even branch off a different direction than retail took? They’d certainly have the resources. Imagine if we kept MoP design but got some of the cool stuff like (most of) Legion’s animations.
I know it was good, but I was and still am someone who generally doesn’t care what spec or covenant or what talent choice or whatnot you pick…if you can heal at the level I need you to heal at, so be it.
But I get disc healing is hard. Most healers even still heal through their UI and disc requires playin a pseudo DPS spec along with managing health bars. I play every spec to some capacity and fully admit disc priest is the one I like the least because I am too accustomed to either focusing on a boss/environment or babysitting healthbars while making sure to run/move as needed. It’s why I claim people who play “battle healers” (weave DPS in with healing) are playing the game at the hardest level
I sure hope so.
I love Cata and I want the opportunity to play it as current content, I’m really looking forward to a classic cata someday.
Maybe even a classic mop.
If they’re planning to fork the game then Cataclysm would be the spot. That’s where we lost a lot of the game mechanics from Vanilla, TBC, and WoTLK and I think it was the point where they updated the game models too.
Maybe keep all the WoTLK mechanics in place and then do a whole other set of expansions that don’t break those mechanics. Have them take place in a universe where Deathwing was killed by the other dragons and never made it to Deepholm to recover, so cataclysm never happens and the WoTLK mechanics remain in place.
I can see there being a WoTLK Classic but Cataclysm was such a huge change to the game itself I can’t really see the Classic WoW line continuing in that direction, basically just becoming a delayed version of Retail, but I don’t think that was the intent with Classic WoW, to just be a delayed version of WoW all over again. I’d imagine it was created because the “Classic” WoW experience became lost to everyone after Cataclysm and there are some old players that want a way to relive that experience and there are some new players who simply joined the game at a time when the Classic experience wasn’t available anymore because Cataclysm was such a big change for the games both in terms of visuals and play mechanics.
for someone who actually started playing in cata due to lack of money prior and young age; when cata released i was i think 17 had my first job; prior i went to school didn’t have any income and dad didnt like the fact i played video games but my mom was here and there she didn’t like spending money all the time say for a sub.
but no i dont think there should be one. why? because i remember just spamming dungeons every single time as i was scared to raid despite people said i was good at healing but yea i didn’t feel like it was really rewarding tbh. WoW isn’t my first mmorpg either and in other mmorpg’s i did raid but those raids were like 40mans because the damage we dealt in that game was so little so you had to bring so many people just to clear it in a decent amount of time. there were no enrage effects but you did have to self heal so in that sense yea there was an enrage effect as potions is what healed you and it got costly af just to raid if you didn’t down it in a decent time.
I’d play the heck out of cata classic. It’s my favorite xpac. There’s lots of things I love about it but one thing I’d be especially excited for would be that sweet sweet running lightning bolt.
The raids were really fun IMO. Firelands is probably my all time favorite raid. Still had talent trees, I liked the pvp system (pvp specific stats and currency). Dungeons were lots of fun. I really enjoyed the glyph system as it was in cata. I loved all the new zones they added. Uldum was a little meh i suppose but even then it was still enjoyable IMO.
As with all the xpacs there’s a large level of subjectivity to it but for me personally I’m looking forward to the possibility of Cata Classic the most. Some of my most enjoyable moments in wow were from cata.
I just threw up a little