I actually thought Cata was a great expansion. The updated questing zones were a huge breath of fresh air, the initial heroics/raids were brutal, but they were all fun. I think the world content was mediocre, and Dragon Soul was just an exhausting and irritating raid. Spine of Deathwing on heroic as a warlock was miserable, we had no burst damage, if you weren’t an arcane mage you were a liability on that fight.
I’d play Classic Cataclysm, but I’d 100% hard stop at Dragon Soul.
Almost all the answers you get for this are going to be lies, or false memories.
The primary reason players started quitting during cata was the rise of F2P games that offered an arrange of cosmetics through casino like game play.
The secondary reason was because CATA heroics were punishing to bad players.
That’s it. There are some other small reasons but they are very incidental for the most part.
Cata raids were also really punishing. For those that did stick it out and actually get geared up with Heroics, they had an even harder surprise waiting for them.
ICC-10 Normal was easy. Any 10-man Normal Raid in Cata was brutal. There were no “easy first bosses”, even Magmaw, Halfus, and Iron Council were very difficult at the start, especially for healers. Healers really struggled with the changes to mana, healing, and a lot more raid damage and mechanics that they had to heal through.
Gone were the days of facerolling thru 10-mans with pugs. And that probably did end up causing some to quit. But it seems like it’s the challenge the people here claim they want now, so idk why they don’t want Cata Classic.
Yeah they tried to hand hold really hard here. Basically destroying hybrid specs. The new retail talent system does something similar, you’re forced to spend roughly half your points in a class tree and the other half in a spec tree. Not too mention there will be only 2 trees.
I didn’t mind the dungeon finder, but the raid finder did wreck the feel of the game for me. It made me feel like I had to get some LFR gear before progressing to raids. Then when I finally felt ready I didn’t feel like raiding anymore. Can’t explain it but I am sure other folks are like me. It’s OCD I know, but I felt like I had to complete LFR like I feel like I have to complete everything else in a game. I definitely hate feeling unprepared and always want gear that doesn’t make me feel carried.
Most folks didn’t like the lack of a social aspect to the dungeon finder, but I didn’t care much about that. I did find guild with LFG as a healer and never had that type of interaction when dealing with the group finder.
I also did not like rated BGs. I know I am in the minority but it was just another thing to do for me. Don’t even get me started on archeology. That felt really contrived to begin with. I mean… Fishing,Cooking,first aid,archeology. It really didn’t fit imo.
Then their was the talent trees and the homogenization of the classes…. As a restodruid in arena it was nice to dispel, but it was also nice to have weaknesses. It is good for the classes to be somewhat unique. That is the nature of RPG. I mean I did complain about my buddies Psionicist being OP in d&d, but I didn’t ask the GM for the ability to explode someone’s mind on my warrior. I enjoyed playing a dumb warrior.
TLDR can’t help ya. I don’t do brevity well. 
Technically I quit at the end of wrath, didnt even play Cata, but it was the world of queuecraft for me. LFD destroyed dungeons for me, no one wanted to do anything but fast fast fast get the lootbox and queue again. No side bosses, no quest runs. So many people rolling need on everything they can too, no one cared because you’re on different servers anyway so there is no risk of being blacklisted. People vote kicking others just because their gearscore wasn’t high enough as well, then the tank leaves, then im in the queue again for another 45 minutes to an hour. Just not fun for me.
Then they are like, we’re adding queues to raids now too!!!
Yeah no, I’ll pass.
I forgot about the vote kicks. I didn’t like that as well. I don’t mind kicking a person that refuses to listen or does the opposite that is asked, but it wasn’t always used for the right reasons
because of what they did to warlock t6 shoulders/helm in 4.3.
“Genuinely interest” you say but you try use gotchas on people who reply and try to defend cata
all of my friends left and playing an mmo alone is pretty bad
I went to play Rift for a while, because most of my friends started to slowly quit. Other than that I play for most of Cata. I didn’t particularly like the shift from Emblems to Justice/Valor points, and not being able to buy tier tokens to keep up with raiders anymore. Felt like all the ground that more casual players gained in Wrath was cast away so the raiders could be on top again.
Not even once, I loved cata. The people who disliked it usually say the same thing. But why they don’t remember is that lfr came out with dragonsoul at the end of the expansion.
Talent tree removal was mop
The talent tree rework. I liked having the freedom to venture down all three if the fancy struck me, felt like removal of player choice. “Some players still make the wrong choices, we need to fix that for them.” Didn’t sit well with me.
I had a really unstable home life at the time so I played during Cata but not very much. I quit in WoD but I can safely say it wasn’t LFD or LFR that did it.
Quit before firelands cause guild went boom then came back for dragonsoul and quit caus of pandas, and i was wrong pandas ended up being awesome.
Ya this is around the time that insulting the intelligence of your customer base became fashionable for big corporations. They tried to reinvent the wheel and became supremely arrogant when it failed.
I quit at the end of Cataclysm since Dragon Soul left a sour taste due to how awful it was.
Least I got my shadow priest the legendary staff.
people who did quit in cata was replaced by new people who later did quit in WoD
if blizzard are smart they would jump from Wotlk to MoP then to legion.
So you quit in every expansion due to LFD and then come back again?