Cataclysm was an exciting time originally; I remember watching all the datamines come out on MMO Champion of the new models, zone changes, etc. Overall it was a fun expansion, although eventually you came to realize that all the zones had had their open world style replaced with linear questlines that mostly focused on making movie/meta/pop culture references.
But I think I have realized the true sin of the Cataclysm zones is not merely the railroaded, theme-parky quests. But it is that they simply made no attempt to encourage open world persistence, particularly with world PvP.
BC had the Hellfire Peninsula capture points, the ZG objectives (which almost no one did because⌠everyone hated Zangar), as well as Halaa, which for a time saw full scale battles take place, even larger than AV as there was no instance cap.
Wrath of the Lich King put all its World PvP eggs in one basket with Wintergrasp, which did not really work. The zone was fought over but felt like a chore more than a borderlands the factions fought over. Unfortunately, Blizzard seemed to think it was the way to go, and went on to make Tol Barad. Tol Barad I would actually say worked better than Wintergrasp; but WotLK succeeded as an MMO on the sheer fact that it was the continent we were all waiting for and had the storyline most Warcraft 3 players were excited about. Even by 3.2 the complaints had started and with 3.3 a lot of players realized that Blizzard was resorting to somewhat formulaic patches to produce content.
Cataclysm meant a whole new world for leveling new characters, but even though the zones told stories about the increasing faction conflict, the actual motivation for PvP hit an all time low. Why were we fighting over a ghost island when there was a full scale war happening in Kalimdor in the Barrens, Ashenvale, and Stonetalon Mountains? This does somewhat come back to the goofy questlines, where the âstorytellingâ actually got in the way of this game being an MMO.
The game has kept Cataclysmâs legacy ever since, where being a âpersistent open world MMORPGâ is a secondary fact to using whatever systems work to keep people logging in and playing. Basically⌠Deathwing really did ruin everything
For me what killed it was being excited to try out the new Shadow Priest skill only to discover that its mana cost rendered it worthless. The next issue was that I was going OOM halfway through boss encounters despite keeping my Dispersion skill on cool down. They eventually fixed all that, but I had abandoned it as my main class by then. The next thing that killed my enjoyment of Cataclysm was most of my friends quitting because the dungeons were just too hard. I finally turned to raiding because that was really the only means of advancing my character. For me, that expansion set the game on the elitist course that it remains on to this day.
The worst realization was that Uldum, an area Iâve been wanting to see ever since finding the mysterious wall in the cactus patch in Tanaris during classic, was nothing but one long, tedious movie/pop culture reference. The whole damn zone. And the quest chain lasts forever.
No, not all zones had this. And they werenât all completely linear. They just had a better pathing system.
Because a faction conflict storyline has zero to do with players killing players.
Sounds like they just didnât want to learn mechanics. Even before the nerf, they werenât that difficult. It simply took learning mechanics and then gearing up for heroics.
Considering thatâs the expansion that my guild combined with an RP guild to go pure casual with people who never raided before and we had no issues with heroic dungeons or raids with some pretty noob players who only played a couple days a week⌠I donât find this accurate at all. And that was just one of three guilds casually running all of the content.
Nope. It had a storyline outside of Indiana Jones. The Indy one was just 80% of the place.
It must be closer to 90% of the place because I legit forgot that there was anything else there. One quest chain with the reference would have been fine, but they oversaturated it.
All of my guilds and my friendsâ guilds were thriving and everyone was participating, because so many wanted to be involved in unlocking guild perks. But most were casual and loved running the content when they had time.
Cata was never a full time job. And those dungeons were not that difficultâ especially after they were nerfed.
⌠Iâm sorry, what? Iâve been a filthy casual in this game since Cata. My progression raiding days ended in Wrath. None of your insults or attacks make any sense and Iâm not even reading further. Seek help. Geebus.
Oh. Nobody actually left the game. I see. Whatever you want to believe. But we know the truth.
You keep telling us youâre a casual who logs in to chat with your guildies. But all the rest of the casuals are lazy good for nothings who wonât git gud and start working end content like a job. If you donât remember making posts like this, perhaps you should pay attention to what youâre posting, because playing like you tell us you do does not privilege you to pass judgment over people who play more and harder than you already.
Please show me exactly where I said no one left the game. Iâll wait. I gave my personal experiences.
Please show me exactly where I called anyone lazy or insulted anyone by saying I liked Cata and that my friends and guildies got through the content. Do you just like attacking people with nonsense? Because none of what you claim I said exists.
Perhaps you should actually read what was posted and not whatever ridiculousness you just made up.
Once again, please show me exactly where I passed judgment on anyone at any time. If you canât comprehend what someoneâs personal experience and opinion is, thatâs a you problem. Not me.
I donât know who piddled in your Cheerios this morning, but absolutely none of whatever crazy conspiracy bs youâve said exists in anything I wrote and Iâm done responding to this insanity.
This 100%. The zones in cata were SO disappointing. I still fantasize about grim batol, or hyjal⌠then I remember that blizzard released them already in some sort of terrible state.
To be fair every expansion has its great flavour, even shadowlands to an extent even though it very drawn out at the moment, my biggest mistake for cats that Blizzard did, was them actually scrapping Ogres for Goblins.
I love diversity Goblins bring, so Iâm glad they are playable but I just canât keep thinking âWhat if we actually got Ogres for the Horde?â.
As a long-time veteran of PvP MMOâs before WoW released, when I looked at vanilla world pvp like Southshore vs. Tarren Mill, I couldnât understand why people were even doing it.
âWhat are you fighting over?â I kept asking. âWhatâs the objective?â
But people were just fighting. Because for most of them, WoW was their first MMORPG, and theyâd never seen anything like this before.
But world PvP in WoW doesnât have any point. Itâs just a cafeteria food fight.
The reason that PvP started dying off, and never really took off again until Blizzard tried bribing people with war mode bonuses, is that people quickly tired of a pointless cafeteria food fight, and wanted something with actual objectives.
There are a number of great games that have come out with important, persistent, and meaningful world PvP. But WoW was never one of them.
I agree with a lot of what you said but in this case, we canât forget the massive change to healing while at the same time making dungeon mechanics harder. Tanks didnât want to slow down and DPS didnât want to avoid damage because it hurt their numbers - and healers could no longer save everyone.
On a side note, one of the things I distinctly remember from Wrath is BC players complaining that Naxx (and the early heroic dungeons) were too easy. The devs responded that Naxx was the âentry level raidâ. They had the mindset that the entry level stuff had to cater to new players without the skills of people playing since launch.
Cata was the first time the dungeon difficulty picked up where the Wrath dungeons left off. There was no reset for new players - just the assumption that everyone played Wrath and everyone running the new dungeons had the skill level of people who finished Wrath.
This causes the same problem we have today with how BFA dungeons are too hard for actual new players @ level 10-20 especially when the classes donât have their full tool kit yet.
While Iâm sure seeing Ogres in the Horde would be great fun for Alliance players, as a long-time Tauren player I say: No Thank You.
Playing a Tauren was bad enough. The elevators in Undercity would regularly kill Tauren players, for years. Your mount could get stuck on the geometry and then when the elevator descended you would fall to your death.
There were also numerous quest buildings in WoD that you couldnât even enter as a Tauren. There was a world treasure rare (in Bladespire Citadel, no less, which was at one point going to be the Horde base of all things) that you couldnât get as a Tauren because the geometry wouldnât allow you to get where it needed to be (and no, size changers donât work for things like that).
Being big sucks.
And for the faction with the stereotype as the âbig, dumb, ugly factionâ, the last thing the Horde needs is the biggest, dumbest, ugliest race of all.
If people want to see Ogres so badly, please lobby for them as an Alliance race.
The Wrath dungeons were difficult at the start, just like the dungeons at the start of every expansion are difficult.
The problem with Cata dungeons is that people were comparing them to the faceroll dungeons they were doing at the END of Wrath, after outgearing them for almost 2 years.
It was a narrative that was made worse because of the âwrath babyâ phenomenon, where a lot of people playing at the start of Cata had NOT been playing at the start of Wrath, since they had picked up the game after that. So they had no idea what the beginning of an expansion was even like, and overreacted when things were actually challenging because they werenât decked out in catch-up gear.
Weâre even seeing this a little bit now where there are complaints of âwhereâs the catch-up gear?â and itâs like⌠catch-up gear? Weâre at the start of an expansion.
I remember the biggest complain at the time was that there was nothing to do unless you raid. You would level up, do dungeons, then do more dungeons for valor cap, then maybe do couple dailies for rep items. I actually kinda liked that, because it was core WoW content and I didnât mind doing it. I could still get my tier sets even if I didnât raid eventually. I thought the vendor system was super good.
