The 5 BIG Issues With Cataclysm That MATTER
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 ส.ค. 2023
- Many of us are expecting Cataclysm Classic to be a follow up to Wrath (will likely find out at Blizzcon) and like any expansion, Cata is not without issues.
Today I go over 5 of the things that I could see as being problematic with this version of WoW
This is The 5 BIG Issues With Cataclysm That MATTER
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It's worth noting that the 'break yourself upon my body, feel the strength of the earth' boss is in this xpack.
Back in the day my guild used him as a tank-test. Before taking a tank into raid, we would see how he did in Stonecore.
why do i remember this 😂
That boss was brutal. so many wipes, so much fun.
Ah.. the "Make your overgeared healer WORK" boss
*shudders*
The 10% guild gold bonus really puts the concept of “10% for the Big Guy” into a new perspective!
😂
Republicans try not to think of Hunter Bidens cock challenge (IMPOSSIBLE)
😂😂😂
Biden just smiled upon you.
Some of my favorite WoW memories include taking Cata Heroics on my Prot Pally. The feeling of a group who was able to get past the first boss of Stonecore was incredible. Heroic Halls of Origination felt like a raid to me and still stands as one of my favorite dungeons to this day.
I remember loving Archaeology on my Hunter as DPS queues for Heroics were close to an hour for the first month or so of launch. I leveled Arch so fast and got so much cool stuff! I always like having stones available to make dungeons easier for the group. Felt like a profession that actually benefited you outside of gear/consumes.
I think with the attitude change of the player base, Cata will be better received this time around. We know what's coming, and even Dragon Soul won't be hated nearly as much and may in fact be a high point for the rerelease.
meh, I dunno about the dragon soul, I always felt they completely botched up the whole massive dragon fight on a conceptual level already, I just couldn't have cared less for whatever the fuck you're actualy fighting in the game (not to mention 'the green Jesus syndrome' really shone through in that cinematic and story-telling at the end was, again, not engaging to me. But honestly the first 2 tiers are (very) fondly remembered!
I actually hated cata dungeons. In wrath the most fun was to queue up into heroics in full ICC heroic gear as a prot pally and pulling and running non-stop to instead this CC- heavy dungeons in Cata with struggles non-stop
I remember healing them after the nerf to mana, actually had to pay attention. Healing was 100% mana management and zero damage. It was very different. Holy Charka priest was awesome!
Dragonsoul as a whole wasn’t terrible, but madness of deathwing specifically was awful. It was such a let down after spine.
Like wow. Im fighting his ankles. Cool.
@dmv4343 thats why a lot of people like cata because it brought challenge. Nothing is wrong with enjoying easy content at all. I enjoy it at times. But majority of the time. I like a hard fought victory.
I absolutely LOVED release heroics in cata. It's when I first learned how to tank and while they were brutal, they were also the most fun I've ever had doing dungeon content at any point in this game ever. If cata classic happens, I genuinely hope they launch with pre-nerf heroics.
People really gas up the difficulty of the 5 mans, but in reality it just was that the LFG system would pair you up with any class/spec that had x role filled. You could end up forming groups with no cc for a trash pull that made things insanely difficult, or people who just never ccd in the first place.
I am in the full belief that if LFG didn’t exist, people wouldn’t have felt so negatively about them. But this is coming from someone who casually rolled through all of these at 14 years old with their guild just fine on both a restoration shaman and arms warrior.
Ghostcrawler was genuinely right lol
Even normal Cata dungeons were really nice. And Uldum is one of my all-time favourite xp zone.
Had so much fun in the pre-nerf heroics. They were in the exact sweet spot of difficulty. Players had to use their full toolkits and pay attention. CC, interrupts, and target priority mattered.
Too much of wow is just go fast and aoe, and it's boring as shit. Cata was the antithesis of this stupid mindset.
Same and tbh they wherent even that hard, maybe around m+16 level. But whats better is it was good for the game, as a lot of players need that early kick in the teeth to know that they must learn the actual game instead of just trying to face roll everything.
@@theformuoli6397 thats such a good point lmao i was super young aswell and I did ok, a lot of people really just dont want to learn tacs.
Week 1 Cataclysm Heroic dungeons were so goddamn much fun. Next to getting Dragonwrath and oneshotting people in BGs, they were probably my fondest memories from that expansion.
cata heroics are one of my favorite memories of the entire game
Absolutely. First step in and people are using raid markers on mobs. Boss fights were actually fun, couldnt just stand still and shot till dead.
But that was actually not fun, mechanics killed all the fun in the dungeons that previous expansion had.
@@dmv4343 No way! actually having to think was a nice change to the crapfest that was Wrath & BC.
@@kaineskeptic6484 early heroics in tbc were pretty hard compared to wrath at least
One of my biggest gripes about cata wasn’t actually in cata. I thought archaeology was really fun and they did really fun things with it in cata but in every expansion thereafter it became an afterthought. In cata it got you toys, mounts with unique mechanics and even a few pieces of gear. Thereafter it was just a few cosmetic items and some achievements.
I think the player base originally blamed Cataclysm for ruining the game, but now that I've had a second run through Wrath I'm not so sure it was Cata. I have to applaud Blizzard for trying to build guild spirit and group participation again, even if it didn't turn out that way.
They have already said in interviews that they will be bringing back RDF etc so pretty much trashing the value of Guilds while pretending they matter...
@@josephteller9715 RDF is 5-man content. Last I check raids were 10 and 25-man.
honestly, the reason i hated cata is becouse they destroyed my beloved Barrens.
Everytime i was feeling down, i would just level up an alt in the barrens.. i wouldn't progress it past 30.. but damn leveling in the barrens, with this chill music, finding people along the way.. it always felt like home.
I felt like my home was taken, so i hated it.
Cata is a great expansion the problem is wrath was top tier so very hard to live up to. The actually hard heroics and all the raids were sooooo good. Yes dragon soul IS good but unfortunately the weakest raid in the expansion so it just looks bad by comparison.
It was the expansion right after this, Mists of Pandaria. Cata was basically more of the same following the recipe of the expansions before it, no massively changed gameplay functions, no massively new features, just new areas, new dungeons, new raids, new mobs. Sure they had the guild overhaul, but I don't think anyone found that to be an issue. Only debateable point was the barrens rework but at the same time I personally liked the Barrens changes, so I feel that's definitely a hit/miss point depending on who you are and not nearly as offensive as the game goes on to become later on.
Cata was when I resigned as an EU forum MVP. Partly that was due to more work and studies, but in all fairness I also lost interest in the game. The community side of things has always been important to me, and with the cross-realm LFD (and later LFR) tool, there was no longer any sense of people actually attempting to behave and be recognized as good players. It was simply "click the button -> teleport -> get loot -> leave without saying bye".
I also have a love for the original Azeroth, and seing it being changed was a let-down for me.
Honestly, I'm surprised to see the 10 man raiding incentive brought up as a negative despite the balancing issues. That was my favorite part of Cata, personally. 10M is just a more intimate experience. You get to know people better. It's easier to have a conversation while playing together, whereas 25M is usually a "clear comms" situation of sitting in a discord call with mandatory push to talk so that people aren't speaking over each other. I clear both 10 and 25 of all current content weekly, have done for all of Wotlk. Definitely look forward to the 10M runs more, though. 25M for me is just a loot grind. 10 is where the journey with friends is at.
I00% agree.
I'm torn about the 10 vs 25 divide that occurred during Cata and MoP. It basically rendered 25 man raiding a niche segment. I'm glad its at 20 man mythic.
It kind of undermined the purpose of 25m guilds pretty hard but I kinda think if they are open to adjusting stats as it is, increasing the 25m hc loot by 6 item levels wouldn’t be seen as a negative in anyway. 10m hc loot still is near bis, 25m hc stays relevant, gg
Depends on your guild. My 25 man guild banters a lot and we only clear comms during difficult progression - which my 10 man guild also does despite being more casual in nature.
As for the loot - its great as it is. 25 man gets more drops so you're more likely to see something useful drop - whereas you might be waiting a long, long, long time for an item in 10 man despite having no competition.
And merging the lockout encourages having alts raiding. Which is great for those with the time to level alts.
@@theformuoli6397 That's not a fair compromise as it just kills 10m raiding flat out. 25m already had higher loot quantity than 10m did which off-set gearing speed in favor of 25m.
People don't like getting weaker loot but are more tolerant towards slower loot acquisition.
Cata at launch was great. And to me, the elemental zones were fantastic. I really, really enjoyed Vashj'ir. Dungeons were... what you expect for a dungeon dammit!
It was a magical experience. The raids were rock solid hard as well, even on normal.
So long as Blizzard don't start nerfing immediately I think a lot of people will be happy. Nerf if after Firelands, sure, I guess. Just don't cave in to the people who say its too hard.
fuck yes, first tier dungeons (heroics) were HARD and FUN, and raids were great too at that time, came here to write a comment along those lines but I'll just bump this one up =D
it was not stop copium, zones are HORRIBLE same for dungeon, dogshit game
Vashj'ir was trash, but I loved doing Well of eternity dg.
@irmaodofox I've never understood why people hate vashjir, the only reason I've heard is that hyjal is faster therefore vash is trash. I understand it's not as efficient but it's the only underwater zone in the game and it's so unique and beautiful. Hyjal is just another burning steppes, it's not unique or special like vashjir imo
I know the guild gold generation was abusable, but it made it easier to offer guild repairs for people that actually contributed. We had a specific tier for raiders that maintained a certain level of activity. As far as difficulty of content goes, it was hard but fun. I don’t think they’d be a problem that other than the need to actually use CC in dungeon finder. I would hope they’ll try to get 10 and 25 man raids a bit closer in balance, though. The difficulty swing was wild between the two. My guild set up for 10 man because we thought, like WotLK, it would be the easier difficulty. Halfus and magmaw taught us otherwise.
Exactly this. It also made it infinitely easier to keep elixirs and other consumables stocked up. My guild back in the day did the exact same thing, we had a Raider rank that got given consumables, repairs, and our tanks were thrown all sorts of good shit.
10 man raiding being viable will be huge for my friends - its sooo much effort maintaining a 25 man sr roster
xd on vanilia you have 40
@@PIXAGODdifference being you can take 39 apes to a vanilla raid
I owned a guild that was realm first to level 25 on Wyrmreat Accord realm. I was quite surprised when it popped up. Unfortunately the guild is now part of history. Thanks for the video.
My only big complaint with cata was the old world zones changing. I guess it was a necessary evil, but the nostalgia of the old zones was lost somewhat.
That for me is actually the biggest pro's of the expansion.
I wouldn’t mind seeing the zones updated again a decade following the Cataclysm, after the land has started to heal.
Imo they should just throw chromie in somewhere and allow players to go between them
The new zones were actually so much fun, especially the new old world dungeons
i remember being a kid and trying to faceroll dungeons and being shocked at how difficult some of them were. looking forward to a ramp up in difficulty
I still have PTSD from doing grim batol heroic the first month of cata. Even votrex was a 100% wipe on like 4 packs if you didnt CC and interrupt properly
All the bosses in that dungeon were dangerous. The trash was dangerous too - though you could remove most of it with the dragon event (assuming no-one screwed up). Its probably 'the' dungeon of the expansion in terms of innate challenge.
Unpopular opinion: cata was actually so dope
No, it wasnt
Cata was a great expansion just had a lackluster last raid.
Aside from dragon soul, I loved the raids in cata. And the changes to lvling and the world I enjoyed as well.
@@derpd-yu3xqagree
@@anthonyrinaldi8242This is the truth. The 1st raid tier and Firelands were awesome.
25m doesn't just have more loot per player, but because it gets significantly more rolls on the same loot table as 10m, 25m achieves bis exponentially faster. This combined with more battle rez's per player and generally easier boss fights, I'm worried guilds will feel forced to continue doing 25m. GDKP's will absolutely be doing 25m, it's a no brainer. There will be items that 10m guilds never see drop a single time in addition to items that no one can use. 10m Cata loot gripes is what gave rise to bonus rolls in MoP.
Despite all of those advantages, 25m nearly went extinct midway through Cata, as all but the most hardcore and established 25m guilds died. The players voted with their actions, and yet, the devs would ultimately side with the 25m guilds when they killed 10m raiding in WoD. The only problem with 10m was that 25m was siphoning development time away from it when 25m was a ghost town.
Honestly, Blizzard is in a very unique situation here. They have an extremely rare opportunity to do what most ganes never get to, in working on fixing issues in old expansions. I know it's unrealistic, but I do hope Blizzard has at least considered the idea that they can very much work on content they didn't have the development time for in previous expansions. People say Warlords of Draenor was an expansion that had too many ideas that couldn't be put in the final cut. Well if Blizzard chose to, this hypothetical WoD Classic could actually have those features. Same with a Cata Classic.
I would really like to see them redo the class changes
one thing I appreciated about Cataclysm was how they tried to make regular dungeons harder and you had to use crowd control in them, and of course as always wow players started crying like children instead of getting better
This. Having difficult dungeons was like having unlimited raid content.
@@kimbo5409 Which is why Challenge Mode was such a great addition in MoP. Some of my best times.
Im a Cata diehard enjoyer, I fully acknowledge that my love for the expansion is through rose tinted goggles, but my God it was so good. RBG's were absolutely the pinnacle of wow for me, just unbelievably intense. I remember our guild was pushing for R1 on the realm and top 0.5% on the battlegroup when we would run into the other highly rated guild on our server, it was pure rivalry and every game felt like mainstage blizzcon.
Not to mention a ton of classes start to get more in-depth and feel more modern, genuinely brought WoW to life for me from a gameplay standpoint.
BRING ON CATA.
No. Bury it in history. Short of Shadowlands it was the WORST expansion on multiple levels. Let it die and be forgotten.
That and Cataclysm still suffered from the same issue Wrath did - being endgame focused, particularly raids and dungeons and trying to make the game harder, it was all bad for the game overall.. The only upside of Cata was the leveling due to quest and zone revamp, it was at least ''refreshing'' seeing as the zones had actual stories, but it was still too fast. I leveled plenty back then, though abandoned every character at max lvl as there was just no incentive to do anything. Despite some immersion, the game still pushed you towards raids, dungeons, endgame grinds...meh, it's just not Classic unfortunately, where the world and the community itself is the game...and not just raidlogging. Did some heroic dungeons....but that got boring after a few times. It was never about ''diffculty'' or complexity, most players don't want that...but simplicity and fun engagement as a game-wide community.
I think what’s benefited Cataclysm is that, for as controversial as it was for its time, it’s failures seem so trivial compared to what happened with other expansions down the line as well as the overall perception of Blizzard changing over the following expansions from this infallible titan of gaming to a fallen entity that’s despised and Mocked ceaselessly.
Like after Cataclysm, you Had Mist of Pandaria being a perfectly good expansion but players were turned off by the pandas and more chill locations thinking it was a joke, Warlords of Draenor had barely any updates and was disappointing despite the hype, Legions was probably the most well lauded expansion since WotLK, and then… BFA and Shadowlands. Yea… tough scene. Before finally settling on Dragonflight which isn’t a dumpster fire like it’s older siblings but also not doing anything particularly exciting so it’s kinda like MoP where it’s not making everyone rush back to play WoW.
So that’s basically 3 outright bad/hated expansions, 2 expansions that don’t get the love like Vanilla/TBC/WotLK but aren’t too hated either, and then 1 that most people would unequivocally call good. You could say that’s a generous 3/6 or 1/6 if you’re that big of a hater.
I personally did not like the new expansion being broken up into separate zones all spread out and Really didn't like the revamp of Azeroth. The removal of class trees was also a Huge negative to Cata, can't believe you left that one out. I stopped playing a few months into Cata then came back for MoP.
I feel you missed a big one. The fact they tore the world apart. That was one of the big selling points to play classic again. To be able to run the old zones.
cata classic releasing is the ultimate proof that wow classic was a tremendous success.
Pre nerf heroics in Cata meant triage healing, a much more fun and enjoyable style to spikey damage. As someone whose healed for 17 years, that was one of my favourite times.
And as someone who played holy paladin and could really only heal one person at a time and had to wait to build combo points to do it, it was extra intense triage! Way too stressful than I wanted out of my for-fun video game, so if they go through with cata difficulty again I'm sure as hell not playing paladin again
Yeah it was super enjoyable to have just enough mana for maybe 8 or 10 heal casts and then you were tapped and the group wiped. Tried as a druid, priest and shaman back then and nothing worked well. Even with perfect play, no overhealing, leaving dps at low hp to prioritize the tank, sometimes it just didn't matter. You didn't have enough mana or healing power to do the job. I quit Cata after a few weeks.
I had forgotten how challenging the heroics were early on, I remember it being challenging and a lot of fun!
I really liked Blackwing Descent and Bastion of Twilight. They were really good raids (after they were fixed). The odd thing for me was that the mother of the black dragon flight was below Cho'Gall and not below Nefarian 2.0.
-issue #1 cash flow: remove from game
-issue #2 hard mode dungeons being actually hard is fine, wotlk are hilariously ez
-issue #3 LFR: its a tool, you could use it or... no. But moving players ino a good "ingame" voice chat would help a lot, letting players to select their languaje besides their role.
-issue #4 10 and 25 with the same loot: i like it, if you see the stadistics from 25hm clears on wotlk, youll see that a big part of the community couldnt break that wall, having the opportunity to grab the best items without doing gdkp sounds exactly like perfect solution to wotlk
-issue #5 players didnt like lst phase of content: nothing to do here since they will copy & paste again, everything else have an ez fix if they actually work
The only thing I remember of Cata is the PVP
A Cataclysm re-release success will be predicated on if the dev team can officially implement what works and what doesn't. in WotLK a carbon copy would be mostly acceptable, but in Cata, I think it would find major success if the team did start picking and choosing what to bring back, and what to change for the better. the group finder is a perfect example of this, among many other things.
I'll tell you one thing the community is dead silent on but is one of the major major reasons why WoW plummeted. It was WOTLKs changes to leveling, which only ended up getting worse.
What I mean is they took the vast majority of elites out of the world, fucked quests all up, everything was solo-able and much easier than before. It's why we'll never see a "hardcore WOTLK". And if we do, it will be very unpopular, because there's very little, if any, risk of failure while questing.
Mass teleport reminds me of the protoss cinematic in legacy of the void in sc2. Mass Rezz is Anduin in BFA Cinematic
I really started raiding during Catalysm and have a lot of good memories from that. Im excited to play it again and with some changes I think it will be a real good experience.
Surprised you didn't mention Transmog.
This definitely shifted away that MMO feel and made the game feel like 'modern wow'
i feel like transmog can be seen as peak MMO experience tho. Having your character look the way you want seems like nothing but upside.
Transmog makes the game infinitely better. Appearances matter so much.
Mained my rogue through that expansion. The moment I realized recuperate was a thing, cataclysm became a rogues paradise. Sub felt good, tsunami assassination rotation felt good. Then the announcement of legendary daggers, that xpak was just loaded with happy memories.
Cata as an expansion meant less for me as a game as the people I got to play with again, as a sort of reunion expac. I had quit in TBC and not returned until the start of Cata so my memories are of the guildies and good times downing actually hard content again. I also felt far more seasoned as a player and was empowered by my own success as a raider doing heroics. I think for me it was actually the pinnacle of WoW and my fondest time with the game. Sure the expansion sucked for people who had played through WotLK but for me it was a fresh start and loads of fun. If I could have that same crew in classic again, I'd 10/10 do it all over again.
Despite not playing very much of actual Cata, I did have good memories from those years. I remember joining a level 20 guild only for the heirlooms (I think that toon is still in that guild to this day, but I don't ever log in anymore). The level 70 twinking scene took off in Cata as well, with TBC becoming the new baseline game, Exp Off toons at 70-74 played with account-capped toons at 70. I joined a guild for 70 BGs, even did some rated BGs with my ~50% PvP DR prot pally. Also made a 71 DK with Nifflevar's Bearded axes from archaeology. Those were fun times. Content specific to Cata though, I barely touched.
The thing I remember most was the broken rework of the old world that made leveling a new character incredibly painful and the overly hard dungeons at the beginning that made 5-man pugs not worth bothering trying, so you had to do it with guildies or reliable players you already knew you could count on. While I had raided in the past, I gave it up sometime during Wrath, so I never saw any raid content in Cata until LFR. A lot of people just did LFR to see the content, so failing and / or not getting such great loot was okay if you were no longer progression focused.
Cata... the expansion that makes me consider going and playing Hard Core Classic...better to fall back then misery forward. Especially since they will Hyper Monotorize Cata.
The biggest issue I have is how people hated on cata for 10+ years and now all of a sudden people are going to love it because it's "classic". Hypocrisy just boggles my mind. Even on retail, two most enjoyable tiers, T11 and T12 didn't have LFR. BoT, TotFW, BWD, FL, all were incredible. I have never had as much fun as I had during these raids. I still remember when I got the 372 trinket for hunter from Halfus Wyrmbreaker, when I got "I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am", when I ranked up in my guild to become a raid leader for one of the groups, when we downed Ragnaros HC, when we were minmaxing with demonology lock with moonwell challice and mastery gear swap to get an insane demon form multiplier on pull. This expansion is great. I really hope you guys will have a blast playing it. I totally believe it's better than WotLK in almost every aspect. Mechanics-wise it's just fantastic.
The people that hated on it still hates on it. Its more the people there found it meh or never played it are hyped for it.
Honestly most of the hate came from ignorance and bandwagoning. People who actually played it have always had an okay opinion of it - criticising Dragon Soul but saying the rest was pretty good. All the haters quit early on or never played to begin with. Same with MoP.
I love cata one of my favorite expacs ever, ive been excitedly waiting for it since tbc came out, hopefully we actually get it. The only problem is i will not be playing it at all without Dungeon finder
When I came back during cata I rerolled on Illidan and I got invited to Blood Legions alt guild, it had its perks for sure like achievement runs in Ulduar for Proto drakes..was a lot of fun actually
Did you forget ICC heroic dungeons existed in Wrath? FoS was the easier if the three but still quite easy to die in a couple spots and especially on the last boss if DPS isn't paying attention which felt like was all the time back in the day for me as a healer. It was quite a wake up call for everyone just like MT was at the end of BC.
Genuine question: wouldn’t releasing Cataclysm Classic defeat the purpose of Classic? Like that expansion remade the old zones? Like if you enjoyed Thousand Needles in Vanilla then you probably won’t like Thousand Needles in Cata?
That is a good point.
Maybe a bold move by Blizzard would be to fork here, and attempt a new expansion based on WotLK?
I remember in og cataclysm when the guild leveling system got out there was a guy on my server just making an absolute zerg guild. Once the guild had reached high enough lvls to purchase the mount (i think dark pheonix and some other? ), he kicked everyone and sold access to the guild for gold lol.
From someone who played since classic, I still stand by my statement years and years ago. Cata was the last great wow. Everything up to it was awesome, everything after was basically just shit molded into something half acceptable. I did hate the gold skimping by guilds.
A note about "unnerfed TBC": this was deceptive from Blizzard. Even though the instances themselves were unnerfed:
1) players got from day 1 all the buffs that were only due to happen in the later phases, effectively making heroics much easier.
2) expansion-wide nerfs were applied from day 1, affecting heroics too ⇒ good examples are the removal of 6k-Cleave, which most elites - world and instance - had in vanilla TBC, and the change to agro mechanics : in vanilla TBC, an incapacitated tank lost agro, causing mobs to rush towards the healer - distributing aforementioned Cleave along the way - this required good coordination, reflexes and proper CC.
"Not Without Issues" is an understatement.
Cataclysm was the best expansion actually
@@MoonTurky Not for me and my friends... we walked away from the game for a while entirely and didn't come back until MOP.
They should just completely remake Dragonsoul, not snip the talent trees and we have perfection. Vashjir still my favourite starting zone.
I hated LFR in cata and on. Yet now I play FF and use the system constantly. I might have been to harsh on it. But the community wasn't ready for it either. No one knew how to wipe and just try again.
I think you are spot on with “too harsh” and “the community wasn’t ready”. That’s honestly the best take
Heroic Deadmines felt like a damn raid. I remember fondly nights of tanking it and helping new players learn the mechanics. Or panicking as a healer multiple times during Heroic SFK.
Considering what they did with wrath, I'm not sure what to expect. TBC was still in spirit of classic. But wrath is more close to retail.
I am just so stuck to the Warcraft 3 universe, that I have no plans to move to Cataclysm. Never did, probably never will. The death of Arthas is the last page for me.
There are also good tomes after the last page of trylogy man, trust me. You abandon lot of fun just because cata is like 8.5/10 in compare to 10/10 wotlk - but its still very good game
IMO the biggest problem cata had was actually the Old-World Revamp, a problem that still lingers in modern WoW today.
So many of the zones imo feel like lesser hollowed out versions of what they were prior. The quest design and writing imo are both some of the worst in WoW, both due to their humor and hamfisted references (more so than usual). Questing really became far more on-rails here than even in WotLK, and it makes leveling in those zones a very samey experience. A lot of these zones lost a lot of their original flavor or what I really liked about them, and only a handful I think had notable lore or story improvements that actually signaled change happening in the world. But honestly, it set such a bad precedent because by them UDPATING the old world, now players would expect that to be CONSISTENTLY updated to reflect the changes in the world and story: something that they're still struggling to do to this day, and why people always speculate and ask for another round of zone updates.
Going back to Vanilla->wotlk really showed me just how much more I prefer the old zones to the classic ones in every respect. I think consolidating the reworks to a handful of zones, or more of the endgame vanilla ones that got the most attention anyway, probably would have been better. But so many of the zone storylines are just weird rehashes and sequels to what we already got, and then sometimes would reference characters/events/quests that were no longer in the game because they removed them -- and wouldn't allow players a choice or the ability to even see what they were like originally. The only positive I think Cata-era zones really have is that questing is a lot faster, and that flying in them was pretty cool for a bit too. The new Cata zones filling out gaps in the original maps is a cool idea, but I wish it were expanded upon more instead of what we got.
Part of the reason vanilla's world has so much appeal imo is that it's literally lost to time. The content no longer exists, those zones no longer exist, at least by the modern game's client. Even the majority of the dungeons were overhauled or revamped over the course of Cata-MoP and WoD.
And it's the biggest bummer I have thinking about going to Cata-Classic: We'll lose the old world again, and it'll just be relegated to vanilla Era servers only. Some people will be fine with this, but it just hurts to see it go again, and I wish they'd offer us some form of Chromie-Time in modern wow to have a chance and experience that content again in the main client if we so chose.
I fully admit and recognize though that for like 90% of people playing Classic, especially wotlk-> cata, that the leveling and old world content will literally not even be a minor thought and that it's just exclusively going to be about the endgame raiding and pvp.
I think that's a shame, personally, since I always thought of WoW more than just a raiding/arena/rated battleground simulator, but I know that for most people my complaints will be dismissed bc it's not where people spend a lot of their time or nostalgia.
I feel like a big thing missed here also is the leveling experience becoming constantly easier over expansions. Been playing some vanilla HC on the official realms recently and it's so much fun for being WoW even without the endgame content. I feel like even in Wrath, the leveling is already rather easy and from what I've heard it's just going to get even easier in Cata.
Obviously not expecting something like having to drink or eat after every 3 mobs, but it's really refreshing to be able to get value out of cc such as frost nova and polymorph, or consumables (not to mention profession items being actually useful).
Main difference for me is that Wrath leveling is easy and I wished there would be more, while Cata leveling is easy but getting it done was a relief. It was dull as hell. And the underwater area was a good idea but past the novelt factor, it just doesn't work well with WoW fight mechanics.
What about the drastic mastery changes through the expac, like ret got a full rework early on and then was heavy nerfed are they just going to use the last patch content again,
LFD is being added to Wrath Classic. Blizzard just confirmed it.
They have to fix healers in early 5-mans and raids. That was rough, and took way too long to fix originally.
Imo cata was actually good as an expansion, but it's the end of any bit of classic WoW. It completely changes the game, while wrath did as well but cata completely changed the old world and the talent system.
I'll always remember the good times when guilds really mattered and the world was seething with players to create a memorable experience. LFD and in extension LFR, changed those experiences for me. There was also the fact of being able to group across servers. This made grouping and eventually raiding an one-off experience where you, in practice, did not build any connections. Together with not being required to level characters from 1 to 60, all kinds of boosting tools and the resulting urge in the player base to get to max level as fast as possible, made pre-Cata but really, pre-Wotlk the most enjoyable era for me.
I never played Cata back when it originally launched. I'm looking forward to playing it this time around
honestly flex raiding is exactly what i'd like to see put into all raids (yeah even vanilla->cata raids). the hardest part of raiding back in the day was dealing with the roster boss. i'm really glad you covered the 10 vs 25 raiding thing fairly. i used to see so many people talk down to 10 man raid teams as though they weren't real raiders. honestly for me the the problems with both raid sizes were exactly what you listed. in 10 man you have no room for even 1 derp player, as well as buff issues and the like, while 25 player had space issues on some bosses.
Cata was my favorite PVP era, both bgs, rbg, and arenas were popping off. Idk if I would play if there wasn't LFG for dungeon tho, with no LFG it makes everything so annoying on WOTLK and as someone who only has a few hours to play a week it just takes up so much time. There is nothing stopping users from not using LFG if they don't want to, but it should be added for casual players.
Amusing seeing your use the Yogscast's old Cata footage in the HC dungeon section
As long as they keep that cancer called LFR away from Cata Classic, it will be an awesome expansion to play.
i say they re-add some of the cut content from the cataclysm beta. Like the Titan Rune System and the Abyssal Depths raid.
Cata is the one expansion I didn't play when it was current and I'm not exactly interested in trying it postmortem.
I loved Guild achievements! It gave us something to do on none raid nights.
The evening that we decided to kill the 100,000 critters for the achievement was so cool. It took about forty minutes, no big deal, but there were fifty of us scattered around the world killing critters. It was fun.
People hate on LFR but that shit was dope for gearing up alts. I was clearing heroic raids in cata and mop and utilized the shit out of lfr for my alts. It was especially useful in SoO as so mained a restodruid but we really needed a disc priest for hc blackfuse so I’d come in on my priest for that fight (atonement was broken af lol). The lfr gear was super helpful for that, particularly the difficult to get trinkets.
Here's how I would change two of the big issues... Cash Flow and 10/25 man raiding.
Cash Flow - Instead of 10% of the amount looted make it 1% and instead of generating gold have it be a credit towards guild repairs up to a certain amount of gold. That way there's a limit but it still exists as a perk.
10/25m Raid - They should just implement the flex raiding system similar to how it is right now in retail but not include personal loot. Instead just have extra pieces drop based on a certain threshold of players.
As far as heroics being difficult, they should be. However, I think with the H+ system that WOTLK has they'll likely roll in the hard aspects of heroics into that system.
Those Cata dungeons were hard and some of my favorite times , some dungeons were long but in all it was fun to actually get challenged
The Cataclysm world is ironically more nostalgic since I haven't seen it since, well, Cataclysm, but I already played the vanilla world on some private servers before Classic was relesed.
the ability prune to me was 1 of the worse things to happen in wow, shaman went from 4/5 action bars or like 30 binds to not able to fill 1 bar it was comical when your whole class gets deleted
I can't wait to be able to finally play Dragon Flight "Classic" Nostalgia for the win those were some good times.
The only and I really do mean, the only way Cataclysm classic would be remotely worth it, would be if they actually added the missed raid tier (the same goes for a WoD remake, if it included the cut content).
Otherwise, it feels like basic classic is showing it's faults and cracks and going past Wrath (which felt like a flop) is only going to highlight that more so.
I really enjoyed Cataclysm Heroic Dungeons, especially with friends. However, I feel like the difficulty of them caused a lot of toxicity amongst players in LFG. Probably because people were so used to steamrolling Heroic Dungeons in Wrath. Unfortunately, the toxicity got so bad I ended up leaving WoW before the dungeon nerfs came. The Heroic Dungeons were great though and I hope to have a better experience the 2nd time around.
I'd love to try cata, I only played on private wotlk servers and came to retail at the beginning of wod.
I still remember when 4.0.6 came out and Totalbiscuit fucking lost it; I still remember him showing the TL;DR of the notes and it was like "All things nerfed by 66%" instead of any written text.
Cant wait for MoP classic and get into SoO Mythic , that raid was so fun
Was anyone else turned off by the weird hp/mana/dmg scaling in cata? A mage went from having 18khp to 109k in 5 levels…
Idk i have already 21k on my mage with togc gear but besides that, yea, cata significantly boosted char values
i'm so hype for cata. BoT and BWD my favorite raids and i wish i had a nice enough computer/wasn't such a noob to raid heroic back then. now am gonna own....
I was just making a comment about Tol'Barad under Madseason's video and this comes out
One thing that cata ruined was world pvp. And just flying over all the new content.
The problem i see is that in a casual guild, you could complete all content in classic, then you could do Black Temple but not the endgame instance (we ran out of time, gotten the first boss down), then in Wrath you can complete Ulduar and a few hardmodes but forget about Algalon.
The fun is leaving quickly if you can choose between grinding dailies or finding a new guild with none of your friends in it.
They catered to the hardcore crowd and then went overboard for the "casual player" who isn't in a guild. But the backbone of the game were always the guilds, and not the top 50 ones but the rest. I think they failed to realise how much that sea of people supported the hardcore raiders and helped the casual players integrate into the game.
You posted this video including a lack of LDR after we have an official announcement of LDR coming in ICC patch. Kudos, just really great stuff .........
I feel like the guild gold bonus is probably the easiest of these issues to fix. Nerf the bonus from 5/10 to 1/5 (or similar) and restrict it to gold drops in guild-majority groups. This drastically lowers the amount of gold coming into a guild and requires that the guild actually work together to receive it, thus making shill guilds a much less profitable and far more time-consuming venture.
i think mop was peak wow after vanilla
Thinking about Cata makes me want to go rewatch TB's Cata leveling videos.
:(
now I'm sad
I read an article in April saying that Kotaku had received a document stating that Blizzard was working on an alternate timeline where the objective of the expansion was to prevent the Cataclysm and that the old world would not be shaped by Deathwings rampage. Is this even close to being true?
WotLK launch content was ridiculously easy and heroics were so undertuned it made normal dungeons irrelevant.
They fixed the problem in Cata, but the same Bad Players cried and squealed until Activision caved in and made everything trivial again.
Cata was great. Dragon Soul sucked. But overall everything else was really good. Loved the dungeons, loved how difficult dungeons were at the start. The leveling is so much fun. Death Knights were amazing which was a big W for me lol. I honestly thought that this and MoP were peak WoW
MoP was peak WoW for me too. Cata had a stumble, but was overall very enjoyable.
RDF didnt come in wrath till ICC patch anyways back in the day but its been said its coming anyways in next patch of wrath classic so we probs will get Raider finder in cata again aswell
i just hit my limit. after icc, if there is no stay in wotlk era. im sadly out. it was fun back in the day and it is now. but all good things come to an end.
At the time, I was really thinking that classes gameplay for some parts where a bit broken and and that the difficulty of the dungeon was pretty unfair sometimes. But they all said that it was me, that I just don't know how to play and blablabla..
My big issues with Xpac: LFR, the nerfing of heroics, the fact that the patch dungeons made all previous dungeons irrelevant, (I forget the name) but the system where players from other realms would appear/disappear on your realm, leveling becoming too easy with talent rework/heirlooms, and the final raid tier being meh.
Most of these are easy to fix. LFR is just less work to not do the thing people don't want. GG. Nerfing heroics is also another thing you don't have to do, and players on average are much better now than they were back then. Not having a LFD system and using the one we do in Wrath should be enough. As for new patch dungeons making the others obsolete, look at how Wrath has H++ dungeons with the previous tier's loot thrown in... you don't even have to add affixes since these dungeons are hard, just add in the loot with the patch drops. EASY fix. It's also a matter of "not doing" something which prevents the phasing between different realms, so that is a win for the smaller dev team.
The last two would be hard to address. Since the leveling for most people will be from 80-85 (most will already have an 80) the easy leveling shouldn't be too bad since it will either be used for alts or to quickly level something with the new race/class combos or one of the two new races. Not ideal but not game breaking. The big one is the final raid tier... it reused a location as well as many assets, lacked memorable fights, and the last two fights against Deathwing are especially hated. If they can do something about that I think it will go over better than most people are expecting.
I Quit at cata and having now replayed vanilla to wotlk again years later and with hindsight, I think it'll be the case again. The world, gear and rpg elements were all but taken and the game turned into an arcade style version of wow, you put in money and selected whatever you wanted from a menu. The redeeming quality is the pvp got really good with rated bgs and a better feeling arena balance
Best dungeon experience was 4.0.3, even though I wiped God knows how many times in SFK for example (the 1st boss there was notoriously difficult) or Grim Batol. But it made me re-evaluate myself as a player, what I can do and what I should do, how should I use my abilities, what should I concentrate on etc. It also required group coordination, today's M+ is no where near it. Sure, it's more difficult but just because of more annoying mechanics added to the game plus the increase in overall damage and health of mobs. In 4.0.3, you had to think about the interrupt cycle sometimes, what to interrupt and what to let go, you had to actively CC mobs so you don't get overrun and track those CCes so that they don't break and re-CC if they break to early, you had to know what kind of debuffs to dispell, you needed to track mob buffs to make it easier for tanks and healers. It was a much more fun gameplay than M+ today is. Healers were also doing their role as healers, because self healing was just starting to be brought into the game for many classes, so you were always engaged. As a person geared up, dungeons became easier, but you still needed to think about all the things listed here. I kinda miss that time.
The problem with the difficulty I had with Heroic Cata dungeons was some group comps made them an absolute slog. I was a DK, so I pretty much brought no CC to the dungeons. It made me dread doing my daily run for badges with randoms. So, I forever loath Cata dungeons.
The biggest issue with cata was resource allocation. If you go back and watch cata blizzcon, you will see that 75% of thier sales pitch is leveling focused. The problem is, everyone had max toons. They talk about the new races, they talk about the new class race combos, they talk about the world revamp. But most of the playerbase wont interact with that stuff in any meaningful way. As a result the endgame suffered massively. T11 is in the conversation for best of all time the reason that that is is it brought back the idea of multiple raids making up the tier that was lost in wrath. However that idea falls apart in FL where there is only 7 bosses. Clearly there was suposed to be a vashir water based raid to complete the neptolon storyline. You see blozz learning from this mistake is MoP goesing from the multiraid tier 14 to throne of thunder with 15 bosses. I hope they complete tier 12 and 13 and add aditional raids come classic cata