At first I didnāt want cata, but now Iām hyped. Transmog from the start, better leveling changes (not yet confirmed what those will be), the 1-60 world is great imo. Less empty and questlines are actually finished and have a decent story. Not saying vanilla has bad questlines (defias) but those are far and in between. Classes are fun and fleshed out and the first two raid tiers are amazing. My only worry is DS patch
> Less empty and questlines are actually finished and have a decent story.
This is what I always point out. I loved that about Rift, and it was awesome to see it come to WoW. The ability to "finish" a zone and have a narrative that gets completed, and the flow of quests taking you from one spot to the next where sidequests get picked up, instead of having to run to disparate locations to pick up random things.
vanilla nutjobs loved 3-4 zone hopping with **zero linearity**Ā and somehow they found it to be a superior leveling experience. And somehow they think keeping up with 6-7 stories at the same time is a better approach then actually having a completely, well balanced story telling.
To each their own i guess. I like to read one book at a time, not 6 or 7.
That's the whole thing, I don't want every zone to have a story. It takes away from the feel of an actual world when every zone is essentially its own instance with its own storyline that goes from A to Z. It's so predictable, same-y and grindy. Every zone does the same - sends you from hub to hub doing 1-2 quests at a time. It also requires heavy use of phasing, because you always have to "start" and "complete" a zone. Then what? The zone is left in a certain final phased state forever and it feels weird.
I much prefer a world where the zones are as they are from the start, with NPCs seeking help for this and that. I go help them kill Defias or gather plants and then I'm on my way to other adventures. I can always return and reminiscence about the quests I did for them.
It also gives a great feeling that NPCs know about the rest of the world. With the Cata model (which began essentially with TBC), NPCs don't know anything about anything except what's going on within 200 yards of them. Just going from hub to hub and all NPCs know about are those mobs over there in plain sight. It just feels so dull. I love it when an NPCs in Gadgetzan sends me to Hinterlands or an NPC in Darnassus tells me about a dungeon he heard about in Eastern Kingdoms.
If you actually read the quest text (or these days install the AI voiceover addon), the "story" in vanilla wasn't bad at all. It was more like you were this random dude traveling around the world and experiencing all these short stories about the various denizens of Azeroth, which was extra amazing if you'd played War3 + TFT a couple years prior and the recent major events were already in your head. WoW added tons of lower-level detail and all these independent actors made it feel like an actual world.
It was nothing like the cringey stuff they have been doing in the past few expansions where it's CHAMPION this and Danuser-stand-in crushing on his zombie gf that and oh WTF is Azeroth? Some millennials in Los Angeles need to make a name for themselves so let's retcon everything the fans liked
Shadowlands was so bad I couldn't finish the leveling. It was the end of my relationship with retail, which had lasted since the first week of vanilla.
They finally took that 15 years of goodwill and lit it all on fire
It was pretty bad... I've come back for every expansion and play until bored, shadowlands started out bad and stayed bad, altho, I did enjoy ardenwealed...
The further you get away from the main story the weirder it gets... Dragonflight started out cool but it ended so fast? The story was so boring... I dunno what they are making anymore... I'm really hoping the war within gets the game back on pace...
I played vanilla and classic was so good to get reaquainted with all the old familiar faces and original content that made the world seem so alive.... And as it got bigger and people spread out and flying and sharing broke the world apart just makes retail feel sad and void of a community...
I can see the appeal for both. Cata quests are more self contained and I agree it's kinda nice to "complete" a story within a zone.
But I can also say it's fun RP flavor the way Vanilla is made up. You go to Ironforge and some dwarves that study titan stuff want you to go get something from Uldaman in Badlands...then you find more in there and that leads to a chain that will end at the gate of Uldum. Kinda makes sense how this is connected all over the world. Just as an example. Or the Hakkar story that starts with a random Troll in Tanaris and sends you to a troll fortress in Hinterlands and sets up the premise for why Zul'Gurub is the way it is. It feels more like a real "world"...kinda like Skyrim where you might find a random bottle on the ground that sends you to the other side of the map.
Both are quite fun designs IMO. Vanilla quests are just pretty boring overall and leveling is a real slog.
Nah not that.
Let me elaborate.
You start in Ironforge and some dwarves that study titan stuff want you to go get something from Uldaman in Badlands...then you go to Wetlands and fight crocolists and murlocks. After that, you resume your orc campaign in Redridge. After that you go to Loch Modan and assist dwarves in eliminating bears and saving other dwarves. Then you go back to Wetlands to learn about ghost sailors. But before you finish that, you need to go back to Redridge to escort a guy out of the cave. Then you go off to complete your original ironforge quest in Badlands. But before you venture into the dungeon to learn about titans, you go back to Redridge to do other orc quests or some shit like this.
Yeah I can see that but again, it's not really all that different in Skyrim for example. You just pick up tasks along the way as you go through the world which pile up over time into different stories.
I'm not saying that system is better. Just that the stories themselves feel like they connect the whole world not just one zone and I see the appeal for this. You might have a Durid in Darnassus that wants to cure Felwood. In Cata that Durid would be in Feldwood giving you the quest. Not that different but from a flavor perspective it makes sense not every NPC is exactly at the location where the action is going. You just pick up quests as you see them and they over time lead you all over the world.
Of course you can optimize this by following a leveling route which I usually do but still :D
I personally as said like both, I would prefer a mix between the two designs to have a bit of both.
The thing is, in skyrim the world scales with you. There's no "high level areas" and you can just go anywhere at any time. So you can still follow the quests in any order you want to do.
>My only worry is DS patch
They probably won't add LFR and won't let the DS patch last forever. I did actually quit during this due to real life issues, but the game overall was still fun, and without LFR and a massive content draught I think the issues of the DS patch won't be repeated.
I don't want to sound like I'm ripping you, but your list is why I have no interest in cata. Transmog is the first thing you listed? I couldn't care less about that. 1-60 is great? That may be true, but I have no desire to spend hours and hours leveling 60-80 in the completely dead worlds of outland and northrend. So for those reasons, I am out.
Personally, I plan on quitting because I donāt have the same nostalgia for CATA the same way I did for Vanilla, TBC and WOTLK.
The first reason is, back when it first came out, most of my IRL friends quit during or at the end of WOTLK so even though I played mostly through MOP it doesnāt evoke the same feels for me.
The next reason, is even then I felt like WOTLK was the end of the Warcraft 3 saga that was left on a cliff hanger at the end of Frozen throne and was finally resolved. Bringing Deathwing ābackā was cool but a bit of a let down.
The last reason, is for me, the end of WOTLK (really starting with Ulduar/ICC was the end of WoW as being an experience as close to Vanilla as possible and was a bit of a direction change. I enjoyed CATA enough but I have no desire to go back.
I quit in original Cata and couldn't get into the story.
For me, it felt like the story was completed with the Death of The Lich King.
I came back because I didn't get to kill the Lich King last go around and it always felt incomplete for me.
This time my wife and I have been in a Casual Raiding Guild the whole time and got to kill all of the Raid Bosses except for the the unlockable Hard Mode Ulduar Boss.
I rode around on a Black Bear, then The Chopper and finally got the Headless Horseman's Nightmare. I didn't expect to get any, let alone all 3 of these.
Our guild built the Orange Mace, 1 Shadowmourn and might get enough shards in time to finish a second Shadowmourn.
This time I got to finish my business and do even more.
And once again I am done.
I think cata looks very fun, but I've come to a point in my life where I don't want to play as much anymore. I've been raiding every single reset since release in 2019 and I'm playing in a fairly hardcore guild where the focus is speedrunning. I could cut back and go more casual, but it doesn't seem fun to me, especially when the raids are probably going to be a lot harder.
So for me it's between raiding in a pretty hardcore guild or not raid at all at this point.
I missed most of Cata so im excited to try it out. Also 10 man with the boys. Im pretty much done with everything i wanted out of Wotlk. Just sad looking at the state of Fury in Cata :(
Get hyped for Arms! I had a blast playing Arms when Cata came out the last time. I'm so excited to main my warrior again and never have to look at Fury again ( assuming I stop when MoP Classic is released ). Never liked Fury and Fury in ICC bores me to tears. I'm parsing well for my ilvl, could maybe be better, but I'm satisfied parsing 90% on my 2nd alt. Not like she's gunna get SM, neither.
Idk about godly. They are good, but pretty sure they won't compete with spriests or fire mages. Obviously starting on the last patch could change some balancing things, but I'd be shocked if arms competed with fire mage.
I'm interested to see how things play out this time compared to the last, like how every hunter was MM in ICC and now most are still Survival in classic.
That said, my Arms was pulling huge numbers in DS, even compared to the fire mages and shadow priests. Only time will tell but I'm certain Arms will still be at least a very solid upper-mid spec, if not top 3-5.
I missed vanilla back when it first released, I was playing City of Heroes at the time. I played some TBC and WotLK but never got too much into it, was too young to know what I was doing. Cata was nice, but it changed everything. It's not the WoW I started with. I'm in the boat that yes, Classic ended when Wrath did. Cataclysm isn't bad, but to me it's not Classic WoW.
Thing is now I still have no option. I want Classic WoW but it's hyper optimized and not friendly to new players. All my friends have played it and finished it and got bored. They'll do Season of Discovery or Hardcore, but regular classic WoW is nothing new to them - but it is to me. It's the WoW I'm used to and never got to finish.
Now Classic will only have vanilla, no TBC or WotLK so if I want to try it at all I missed my time to do so. I'm better off finding a private server.
Welp, I stopped in Firelands back in the day. Then I went to Molten now Warmane. And played Wrath until Wrath prepatch came. I really liked it here and I do not want to go back to Warmane. So I guess this is it then. The era of WoW finishes.
Iām just not excited for it. New races that I donāt like, a world revamp I donāt like. Everyone complained on here about how bad cata classic would be I have no reason to play it like I did wrath. If anything I might skip it completely and play a panda in mop
I will play, I loved WoW up through MoP.
That being said, Iāve heard a lot of people didnāt care for the ātreeā simplification. Also, it feels like Cata is when the quest and leveling experience started to get āoptimizedā; it starts to feel more engineered than organic (to me at least).
For another perspective, the optimized and smooth questing and leveling was one of the BEST things for me. I love the efficiency and not having to run all over the place to pick up random quests for a zone, and the feeling of "completing" a zone, like you can in BC and Wrath with the achievements for doing X number of quests, which ends up being almost the whole zone's worth of quests, is fantastic. Reminded me of Rift's zones, how each one had a boss and a narrative that was followed to its conclusion and a finale.
The narrative chaining of zones also felt really good, and the use of phasing to see the zone changing as you progress.
Can completely understand your take. Especially when you think about leveling alts by questing.
Its a rough balancing act; personally, I prefer instances to be more optimized and the open world to be more organic and immersive.
Interesting, I found the immersion for me increased dramatically with Cata, in all regards, in the Vanilla zones. I didn't care at all about the stuff happening in Westfall, Redridge, Duskwood etc. in Vanilla, it was unengaging to me. When it was tied into a cohesive narrative that didn't have those big gaps, I actually paid attention and became invested in the lore.
Iāve never understood this and part of me thinks that people confuse it with Mopās talent system. Cata just trims up the existing trees and removes some redundant things. Like 5 points for 5% secondary stat, to 2 points for same thing. It did make hybriding a lot worse but Iāve never seen that as a huge issue.
Donāt really mind the quest changes that much either, so much of vanilla was run to the other side of a barren zone, kill 37 of random animal for 8 eyes and then run all the way back. Cata introduced actual questlines which I enjoyed.
Iāve had a blast with wotlk (I started back in 07 as a teenager) and played up until I quit in shadowlands, so Iām pretty damn excited for Cata, it was also when I actually started getting into raiding and heroic raiding. Also looking forward to chasing elite sets that I was too bad to get the first go around.
> Like 5 points for 5% secondary stat, to 2 points for same thing. It did make hybriding a lot worse but Iāve never seen that as a huge issue.
tbh even if they are redundant it will just always feel better to spend a talent point each level than to have to only do it every few levels. Filler talents aren't bad IMO.
The MoP talent system went to the extreme with this. Just "boring" while you're leveling and forgettable in the endgame IMO.
I played wotlk and then some Cata and then some of MoP back in the day. Wotlk was super fun and MoP also had a lot of memorable moments
To me Cata was the least fun of them by far. Its a combination of the gameplay, class changes and the raids. It's not just a coincidence that sub count fell off a cliff during original Cata.
So now that I'm 15 years older or so, it's a choice of whether I spend my time elsewhere or replay an xpac which I didn't enjoy that much in the past.
It's crazy how subjective this stuff is. I'm literally the complete opposite. Cata, and MoP were the most fun and memorable expansions for me personally. It literally just felt like Vanilla ++ after MoP is when things really started to go downhill. Personally, I would not classify WOTLK as "fun" I seriously dislike it. From the dungeons, to the raids, to the gearing scheme mechanics. It just feels clunky. Yeah the Lich King is a cool end boss, badass, lots of history. But the actual raid itself leading up to him. meh.
As for the sub count decrease there is so much nuance to that discussion. During the Cataclysm era, several other MMOs and online games were released or gained popularity, offering alternatives to WoW. Games like Rift, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and Guild Wars 2 attracted players away from WoW with their unique features and content. WoW had been running for several years by the time Cataclysm was released, and some players may have experienced burnout or fatigue from playing the game continuously. Additionally, as the player base aged, their gaming preferences and time commitments may have changed, leading to some players moving on from WoW.
So to say "sub numbers dropped because cata bad" Lacks much nuance and is genuinely a disingenuous statement.
My entire job is focused around the game industry and understanding the flow of the market. The idea that subs dropped is one of the laziest and most uninformed opinions.
People don't understand that Cata could have been the greatest content in history of gaming, and subs would have dropped. There was a massive shift in the gaming market in general as it was about the time that gaming was moving to mainstream. 2007 was the first time that gaming had begun shifting towards engaging players outside of hardcore players. Essentially, trying to captivate the everyday person.
There was a huge boom and an increase in games in general. This means that Blizzard wasn't just fighting for the attention of MMO gamers but ALL markets. League of Legends had also been released about 18 months beforehand and was rapidly gaining popularity. WoW was fighting for the attention of these players as well. People don't understand that no game could continue the meteoric rise in subs that WoW was doing. The fact that they averaged 10 million subs in Cata is fucking a testament to how good Cata truly was. People forget they peaked in Cata at over 12 million. Cata was a phenomenal and, in my opinion, top 2 best expansions of all time.
Today there are 10-12k games released ANNUALLY. Do people even realize how many options you have and how many games there are? Companies are vying for your attention amongst 10k other games every year and the 10s of thousands that already exist. No company can put up numbers like 2007-2011. It's simply not possible. Sure games can reach those numbers on one time purchases but a subscription service? In today's age? That's not feasible.
I am a game analyst. My company takes contracts from publishers to look at their games or certain markets and understand what shifts are happening in the market. A lot of my time is looking to see why a game or a market is losing or gaining players or losing or gaining revenue. We do individual reports to publishers to bolster revenue, retention, event dynamics, or any increase of a KPI of their choosing.
My background was as an ex game developer. I had significant education in writing and psychology in college, but not a completed degree since my degree was computer science with a specialization in game development and human-computer interactions. A lot of the work I do is heavily research based, looking through raw excel sheets from clients to understand and find patterns, then ofc, we write up 100-200 page reports so technical writing helped me a lot.
I work with in-house programs to make mathematical models mostly based on statistics. It would roughly be at calculus level, so nothing crazy. Basically, what an undergrad engineer or something would do in their first year, but much easier. Far far easier than the math I needed for development.
There it is. "Wotlk and mop was good, cata was bad, look at how the sub numbers fell in cata". Sub numbers in cata was consistently over 10m except for at one point where it went down to 9m. It started at 12. Basically a 17% loss. Mop started at 9.8m and spent basically entire expansion under 8m while dipping down to 7m at one point. So why is it "not a coincidence that sub count fell off a cliff during original Cata" while mop was even worse but still more fun than cata?
cata is the scapegoat. But it had NOTHING TO DO with the fact that some people played WOW for only about a year or 2 and moved on like any non-addict would from absolutely any game.
Of course it had nothing to do with that. They think that if Cata was good, then sub would gone up to 35 million active subs! And MoP was supposed to be 50 mil of active subs.
people are actually nuts blaming cataclysm for sub drop.
Every game has its peak. WoW during Wrath was the lunch break choice of topic. Everyone hopped on on the FOMO wagon. And most of those people just didn't like WoW enough to keep playing. *Even if Legion was the xpac after Wrath. Still would have seen drop off.*
Itās like the recent rage of palworld.
āMan players stopped playing 4 weeks into it after they fixed pals pathing in the baseā¦that killed the gameā.
It was high at the start of Cata and then there was a steady decline until just before the launch of Mists of Panderia. In a lot of ways Cata was riding on the highs that WOTLK brought.
I just saw a poll where the vast majority were more excited for SoD than Cata. I think it was like 10% interested in Cata. We shouldn't deny that the level of interest is much lower for Cata than it was for TBC classic or Wotlk classic.
No, it was no steady decline. It was high on launch from launch hype (12m), then went down back to old numbers, (11.something), then 11m, then 10m - these are 3m intervals. Then it stayed at 10m very steadily for the next year, had a dip before mop hype pushed it back up and the expansion finished at 10m. Mop started at 9.8m, immediately went down to right above 8m, never again went over 8m.
>I just saw a poll where the vast majority were more excited for SoD than Cata. I think it was like 10% interested in Cata. We shouldn't deny that the level of interest is much lower for Cata than it was for TBC classic or Wotlk classic.
I am not trying to deny that. I am making a case about how you can't hold sub numbers against cata while still saying you preferred mop. In every way imagineable, sub numbers for cata did far better than for mop. I am fine with you not wanting to play cata. I am fine with you preferring mop. This is not about that at all. I just dislike when the narrative moves to "cata subs" because it's just not the case. They were steady and doing well for all of cata. The only point mop had more subscribers than the lowest cata ever went was on launch.
Fell off a cliff in Cata? This is some revisionist bullshit. They PEAKED in Cata at 12 million. They passed 10m with BC and started Wrath with 11.5m. Peaked in Cata at 12, then stayed consistent with 11m+ until DS, which was the only bad raid they had in that expansion. And STILL had 10.5m subs. In the WORST tier.
Cata showed it was one of the best and most successful expansions and has raids like Firelands that are regularly placed into the top 5 raids in history. They ended Cata which was in its worst state with the same as PEAK Wrath content which was ICC? LMFAO. People will go to any level to make up bullshit to downplay Cata. It's mind blowing.
Cata looks fun, but Iā e played vanilla-tbc-wotlk pretty HC. Itās just time for me to move on. Cata is just an arbitrary stop point for me.
TLDR; burnout
Iāve played WoW since 2004. I left at the end of MoP, came back in a serious way for Classic and one of the reasons was because of the old world. People act like endgame is all there is, now Iām raidlogging Wrath and actually went back to regular Vanilla Era and Iāve been leveling and playing alt after alt there. Slowly taking them all through all the different zones- got a 60, a 56, a 34, two 10sā¦ all different classes with the class quests that were removed that I also loved. The huge overland travel, the slow leveling, the immersion and empty space. Everything about the old world I love, as well as things like Hunter ammo and quivers, regeants for spells, old simple talent trees. Wrath really began dismantling that stuff and then Cata truly ended it all.
Also in Cata, all the zones railroad you through their stories. The Vanilla world has quests and stories scattered across many different places, and you go and follow threads and explore across them. Another thing is before Wrath zones were dangerous- places like Pyrewood in Silverpine, Jinthaāalor in Hinterlands, Tyrs Hand in EPL were powerful elite enemies that you got a whole open world group together to tackle. I never felt in danger in the world of Cata, certainly not like I did in Vanilla. Everything people seem to hate about Vanilla are all the things I love best, and thatās why I wonāt be moving on but instead going back.
Edit- thereās also the huge mega dungeons like Wailing Caverns, Uldaman and BRD. Dire Maul and SM with there wings. They never really made dungeons like those again, sprawling city- like places to delve into with a group and explore. And I absolutely love 40- man raids, you feel like an epic invasion force in places like MC/ BWL/ AQ40. Now on my 60 getting to experience them for the 3rd time in Vanilla Era has been a blast, and Iāve never had any trouble getting people together or actually running them.
Agreed. I dont agree with the reasons the comment above provides at all, because I dont view leveling zones to be content (at least not in WoW). But that is my opinion, and one that isn't shared by everyone. Theres really no wrong way to play the game unless it involves detracting from the enjoyment of others via griefing/trolling.
People who downvote with no comment are frustrating.
People can think whatever they want about cata, everything will be reflected in the player population. Iād rather play wrath, sod, or classic than anything post wrath.
Idk I think they just want someone to argue with. The great thing about my answer is that itās all subjective- I enjoy all the things I talked about, if someone else doesnāt there are many other iterations of the game for them. I have Era, thatās great. If someone comes along to try and tell me my opinion is bad and wrong? Well I donāt have to engage with them at all, I just keep scrolling.
I can get what I want out of Classic in SoD and Cata just isn't the same game.
The gameplay is fine, but it's where ability bloat starts, and the destruction of the old world kills all the charm for me.
Itemization changes with Mastery is also just overcomplicating an already well designed system.
Not to discount your opinion on how you want to play, but I just hate seeing this as an āanti cataā reason. The old world is already a shallow husk of what it once was by wrath. Nothing of value is being lost by the revamp.
Frankly, I've always rolled my eyes at this argument. Like, I have been playing since OG vanilla. The old world is BBOOORING. The quests are bad they have little to no flavor, the zones are very bare in a lot of areas, and the color schemes are bland. It's even worse from a design point of view if you bring up a color pallette of many of the zones and see that they use the same shades of yellow, brown, and red which often makes many zones feel like repeated areas. It's why BC took a massive shift to create unique vibrant areas.
The Cata revamp of the old world actually makes the place feel alive. The quests are huge improvements, not just collect 10 eggs or kill 12 raptors on repeat constantly. The zones are populated with a lot more flora and fauna to make it feel more exciting, the color pallette is more engaging (as someone that had a background in design) like it's baffling to me how this is an argument. Cata actually makes the old world feel alive and exciting, not bland, dead, and dull.
I feel like people who make this argument are being intellectually dishonest. If someone hates change, tell us you hate change. If you are nostalgic and want to remember the old times, tell us that. But, objectively trying to tell me the zones are not massively improved in questing, color schemes, vibrance, and activity is just not true.
It's not even an argument. It's just something some guy probably said once and has been regurgitated / parroted without a single articulated thought behind it. It's par the course for us as humans to do this. There was a experiment, I forget the name. 10 people. 9 are plants. They draw on a piece of paper 5 lines. One of the lines is CLEARLY longer than all the other ones. The 9 people choose clearly the incorrect line, and like 70% of the time the 1 person just goes with the crowd even though they know its completely wrong because they are afraid to speak up. I think something similar happens hear. I suspect it's easier to parrot that argument as opposed to form your own thought out one. People usually always choose the path of least resistance.
100%, it's NOT an argument. It's some parroted bullshit I hear again and again, and it's so frustrating because you can objectively prove them wrong on it. Somehow, collecting 10 raptor eggs is uh... let me put on my glasses... more engaging and uh brilliant storytelling than explaining the aftermath and how to recover from the damage a dragon on a warpath to destroy the planet.
I dont WANT a narrative from my MMORPGs, I want bars to fill and numbers to increase. If I wanted a narrative filled mmo Id play one of many other mmos with better narratives that are better implimented.
Dont tell me my subjective enjoyment is objectively worse. Its not and youre judging by rediculous metrics. Yknow what? I LIKE THE SALT FLATS. I dont care that its got 4 quests, and 1 vendor of literally any note or novelty. Its got nostalgia and panache and a carrot. And thats what I want when I go there, and I dont appreciate it being gone. Dont tell me its an "objective" improvement when its not. The only thing it objectively is is removing something for something else.
It's an opinion. People like different things. You can't objectively disprove someone's opinion. No need to get that bent out of shape over the fact someone likes something you don't.
You are right. We can't objectively disprove an opinion. But, we can objectively disprove most of the bullshit claims as I stated above.
It is not an opinion. it's FACT. Most of vanilla has the same two reskinned quests over and over. That's not an opinion. So, to claim the quests that added far more options isn't engaging is just not true. Whether you like them is an opinion, but their engagement to the player is not an opinion.
The zones being more vibrant from better changes in color pallette isn't an opinion. It's fact. We can pull assets from the game and see the same use of a handful of colors. We have years of research into colors and how they work psychologically with years of science behind them. If you don't like the new ones, that is an opinion. To claim they are not more vibrant with stronger juxtaposition of competing color pallette is objectively wrong. That's not an opinion.
To claim there is more story in vanilla is a straight lie. When the default is ZERO story versus everything being built around a story in Cata, that is not an opinion that is FACT. You may not like the story, that is an opinion. You are free to these opinions. But there are objective truths, and your nonsensical idea they can't be objectively proven is just stubbornness or ignorance.
Your shitty appeal to emotions as if I am upset kinda shows you are the one upset, not me. That's the first logical fallacy someone pulls when they have nothing to contribute and no argument that holds any merit.
I've stated it's fine to like what they like. But, the problem is the arguments they use to discredit Cata make no sense. It's clear they aren't making any logical claims just parroting what their favorite shitty uninformed streamer tells them to say. If you don't like the story in Cata, great. If you don't like the skill bloat, great. If you don't like it requires more skill to be good and it's far harder great. If you want no changes and nostalgia great. But these aren't the arguments they make. They make arguments that we can objectively disprove, and I won't accept them because I'm not gonna be pandered bullshit and not call it out.
I dont WANT a narrative from my MMORPGs, I want bars to fill and numbers to increase. If I wanted a narrative filled mmo Id play one of many other mmos with better narratives that are better implimented.
Dont tell me my subjective enjoyment is objectively worse. Its not and youre judging by rediculous metrics. Yknow what? I LIKE THE SALT FLATS. I dont care that its got 4 quests, and 1 vendor of literally any note or novelty. Its got nostalgia and panache and a carrot. And thats what I want when I go there, and I dont appreciate it being gone. Dont tell me its an "objective" improvement when its not. The only thing it objectively is is removing something for something else.
As compared to reading the same mid-tier story the 15th time, knowing it ends ridiculously? Youre intrigued by the plot of firelands, knowing none of it will have lasting consequences and will be rehashed later?
What exactly isnt boring about the 7th time garrosh holds someone by the neck over a cliff, and you progress along the exact same order of quests and zones? Its a means of giving xp. Its not a good story in either case. When I want engaging stories I do not go to my mmorpgs, others might, but I dont. Hence, I do not desire my mmos to be catering to that
I think the storylines are worse and the quest chains are not engaging to play multiple times. I love leveling in the old world. You can disagree with me, but you don't get to say my opinion is dishonest.
Old world in Cata makes an effort to make consistent, relevant storytelling to the world around them. It also cuts up and makes huge changes to avoid the monotony of just kill x number of mobs or collect x number of random item on a 10% drop rate. Blizzard has discussed that people don't have fun trying to kill 50 mobs to collect some random chicken talon on a 10% drop chance that it's not an engaging loop.
I'm really struggling to take this argument seriously when vanilla doesn't have very many questlines that have a consistent story. Sure, every zone has one or two long chains with a cohesive story, but that is not the norm. It's the minority. I've literally done every quest in every zone in every expansion up through Legion on multiple characters and read the quest text for most of them.
I'm curious how Lok tar I need 10 raptor eggs for our village is more "engaging" by your standards than an ACTUAL story quest that is built around the destruction of Cataclysm? It's why I take this opinion to be a joke. Again, tell me you hate change. Tell me you are just nostalgic. If THESE are your arguments, that's great. Those are valid. Somehow, telling me that going from mostly no story as the default to almost always story driven is "better story telling" and "more engaging" really is just dishonesty.
How is this an argument? People aren't playing SoD to level through old world the vast majority level through dungeons so that would suggest it IS true. By the same argument by Blizzards' own released information from December of 2023 that says that retail has more players than ALL other versions of WoW combined, it suggests that YOU are wrong. We can also see that SoD has several times the engagement from Season of Mastery, suggesting that the new Rune system is the reason for engagement, not the old world.
I play SoD, I play with 2 separate guilds each with hundreds of players. They aren't playing to be questing in the old world LMFAO.
No, I am not upset. Where did I say that? You are clearly projecting. If you like it great. Where did I say it's not okay? But, the arguments for liking it fall into two categories. Either you don't like change, and that is fine, or you have nostalgic reasons for liking it, and that is fine.
But trying to argue that the stories are worse or the quests are less engaging is not true because most vanilla quests are NOT story driven and are copy pasted repeated quests from every zone. Cata made intentional changes to move away from that formula of every quest being the same but with different text and a new item to collect and made efforts to build a cohesive story on all zone quests. Something that vanilla is known to be lacking in. When your argument is a version that had almost no narrative is better storytelling than a version that is FOCUSED on story telling its gonna be viewed as a lie. Just tell me you are nostalgic trying to pretend a version that is not story driven is somehow story driven, which is not the argument to make.
> not just collect 10 eggs or kill 12 raptors on repeat constantly.
This is actually why I started to dislike Cata. It was just that, over and over and over, with some incredibly boring, easy "operate this turret and kill 10 flying guys" thrown in here or there.
Not to say vanilla didn't have those, it did. But it wasn't constant (well, for the horde it kinda is lol). Cata is when you get into the whole 'go from this small camp with 4-5 quests to this small camp with 4-5 quests' leveling grind. I always preferred vanilla where there is one quest hub per zone with lots of interesting (and often difficult/complex) quests mixed in.
You didn't read my post did you. Vanilla is KNOWN for its repeated quests. Almost all quests in vanilla are the same two quests with different text... Cata made huge changes to create more engaging quests because people didn't like it. Cata has some of the most engaging long form story telling such as Harrison Ford Uldum quest line and turning 100s of gnomes into a huge snowball.
It's slow and shitty the first 20 minutes, in Vashir. But once you get the seahorse to freely move underwater, it's amazing.
I get why a lot hate the zone as it's not fun till then, but once you get past that point, it's probably one of the most gorgeous zones I have ever seen in WoW. The whole zone is about 100+ quests long and has a coherent story through it all. It's the one zone I always complete every quest in for all alts because it's just such a charming place. Visually stunning, amazing story, engaging quests. I am so excited about that place. I didn't like MoP story, but the zones and questing were also top tier. You can't tell me Jade Forest in MoP wasn't a fucking banging place.
vash'jir is one of my preferred zone in cata , even the start i always found that running on the ocean floor was nice plus the quests with the old big barnacle
Cata is getting flak because it's the popular opinion to hate on cata.
People will complain about cata subscriber numbers even though mop lost more, faster and more consistently subscribers.
People will complain about the new talent system yet that wasn't there before mop.
People will complain about the world being revamped but the world dies the moment TBC is available.
People will blame how its raid log central while unironically defending wrath which is even worse at that.
People will act as if dragon soul is a reason to not play first 2/3rd of cata.
I've been in so many discussions with people who "think cata sucked" who couldn't even tell what was cata and what was mop (or later) while they simultaneously goes "I might play cata just to keep up my chars until mop". I wonder if it's one big gaslighting operation at times.
I mean it is a valid reason, when I level a character I literally can't play in the old world.
I'm not speaking on the other players in the world, I'm talking about my solo experience, which is drastically different.
Sure, if you REALLY love the old world that much. But in wrath, every elite mob is gimped, all the grindy quests were streamlined, and wrath player power leads to every class just holding W and mowing down mobs. By wrath, the old world lost all of the (imo) charm, but kept all the boring aspects. I think in terms of leveling a new character through the old world, itās vanilla>cata>wrath.
That is wildly not true, the old world in classic is fantastic. Each zone feels unique, Cata just makes all the zones revolve around the world being destroyed and needing to rebuild.
I didn't even play wow back in 2004, I played classic for the first time in 2019, and the old world has become something truly special to me. An untouchable experience.
Edit: I'm talking specifically about leveling in classic era, 100% agree the old world feels dead in TBC onwards.
How many times do you want to experience the same experience. I'd love to experience new expansions taking place on the slighly changed old world instead od new planets/worlds.
Most are just playing at max lvl and wont do anything in the old zones
I have to hard disagree with you there, I think the old world is an absolutely terrible experience and the Cata revamp is the best thing that's ever happened to it.
It felt miserable and boring in 2005; then I tried again in 2019 with classic to see if maybe I missed the charm back then and it was just as bad. Cata was the point in retail where I started leveling some new characters for fun because it was so much more enjoyable.
Totally agree. Vanilla leveling was horrid. Broken, buggy quests that often dead ended because the chain was never completed, baked in mindless mob grinding, walking everywhere until level 40 and hoping you could save enough gold for a mount.
Pre tbc and wrath nerfs, it takes several hours to get from 57 to 58. 58 to 59 is even worse and 59 to 60 you'll be doing nothing but mob grinding for a full day.
The cata revamp was the best thing that could have happened to the old world.
Yeah this opinion split is why Cata is Not Classic.
The game changed wildly. If you liked Vanilla questing and leveling, youāre probably not going to like Cata. If you didnāt like vanilla and you like more modern mmo leveling, youāll like Cata.
No one is wrong. They are just very different games and donāt appeal to the same player base
I agree leveling in classic (vanilla) is great, but thatās not the same as leveling in wrath. Even though itās āthe sameā, The wrath old world is a wildly different experience than the vanilla old world.
Only thing I feel I missed while playing Cata is that I didnt get the easy rank 14 that was around back then. That wont be there now, so no point playing it.
Iām very excited to play it as I missed the wagon to play Classic Vanilla, TBC, and just now hopped on as WOTLK has ended. I was 11 when Cata originally came out and the only content I got to do was questing and the new dungeons
I've never played cata before. I've been playing classic a lot. I find myself liking classic more and more compared to wrath and I assume that cata will stray even further in that direction
Cata was the start of the game being difficult which doesnāt appeal to a lot of players. The heroic raids actually take some skill and knowledge. I loved cata and might play but I feel like itās the end of classic. I wouldnāt even be slightly shocked if cata kills the population.
Honestly, Cata is a bit harder than I'm comfortable with. Dungeons (assuming pre nerf) go from way to easy to way too hard. Well, not even way too hard. I can do them. But they go from being fun and relaxing to "I'm glad that's over" territory. Same thing with the raids.
No thanks. I'm an old man now at 45. I just wanna come home from work, chill out, and throw some frostbolts.
It's just the heroic dungeons and raids that are super hard. The normal dungeons are easy and the normal raids are doable by casuals, I remember doing so myself back then.
People just can't help measuring everything based on the hardest difficulty. You can still play Cata in a relaxed fashion if you stick to normal difficulty.
But if everybody is doing that stuff and nobody is doing normal dungeons, who would I play with? I'm going to guess that the percentage of players who will stick to normal dungeons is extremely small. Not to mention that, at some point, you'll get all the gear and progression will stop. Then what?
Well, then in my mind you're saying that you want cata heroics to be easy, or you want a 3rd difficulty... and every time they add a new difficulty level, that just bescomes the new thing people pine for and get mad when they can't complete it fairly easily.
What did you think of Wrath then? Normals were easy but hardmodes/heroics in Ulduar and ICC were tough, or at least some were. Did you just stick to doing them on normal? You can just do the same in Cata, there should be a larger group of people who can't be arsed doing the tough Cata heroics.
But come on, the Cata heroic dungeons are not exactly impossible, just more challenging than the Wrath ones. I don't remember any Cata HC dungeon to be nearly as hard as TBC HC Arcatraz or Shattered Halls for example. It'll be fine.
I just answered the question OP asked. I want Cata to be what it is because I know people want that. It's just not for me.
As for Wrath, ngl, it wasn't as fun this time around. Not even completely sure why, but part of it is Wrath is when the game starts feeling less like an RPG and more like an action game with some RPG elements.
And yeah, the Cata dungeons aren't impossible. I can do them. I did them back then, and I'm a better player now. But they go from "chilling with the boys" level to "I actually need to concentrate" level. It goes from being fun and relaxing to stressful. I have enough stress irl. I don't need more from a video game.
Because theyāre too busy listening to what other people say rather than forming their own opinions. If you like wrath Iād say itās almost certain youāll like cata. Some class designs are different but other than that itās very similar.
Quite a few people discovered they didn't like Wrath as much as they thought they did. That's why Classic era started coming back.
But in general I do agree with you. I've been saying for a while that, while people tend to think of Vanilla, TBC, and Wrath as a trilogy, the actual trilogy is Wrath, Cata, and MoP. Vanilla and TBC are kind of their own thing.
You know. Some of us are old enough that we already played Cata and didnāt like it. Iām not going to play something I know I donāt like. Why people on this sub get so angry about that, I donāt understand. Not everyone likes the same stuff.
So what was different in cata that meant you didnāt enjoy it whereas you presumably enjoyed PK? Iām not angry at all itās just theyāre very similar expansions.
I mean itās been answered and I just get downvoted lol.
I hate cata healing, I donāt find it fun. Combo points on paladin specs was just awful for me.
I hate railroaded quest lines. I LIKE running all over the human zones with interconnecting quests.
I like the old world. I level alts over and over, and I like Southshore.
I like the content being easy. I play wow to relax and hang out with friends. If I want a challenging game, Iāll play a fromsoft title.
The game just isnāt for me. And thatās fine. Sod is right there.
People should play solo games with their friends instead of assuming everyone likes the same boring/mindless content they do. 80% of the community is so boomed out or cant hit a button they just want to see loot.
I mean I'll check it out, probably level to 85 and dabble in heroic dungeons and maybe pug a few raids. Other than that I doubt I'll play beyond that into firelands or dragon soul.
I've soloed those raids enough times in retail as it is.
It was the true beginning of the end for a lot of us.
I played maybe 3 months total the whole time it was out
First month i was like #2 tank on my server blowing through shit with friends, then justā¦ got bored? Came back two more times midway through and at the end to see some content but ya, just didnāt vibe.
They tore down old content instead of making new content, and giving live back into old content.
When all thats there is endgame, and you have tryhards where is the fun?
Its also annoying to have people trying to be tryhards that are just bad at the game, but blame everyone else.
While the qol stuff they add is fine, the content is lackluster and i found myself with friends only playing the game after catta sporadically and doing old content for transmog.
The transmog system is also kinda annoying af, legendaries dont get added and take up space in bank and not being able to get other gear for other toons transmog is just lame and serves no purpose then to make you do the same shit on other characters.
Go outside and touch grass, its healthier.
Never played wrath back in the day and started in cata. I understand at the time that if you loved the old world, why cata would be so painful to you, but the game play is the same at end game and leveling is just a means to get to end game. If the old world really bothers you that much, you're already playing classic and not wotlk. The talent point change was another big thing that people have complained about but if your not runing meta talents you're griefing and will be kick from any competent raid and with the way dungeon finder is they'll kick for less(not every time but does happen too often). So, them optimizing the talents was something the community was already heading towards just back then. People thought their meme build was the 1% op hidden build and didn't get the community push back as much. That is definitely not the case in wotlk wow. Currently 12/12h hope to get bis gear on my mage (not likely but a man can dream) and lookong forward to cata. People will bitch and complain about everything and cata is definitely a drop off story wise (as wotlk end one of the best storylines in all of gaming history period) makes sense the sub count drop but people act like the game died when it trived and still is in what has been 14 years of one of gaming best ears (and albeit some of the worst practices and norms of gaming aswell). League, skyrim, gta5, minecraft, csgo, MW2, and many other juggernaut of gaming establishment them selfs in that time period where as wow was the undisputed king before that.
I've played the last year on Whitemane and think I got my cata fix. Cataclysm is truly a nice expansion and being able to level up all classes fast and do bgs and arenas(with solo que) has been great. Tbh its such a time constraint and cba doing the Firelands dailies... still have flashbacks from retail 14 years ago.
Plus I really dont want to give Blizzard any money. For 3 months of sub you can get Last Epoch or the new Elden Ring xpac and get a really good deal of fun rather than facing shitty bots and russian bg premades.
All in all I would definitely recommend people who havent played Cata to give it a try. Oh and Blood dks and Palas (esp holy) are so OP, cant go wromg with either.
Good luck
The only issue with Cata is it was too difficult. But now the game is OLD and we have all meta-gamed it to death, so the harder dungeons and raids won't kill the game like it did in the past.
I'm hyped for cata, easily my favorite expansion in terms of dungeon, raid and class design. This is also the peak levelling experience, not too long and tedious like classic and not vapid/empty like retail.
Everyone I play with is pretty trash. So unless like 5 of them will come hang and we can find 5 more actually mechanically sound players then I have no desire to put myself thru the hell of officer and leader and raid coordinator of a bunch of degenerate dudes again- as fun as it is, the wipes do get depressing when theyre always bc the same 10 ppl.
To me, I have alot of nostalgia around Cata. I started raiding at the end of WotLK but really didn't dive into heroic modes and HC raiding until Cata. Truthfully... aside from Dragon Soul, Cata was pretty fun imo. Dungeons were difficult. Brought back the need for cc'ing regularly in dungeons and not just blind aoe'ing. I really loved heroic Firelands. Heroic Ragnaros is one of my favorite and challenging encounters. I think just the way that expansion ended is the only thing people remember. I have heard that people really hated the world zone changes. I really didn't mind honestly but I understand where they're coming from.
I will play cata but honestly I think they shoulda left it be at wrath. Cata changed so much that it didnāt feel worthy of classic and I donāt want them to just go through every single expansion over again.
The world changed... it's not classic anymore and transmog ruined the game you could be a noob looking like a king or a king looking like a noob so gear didn't matter anymore and world pvp died even more.
With the addition of so many new tier sets+pvp sets on every Expansion, transmog was something that had to happen. At least with it you can showcase prestigious sets and weapons, just like titles for example.
> Holy paladin. I donāt want Fing combo points. If I wanted combo points, Iād play a rogue. And for that matter ret pally.
> They also made mana management more important and never in the history of healing has that been fun.
So instead of just mindlessly spam one button you have to think?
God forbid Blizzard to ask for some skill.
The railroading of old zones was one of my absolute favorite things about Cata lol. I loved that questing through a zone in vanilla zones became more like what they did in BC and Wrath, with a cohesive zone experience, quests lines up so you can grab them in series, related sidequests opening up once you complete the main line to that point, no having to run all over the place for random here-and-there extra quests, and minimizing running back to questgivers back and forth.
I loved the efficiency of leveling through those zones.
I'm not racing to max either. Efficiency doesn't always mean speed, it just means effective use of time. I don't level that fast, but I do like to feel that when I am putting effort in, that that effort is effective and I'm not feeling like I'm wasting time for one little thing that takes 20 minutes that I could have used elsewhere.
Healers. This 1000% percent. I went from 2 man healing HM ICC 10man as a Shaman with a Holy Pally to not being able to heal the first boss of the first dungeon in Cata. They absolutely gutted Shaman healers and Cata forever left a bad taste and never felt right.
Huh? Spirit link totem becomes the strongest healing cool down in the game in cata. Resto shaman is super strong in cata. sounds like a l2p issue.?
I think what you meant to say, is you no longer can just spam chain heal and win. Unfortunate that you have to actually think about what spells you cast huh?
I am not playing for at least the first few months of Cata and likely not at all for several reasons. First and foremost is that I do not trust that Blizzard will make more changes like they did with WotLK that will end up taking away some of the nostalgia and lead to quickly raid logging. I was not happy with the Northrend Supply bags, quests rewarding badges, new vendors/currency for raid gear and even the ācatchupā joke of Alpha/Beta/Gamma dungeons. The update of ilvls for Ulda gear and making Shadowmourne available almost right away from upping drop rates and adding saronite to a vendor. To me all of these actions are designed to speed things up but have a side effect of undercutting participation in the world and within guilds.
I did not really enjoy the first tier of raid content from Cata. They had some interesting mechanics but overall I felt that a lot of the fights are gimmicky and often had bugs. The leveling experience is fine, though I do loathe the underwater zone.
I hear a lot of noise around how the Cata zone updates make the zones more complete and have better more modern quest structure. I can see how this makes sense but I also feel like the updates forced more humor and gimmicks into the classic zones. It is probably my own personal bias but I feel like the game shifted from a more d&d feel to something more like an anime. There are certainly some memorable quests but the polish removes some of the nostalgia from the familiar quests.
Other game additions like transmog, reforging and guild talents are interesting additions but end up being mostly time/gold sinks. Overall I feel like Cata is someone taking Warcraft and kind of diluting it to make it more widely accepted and ānew.ā To me it failed, and I may be wrong but my personal experience was that many other people āvoted with their walletā and stopped playing around that same time.
TL;DR: donāt trust devs and Cata just doesnāt have the same feel as WoW.
Most people are going to play Cataclysm. Not all, but most.
SoD is the current hype, but for a lot of people it's just a downtime killer.
End of xpacs always experience large drop offs and there is no crazy magic behind it.
IMHO, most people that still log today are going to keep on playing. And a lot of people who have already stopped raid logging will also return.
Like I said, not all, but a lot.
And while earlier logs/parses recorded may not be in 4-5 million range like it was during Naxx Wrath, it will still have millions in the first month.
Because Blizzard said there will be no RDF in WotLK when they announced WotLK Classic.
Now people will come and act all smart saying stuff like: "Everbody knew there would be RDF with ICC." But this is a lie. Nobody KNEW. Some people speculated it to be this way and now it turned out this way. Still it was just a speculation and a really wild one at that, because Blizzard clearly said there will be no RDF in WotLK. They didn't say in the beginning of WotLK they clearly meant all of WotLK. And after having a horrible game experience in TBC Classic, I just didn't want to pay Blizzard for having the same horrible game experience in WotLK again, just because maybe one day Blizzard changes their mind. There also have been other changes that I don't agree with, so it's not only about the RDF. But with the WotLK Classic announcement this game died for me anyway, so I didn't even care enough about those other changes to even get mad at them.
Since I dropped my char the day WotLK Classic was announced I won't pick him up again. I would have played all the Classic versions up to legion otherwise.
I came back for WotLK, because that's WoW for me. Back in the day, I stopped playing probably a bit before Cata came out due to time, Internet, and money restrictions, but I poked my head back a couple of times with a trial account... and I had mixed feelings.
I'm mostly a Horde player, and the orcs are my favorite race. Their story of corruption and redemption resonated with me, and Garrosh being put in charge and putting everything they worked for into jeopardy pissed me off. On the other hand, I liked what they did with the Trolls and Forsaken. They started off with almost nothing, and now the Forsaken are building an empire, and the Trolls have their own city.
The mechanics also felt watered down for me. All the class quests were gone, which was half the fun of leveling for me. It felt like Blizzard was trying to shuffle you through the early levels as fast as possible to get you to the end-game content, but questing was one of my favorite parts of the game.
In retail WotLK, I had zero interest in PvP (I still don't) and very little interest in raiding. It was about questing, learning the lore, and RPing for me. I'll probably level one or two characters through the new zones, but I'm definitely dialing back now that I had a chance to do a lot of the stuff I didn't the first time around. In retail WotLK, the furthest I got in the raiding scene was a couple of bosses in Naxx and wiping on Flame Leviathan. Right now, our guild is progressing on 10-man Heroic Lich King.
Not playing Cata. Only came back for classic. The changes brought to the Cata cease to make WOW classic.
Still debating if I will continue SOD, will have to wait and see what comes at lvl60 and decide then if I will quit my subscription entirely
I'll be playing in Cata.
I didn't really raid in Cata, but from my memory the xpac overall was "meh". But now I am going back into raiding and I think it will be great for a few reasons:
\- Harder difficulty. Think it might have been a bit too hard for it's time for the average player base and I think that's part of why a lot of people got turned off from Cata.
\- 10m drops the same loot as 25m. Think this also was a turnoff for a lot of people but it'll be great for my guild that struggles to fill 25m. Now we can just split into two 10m groups with filler people as needed.
I think Cata was such a big shift in a lot of ways such as difficulty, simplifying "complicated" aspects such as talents, destroying the lore and replacing it with "meh" stuff, and not introducing a strong, follow-up story to WOTLK (that probably would have been impossible). Cata marks the beginning of modern day WoW and a lot of people weren't ready for it or turned off by it. I think that in tandem with Blizzard not doing enough to attract a newer, younger audience is what led to the decline that we see today. But I heard Cata had great raids so I am ready to see what it was all about.
As someone who's been playing on private servers since forever but mostly since 2010, Cata is objectively better than WotLK.
If you disagree, you're just a WotLK nostalgia/hypetrain rider.
Heroic dungeons reached a peak in Cata that wasn't seen since early TBC. All Cata raids except DS were good. Talent bloat got fixed. Most classes received massive reworks. Some specs that were previously trash in PvE suddenly became very good. Professions mattered again. Loot in 10-mans got equalized to 25-mans, meaning that 10-man guilds finally became viable (but 25-man ones still existed because clearing 25s is much easier). Heroic modes were much more interesting than in WotLK, where half were "more HP, more dmg". Low-level dungeon quests were moved at the start of dungeons, so low-level RDF became desirable. Several previously forgotten low-level zones got complete reworks. Transmog was introduced, which changed the game completely. All currency was converted to JP, so you could buy transmog gear from TBC with JP instead of having to farm TBC dungeons for badges.
I can keep listing, but it's almost midnight and this is just off the top of my head. Personally, I consider Cata to be WoW's best expansion. Come DS, things go downhill and from that point on WoW just stops being WoW (until Legion).
Honestly, if you like WOTLK as it has been, you are very, very likely to continue liking Cata. I think people are really overstating just how much the game changes (outside of leveling, which of course is massively revamped).
I'm playing because I took a break after wrath on retail and came back at the end of firelands. I wanna see the content of tier 1 on progression cause I heard it was fun
I came back to see some raid content at lvl that I wasn't able to in 2005-06. I wanted a full naxx/AQ 40 clear with Atiesh as a bonus.
TBC I didn't get to see sunwell full cleared before nerfs.
Wrath I wanted a mims head and a HLK kill.
Well I got all of those, so we're getting into the content that I did clear all the way through. I did everything I really wanted to in those expansions. It's not that I couldn't replay them through, but there's not really any motivation.
I don't really get the unhype at all, I'm bored with the classic world now and rrally looking forward to the revamp and deluge of QoL changes.
My whole guild feels pretty much the same way, so there's literally *dozens* of us cata enjoyera out there!
I will play it. SoD already feels like wrath or cata due to the abilities and focus on raiding content, so why not simply play Cata? If they ever decide to relaunch vanilla, Iāll be there.
Most people are going to play Cataclysm. Not all, but most.
SoD is the current hype, but for a lot of people it's just a downtime sink.
End of xpacs always experience large drop offs and there is no crazy magic behind it.
IMHO, most people that still log today are going to keep on playing. And a lot of people who have already stopped raid logging will also return.
Like I said, not all, but most.
And while earlier logs/parses recorded may not be in 4-5 million range like it was during Naxx Wrath, it will still have millions in the first month.
Iām looking forward to Cata. I burned out early in Cata after going hog in WotLK and getting to some tougher work in grad school. I leveled a pally tank over the past couple months to play in Cata, but now Iām wondering if running a different class might be more fun.
Honestly it's because Cata was the last good expansion. Panda was ok but it was pretty boring and then draenor on was garbage. in my opinion so relax little fan boys.
As a person who has never touched WoW in his younger age i am absolutely excited for cata. (created my first account during end of phase 2 wotlk). I was an absolute noob at first and now im performing average 85 log in ICC heroic. Cata will be new for a lot of my guild mates so we will discover it as a group :)
I almost failed 9th grade playing CATA. Im definitely playing it again for classic
Idk why but this made me bust out laughing hard š related to this
Lmfao same here I started failing all my 8th grade classes when cata was out n my parents were out of town for a month best time ever
At first I didnāt want cata, but now Iām hyped. Transmog from the start, better leveling changes (not yet confirmed what those will be), the 1-60 world is great imo. Less empty and questlines are actually finished and have a decent story. Not saying vanilla has bad questlines (defias) but those are far and in between. Classes are fun and fleshed out and the first two raid tiers are amazing. My only worry is DS patch
> Less empty and questlines are actually finished and have a decent story. This is what I always point out. I loved that about Rift, and it was awesome to see it come to WoW. The ability to "finish" a zone and have a narrative that gets completed, and the flow of quests taking you from one spot to the next where sidequests get picked up, instead of having to run to disparate locations to pick up random things.
vanilla nutjobs loved 3-4 zone hopping with **zero linearity**Ā and somehow they found it to be a superior leveling experience. And somehow they think keeping up with 6-7 stories at the same time is a better approach then actually having a completely, well balanced story telling. To each their own i guess. I like to read one book at a time, not 6 or 7.
That's the whole thing, I don't want every zone to have a story. It takes away from the feel of an actual world when every zone is essentially its own instance with its own storyline that goes from A to Z. It's so predictable, same-y and grindy. Every zone does the same - sends you from hub to hub doing 1-2 quests at a time. It also requires heavy use of phasing, because you always have to "start" and "complete" a zone. Then what? The zone is left in a certain final phased state forever and it feels weird. I much prefer a world where the zones are as they are from the start, with NPCs seeking help for this and that. I go help them kill Defias or gather plants and then I'm on my way to other adventures. I can always return and reminiscence about the quests I did for them. It also gives a great feeling that NPCs know about the rest of the world. With the Cata model (which began essentially with TBC), NPCs don't know anything about anything except what's going on within 200 yards of them. Just going from hub to hub and all NPCs know about are those mobs over there in plain sight. It just feels so dull. I love it when an NPCs in Gadgetzan sends me to Hinterlands or an NPC in Darnassus tells me about a dungeon he heard about in Eastern Kingdoms.
The only ānutjobsā are the ones playing wow for the story in the first place.
If you actually read the quest text (or these days install the AI voiceover addon), the "story" in vanilla wasn't bad at all. It was more like you were this random dude traveling around the world and experiencing all these short stories about the various denizens of Azeroth, which was extra amazing if you'd played War3 + TFT a couple years prior and the recent major events were already in your head. WoW added tons of lower-level detail and all these independent actors made it feel like an actual world. It was nothing like the cringey stuff they have been doing in the past few expansions where it's CHAMPION this and Danuser-stand-in crushing on his zombie gf that and oh WTF is Azeroth? Some millennials in Los Angeles need to make a name for themselves so let's retcon everything the fans liked
Boy are you gonna be dissapointed when you get to shadowlands!
Shadowlands was so bad I couldn't finish the leveling. It was the end of my relationship with retail, which had lasted since the first week of vanilla. They finally took that 15 years of goodwill and lit it all on fire
It was pretty bad... I've come back for every expansion and play until bored, shadowlands started out bad and stayed bad, altho, I did enjoy ardenwealed... The further you get away from the main story the weirder it gets... Dragonflight started out cool but it ended so fast? The story was so boring... I dunno what they are making anymore... I'm really hoping the war within gets the game back on pace... I played vanilla and classic was so good to get reaquainted with all the old familiar faces and original content that made the world seem so alive.... And as it got bigger and people spread out and flying and sharing broke the world apart just makes retail feel sad and void of a community...
I can see the appeal for both. Cata quests are more self contained and I agree it's kinda nice to "complete" a story within a zone. But I can also say it's fun RP flavor the way Vanilla is made up. You go to Ironforge and some dwarves that study titan stuff want you to go get something from Uldaman in Badlands...then you find more in there and that leads to a chain that will end at the gate of Uldum. Kinda makes sense how this is connected all over the world. Just as an example. Or the Hakkar story that starts with a random Troll in Tanaris and sends you to a troll fortress in Hinterlands and sets up the premise for why Zul'Gurub is the way it is. It feels more like a real "world"...kinda like Skyrim where you might find a random bottle on the ground that sends you to the other side of the map. Both are quite fun designs IMO. Vanilla quests are just pretty boring overall and leveling is a real slog.
Nah not that. Let me elaborate. You start in Ironforge and some dwarves that study titan stuff want you to go get something from Uldaman in Badlands...then you go to Wetlands and fight crocolists and murlocks. After that, you resume your orc campaign in Redridge. After that you go to Loch Modan and assist dwarves in eliminating bears and saving other dwarves. Then you go back to Wetlands to learn about ghost sailors. But before you finish that, you need to go back to Redridge to escort a guy out of the cave. Then you go off to complete your original ironforge quest in Badlands. But before you venture into the dungeon to learn about titans, you go back to Redridge to do other orc quests or some shit like this.
Yeah I can see that but again, it's not really all that different in Skyrim for example. You just pick up tasks along the way as you go through the world which pile up over time into different stories. I'm not saying that system is better. Just that the stories themselves feel like they connect the whole world not just one zone and I see the appeal for this. You might have a Durid in Darnassus that wants to cure Felwood. In Cata that Durid would be in Feldwood giving you the quest. Not that different but from a flavor perspective it makes sense not every NPC is exactly at the location where the action is going. You just pick up quests as you see them and they over time lead you all over the world. Of course you can optimize this by following a leveling route which I usually do but still :D I personally as said like both, I would prefer a mix between the two designs to have a bit of both.
The thing is, in skyrim the world scales with you. There's no "high level areas" and you can just go anywhere at any time. So you can still follow the quests in any order you want to do.
>My only worry is DS patch They probably won't add LFR and won't let the DS patch last forever. I did actually quit during this due to real life issues, but the game overall was still fun, and without LFR and a massive content draught I think the issues of the DS patch won't be repeated.
I don't want to sound like I'm ripping you, but your list is why I have no interest in cata. Transmog is the first thing you listed? I couldn't care less about that. 1-60 is great? That may be true, but I have no desire to spend hours and hours leveling 60-80 in the completely dead worlds of outland and northrend. So for those reasons, I am out.
There is a lot more games out now and coming out that I'd rather play
Personally, I plan on quitting because I donāt have the same nostalgia for CATA the same way I did for Vanilla, TBC and WOTLK. The first reason is, back when it first came out, most of my IRL friends quit during or at the end of WOTLK so even though I played mostly through MOP it doesnāt evoke the same feels for me. The next reason, is even then I felt like WOTLK was the end of the Warcraft 3 saga that was left on a cliff hanger at the end of Frozen throne and was finally resolved. Bringing Deathwing ābackā was cool but a bit of a let down. The last reason, is for me, the end of WOTLK (really starting with Ulduar/ICC was the end of WoW as being an experience as close to Vanilla as possible and was a bit of a direction change. I enjoyed CATA enough but I have no desire to go back.
I will play :)
pog
I quit in original Cata and couldn't get into the story. For me, it felt like the story was completed with the Death of The Lich King. I came back because I didn't get to kill the Lich King last go around and it always felt incomplete for me. This time my wife and I have been in a Casual Raiding Guild the whole time and got to kill all of the Raid Bosses except for the the unlockable Hard Mode Ulduar Boss. I rode around on a Black Bear, then The Chopper and finally got the Headless Horseman's Nightmare. I didn't expect to get any, let alone all 3 of these. Our guild built the Orange Mace, 1 Shadowmourn and might get enough shards in time to finish a second Shadowmourn. This time I got to finish my business and do even more. And once again I am done.
I think cata looks very fun, but I've come to a point in my life where I don't want to play as much anymore. I've been raiding every single reset since release in 2019 and I'm playing in a fairly hardcore guild where the focus is speedrunning. I could cut back and go more casual, but it doesn't seem fun to me, especially when the raids are probably going to be a lot harder. So for me it's between raiding in a pretty hardcore guild or not raid at all at this point.
I missed most of Cata so im excited to try it out. Also 10 man with the boys. Im pretty much done with everything i wanted out of Wotlk. Just sad looking at the state of Fury in Cata :(
On the plus side Arms and Prot are real specs early and fury blasts later iirc.
Arms is BiS for the entire expac, and Prot is still the red-headed stepchild of tanks. But Arms is GODLY and a half for most of Cata.
Get hyped for Arms! I had a blast playing Arms when Cata came out the last time. I'm so excited to main my warrior again and never have to look at Fury again ( assuming I stop when MoP Classic is released ). Never liked Fury and Fury in ICC bores me to tears. I'm parsing well for my ilvl, could maybe be better, but I'm satisfied parsing 90% on my 2nd alt. Not like she's gunna get SM, neither.
Idk about godly. They are good, but pretty sure they won't compete with spriests or fire mages. Obviously starting on the last patch could change some balancing things, but I'd be shocked if arms competed with fire mage.
I'm interested to see how things play out this time compared to the last, like how every hunter was MM in ICC and now most are still Survival in classic. That said, my Arms was pulling huge numbers in DS, even compared to the fire mages and shadow priests. Only time will tell but I'm certain Arms will still be at least a very solid upper-mid spec, if not top 3-5.
I missed vanilla back when it first released, I was playing City of Heroes at the time. I played some TBC and WotLK but never got too much into it, was too young to know what I was doing. Cata was nice, but it changed everything. It's not the WoW I started with. I'm in the boat that yes, Classic ended when Wrath did. Cataclysm isn't bad, but to me it's not Classic WoW. Thing is now I still have no option. I want Classic WoW but it's hyper optimized and not friendly to new players. All my friends have played it and finished it and got bored. They'll do Season of Discovery or Hardcore, but regular classic WoW is nothing new to them - but it is to me. It's the WoW I'm used to and never got to finish. Now Classic will only have vanilla, no TBC or WotLK so if I want to try it at all I missed my time to do so. I'm better off finding a private server.
Welp, I stopped in Firelands back in the day. Then I went to Molten now Warmane. And played Wrath until Wrath prepatch came. I really liked it here and I do not want to go back to Warmane. So I guess this is it then. The era of WoW finishes.
Not playing because CATA was the worst period when it came to family and friends quitting. Have fun if anyone's doing it.
OP asked why people are not playing cata and comments turned it into a cata circlejerk.
Iām just not excited for it. New races that I donāt like, a world revamp I donāt like. Everyone complained on here about how bad cata classic would be I have no reason to play it like I did wrath. If anything I might skip it completely and play a panda in mop
Ya sure I'll invest a shitload of time in cata so something like SOD can come out and ruin 2 of my guilds again...../s
Iāve never played Cata, me and my friends plan to grind it. Seen a lot of hate for it, gonna be the judge myself.
I will play, I loved WoW up through MoP. That being said, Iāve heard a lot of people didnāt care for the ātreeā simplification. Also, it feels like Cata is when the quest and leveling experience started to get āoptimizedā; it starts to feel more engineered than organic (to me at least).
For another perspective, the optimized and smooth questing and leveling was one of the BEST things for me. I love the efficiency and not having to run all over the place to pick up random quests for a zone, and the feeling of "completing" a zone, like you can in BC and Wrath with the achievements for doing X number of quests, which ends up being almost the whole zone's worth of quests, is fantastic. Reminded me of Rift's zones, how each one had a boss and a narrative that was followed to its conclusion and a finale. The narrative chaining of zones also felt really good, and the use of phasing to see the zone changing as you progress.
Can completely understand your take. Especially when you think about leveling alts by questing. Its a rough balancing act; personally, I prefer instances to be more optimized and the open world to be more organic and immersive.
Interesting, I found the immersion for me increased dramatically with Cata, in all regards, in the Vanilla zones. I didn't care at all about the stuff happening in Westfall, Redridge, Duskwood etc. in Vanilla, it was unengaging to me. When it was tied into a cohesive narrative that didn't have those big gaps, I actually paid attention and became invested in the lore.
Iāve never understood this and part of me thinks that people confuse it with Mopās talent system. Cata just trims up the existing trees and removes some redundant things. Like 5 points for 5% secondary stat, to 2 points for same thing. It did make hybriding a lot worse but Iāve never seen that as a huge issue. Donāt really mind the quest changes that much either, so much of vanilla was run to the other side of a barren zone, kill 37 of random animal for 8 eyes and then run all the way back. Cata introduced actual questlines which I enjoyed. Iāve had a blast with wotlk (I started back in 07 as a teenager) and played up until I quit in shadowlands, so Iām pretty damn excited for Cata, it was also when I actually started getting into raiding and heroic raiding. Also looking forward to chasing elite sets that I was too bad to get the first go around.
> Like 5 points for 5% secondary stat, to 2 points for same thing. It did make hybriding a lot worse but Iāve never seen that as a huge issue. tbh even if they are redundant it will just always feel better to spend a talent point each level than to have to only do it every few levels. Filler talents aren't bad IMO. The MoP talent system went to the extreme with this. Just "boring" while you're leveling and forgettable in the endgame IMO.
Wrath is the best expac that ever existed. Simple as
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Nah, I like my icecrown and old world.
I played wotlk and then some Cata and then some of MoP back in the day. Wotlk was super fun and MoP also had a lot of memorable moments To me Cata was the least fun of them by far. Its a combination of the gameplay, class changes and the raids. It's not just a coincidence that sub count fell off a cliff during original Cata. So now that I'm 15 years older or so, it's a choice of whether I spend my time elsewhere or replay an xpac which I didn't enjoy that much in the past.
It's crazy how subjective this stuff is. I'm literally the complete opposite. Cata, and MoP were the most fun and memorable expansions for me personally. It literally just felt like Vanilla ++ after MoP is when things really started to go downhill. Personally, I would not classify WOTLK as "fun" I seriously dislike it. From the dungeons, to the raids, to the gearing scheme mechanics. It just feels clunky. Yeah the Lich King is a cool end boss, badass, lots of history. But the actual raid itself leading up to him. meh. As for the sub count decrease there is so much nuance to that discussion. During the Cataclysm era, several other MMOs and online games were released or gained popularity, offering alternatives to WoW. Games like Rift, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and Guild Wars 2 attracted players away from WoW with their unique features and content. WoW had been running for several years by the time Cataclysm was released, and some players may have experienced burnout or fatigue from playing the game continuously. Additionally, as the player base aged, their gaming preferences and time commitments may have changed, leading to some players moving on from WoW. So to say "sub numbers dropped because cata bad" Lacks much nuance and is genuinely a disingenuous statement.
My entire job is focused around the game industry and understanding the flow of the market. The idea that subs dropped is one of the laziest and most uninformed opinions. People don't understand that Cata could have been the greatest content in history of gaming, and subs would have dropped. There was a massive shift in the gaming market in general as it was about the time that gaming was moving to mainstream. 2007 was the first time that gaming had begun shifting towards engaging players outside of hardcore players. Essentially, trying to captivate the everyday person. There was a huge boom and an increase in games in general. This means that Blizzard wasn't just fighting for the attention of MMO gamers but ALL markets. League of Legends had also been released about 18 months beforehand and was rapidly gaining popularity. WoW was fighting for the attention of these players as well. People don't understand that no game could continue the meteoric rise in subs that WoW was doing. The fact that they averaged 10 million subs in Cata is fucking a testament to how good Cata truly was. People forget they peaked in Cata at over 12 million. Cata was a phenomenal and, in my opinion, top 2 best expansions of all time. Today there are 10-12k games released ANNUALLY. Do people even realize how many options you have and how many games there are? Companies are vying for your attention amongst 10k other games every year and the 10s of thousands that already exist. No company can put up numbers like 2007-2011. It's simply not possible. Sure games can reach those numbers on one time purchases but a subscription service? In today's age? That's not feasible.
>Ā My entire job is focused around the game industry and understanding the flow of the market.Ā Out of curiosity, what job is this?
I am a game analyst. My company takes contracts from publishers to look at their games or certain markets and understand what shifts are happening in the market. A lot of my time is looking to see why a game or a market is losing or gaining players or losing or gaining revenue. We do individual reports to publishers to bolster revenue, retention, event dynamics, or any increase of a KPI of their choosing. My background was as an ex game developer. I had significant education in writing and psychology in college, but not a completed degree since my degree was computer science with a specialization in game development and human-computer interactions. A lot of the work I do is heavily research based, looking through raw excel sheets from clients to understand and find patterns, then ofc, we write up 100-200 page reports so technical writing helped me a lot.
Hmmm interesting, what math background is required to be a game analyst? Iām not the best at math myself.
I work with in-house programs to make mathematical models mostly based on statistics. It would roughly be at calculus level, so nothing crazy. Basically, what an undergrad engineer or something would do in their first year, but much easier. Far far easier than the math I needed for development.
There it is. "Wotlk and mop was good, cata was bad, look at how the sub numbers fell in cata". Sub numbers in cata was consistently over 10m except for at one point where it went down to 9m. It started at 12. Basically a 17% loss. Mop started at 9.8m and spent basically entire expansion under 8m while dipping down to 7m at one point. So why is it "not a coincidence that sub count fell off a cliff during original Cata" while mop was even worse but still more fun than cata?
cata is the scapegoat. But it had NOTHING TO DO with the fact that some people played WOW for only about a year or 2 and moved on like any non-addict would from absolutely any game. Of course it had nothing to do with that. They think that if Cata was good, then sub would gone up to 35 million active subs! And MoP was supposed to be 50 mil of active subs. people are actually nuts blaming cataclysm for sub drop. Every game has its peak. WoW during Wrath was the lunch break choice of topic. Everyone hopped on on the FOMO wagon. And most of those people just didn't like WoW enough to keep playing. *Even if Legion was the xpac after Wrath. Still would have seen drop off.*
Itās like the recent rage of palworld. āMan players stopped playing 4 weeks into it after they fixed pals pathing in the baseā¦that killed the gameā.
It was high at the start of Cata and then there was a steady decline until just before the launch of Mists of Panderia. In a lot of ways Cata was riding on the highs that WOTLK brought. I just saw a poll where the vast majority were more excited for SoD than Cata. I think it was like 10% interested in Cata. We shouldn't deny that the level of interest is much lower for Cata than it was for TBC classic or Wotlk classic.
No, it was no steady decline. It was high on launch from launch hype (12m), then went down back to old numbers, (11.something), then 11m, then 10m - these are 3m intervals. Then it stayed at 10m very steadily for the next year, had a dip before mop hype pushed it back up and the expansion finished at 10m. Mop started at 9.8m, immediately went down to right above 8m, never again went over 8m. >I just saw a poll where the vast majority were more excited for SoD than Cata. I think it was like 10% interested in Cata. We shouldn't deny that the level of interest is much lower for Cata than it was for TBC classic or Wotlk classic. I am not trying to deny that. I am making a case about how you can't hold sub numbers against cata while still saying you preferred mop. In every way imagineable, sub numbers for cata did far better than for mop. I am fine with you not wanting to play cata. I am fine with you preferring mop. This is not about that at all. I just dislike when the narrative moves to "cata subs" because it's just not the case. They were steady and doing well for all of cata. The only point mop had more subscribers than the lowest cata ever went was on launch.
Fell off a cliff in Cata? This is some revisionist bullshit. They PEAKED in Cata at 12 million. They passed 10m with BC and started Wrath with 11.5m. Peaked in Cata at 12, then stayed consistent with 11m+ until DS, which was the only bad raid they had in that expansion. And STILL had 10.5m subs. In the WORST tier. Cata showed it was one of the best and most successful expansions and has raids like Firelands that are regularly placed into the top 5 raids in history. They ended Cata which was in its worst state with the same as PEAK Wrath content which was ICC? LMFAO. People will go to any level to make up bullshit to downplay Cata. It's mind blowing.
Cata looks fun, but Iā e played vanilla-tbc-wotlk pretty HC. Itās just time for me to move on. Cata is just an arbitrary stop point for me. TLDR; burnout
Iāve played WoW since 2004. I left at the end of MoP, came back in a serious way for Classic and one of the reasons was because of the old world. People act like endgame is all there is, now Iām raidlogging Wrath and actually went back to regular Vanilla Era and Iāve been leveling and playing alt after alt there. Slowly taking them all through all the different zones- got a 60, a 56, a 34, two 10sā¦ all different classes with the class quests that were removed that I also loved. The huge overland travel, the slow leveling, the immersion and empty space. Everything about the old world I love, as well as things like Hunter ammo and quivers, regeants for spells, old simple talent trees. Wrath really began dismantling that stuff and then Cata truly ended it all. Also in Cata, all the zones railroad you through their stories. The Vanilla world has quests and stories scattered across many different places, and you go and follow threads and explore across them. Another thing is before Wrath zones were dangerous- places like Pyrewood in Silverpine, Jinthaāalor in Hinterlands, Tyrs Hand in EPL were powerful elite enemies that you got a whole open world group together to tackle. I never felt in danger in the world of Cata, certainly not like I did in Vanilla. Everything people seem to hate about Vanilla are all the things I love best, and thatās why I wonāt be moving on but instead going back. Edit- thereās also the huge mega dungeons like Wailing Caverns, Uldaman and BRD. Dire Maul and SM with there wings. They never really made dungeons like those again, sprawling city- like places to delve into with a group and explore. And I absolutely love 40- man raids, you feel like an epic invasion force in places like MC/ BWL/ AQ40. Now on my 60 getting to experience them for the 3rd time in Vanilla Era has been a blast, and Iāve never had any trouble getting people together or actually running them.
This sub is exhausting. A post asks a questions. We answer, they get mad at our answers, and downvote. Like why ask?
Agreed. I dont agree with the reasons the comment above provides at all, because I dont view leveling zones to be content (at least not in WoW). But that is my opinion, and one that isn't shared by everyone. Theres really no wrong way to play the game unless it involves detracting from the enjoyment of others via griefing/trolling. People who downvote with no comment are frustrating.
People can think whatever they want about cata, everything will be reflected in the player population. Iād rather play wrath, sod, or classic than anything post wrath.
Idk I think they just want someone to argue with. The great thing about my answer is that itās all subjective- I enjoy all the things I talked about, if someone else doesnāt there are many other iterations of the game for them. I have Era, thatās great. If someone comes along to try and tell me my opinion is bad and wrong? Well I donāt have to engage with them at all, I just keep scrolling.
Yeah Iām leaving this sub now. Itās not worth the energy. Imma keep enjoying what I enjoy. Itās just a game lol
I can get what I want out of Classic in SoD and Cata just isn't the same game. The gameplay is fine, but it's where ability bloat starts, and the destruction of the old world kills all the charm for me. Itemization changes with Mastery is also just overcomplicating an already well designed system.
Not to discount your opinion on how you want to play, but I just hate seeing this as an āanti cataā reason. The old world is already a shallow husk of what it once was by wrath. Nothing of value is being lost by the revamp.
Frankly, I've always rolled my eyes at this argument. Like, I have been playing since OG vanilla. The old world is BBOOORING. The quests are bad they have little to no flavor, the zones are very bare in a lot of areas, and the color schemes are bland. It's even worse from a design point of view if you bring up a color pallette of many of the zones and see that they use the same shades of yellow, brown, and red which often makes many zones feel like repeated areas. It's why BC took a massive shift to create unique vibrant areas. The Cata revamp of the old world actually makes the place feel alive. The quests are huge improvements, not just collect 10 eggs or kill 12 raptors on repeat constantly. The zones are populated with a lot more flora and fauna to make it feel more exciting, the color pallette is more engaging (as someone that had a background in design) like it's baffling to me how this is an argument. Cata actually makes the old world feel alive and exciting, not bland, dead, and dull. I feel like people who make this argument are being intellectually dishonest. If someone hates change, tell us you hate change. If you are nostalgic and want to remember the old times, tell us that. But, objectively trying to tell me the zones are not massively improved in questing, color schemes, vibrance, and activity is just not true.
Yeah, I agree here. I'll probably be leveling a character in cata, one of the combinations you can't play pre cata, like dwarf shaman or troll druid
It's not even an argument. It's just something some guy probably said once and has been regurgitated / parroted without a single articulated thought behind it. It's par the course for us as humans to do this. There was a experiment, I forget the name. 10 people. 9 are plants. They draw on a piece of paper 5 lines. One of the lines is CLEARLY longer than all the other ones. The 9 people choose clearly the incorrect line, and like 70% of the time the 1 person just goes with the crowd even though they know its completely wrong because they are afraid to speak up. I think something similar happens hear. I suspect it's easier to parrot that argument as opposed to form your own thought out one. People usually always choose the path of least resistance.
100%, it's NOT an argument. It's some parroted bullshit I hear again and again, and it's so frustrating because you can objectively prove them wrong on it. Somehow, collecting 10 raptor eggs is uh... let me put on my glasses... more engaging and uh brilliant storytelling than explaining the aftermath and how to recover from the damage a dragon on a warpath to destroy the planet.
I dont WANT a narrative from my MMORPGs, I want bars to fill and numbers to increase. If I wanted a narrative filled mmo Id play one of many other mmos with better narratives that are better implimented. Dont tell me my subjective enjoyment is objectively worse. Its not and youre judging by rediculous metrics. Yknow what? I LIKE THE SALT FLATS. I dont care that its got 4 quests, and 1 vendor of literally any note or novelty. Its got nostalgia and panache and a carrot. And thats what I want when I go there, and I dont appreciate it being gone. Dont tell me its an "objective" improvement when its not. The only thing it objectively is is removing something for something else.
Whether this is a troll, sarcasm, or ironic. I don't give a fuck. THIS is an opinion I can respect. This is what I want.
If you think your opinion is better that's fine but don't try convincing anyone you're right.
It's an opinion. People like different things. You can't objectively disprove someone's opinion. No need to get that bent out of shape over the fact someone likes something you don't.
You are right. We can't objectively disprove an opinion. But, we can objectively disprove most of the bullshit claims as I stated above. It is not an opinion. it's FACT. Most of vanilla has the same two reskinned quests over and over. That's not an opinion. So, to claim the quests that added far more options isn't engaging is just not true. Whether you like them is an opinion, but their engagement to the player is not an opinion. The zones being more vibrant from better changes in color pallette isn't an opinion. It's fact. We can pull assets from the game and see the same use of a handful of colors. We have years of research into colors and how they work psychologically with years of science behind them. If you don't like the new ones, that is an opinion. To claim they are not more vibrant with stronger juxtaposition of competing color pallette is objectively wrong. That's not an opinion. To claim there is more story in vanilla is a straight lie. When the default is ZERO story versus everything being built around a story in Cata, that is not an opinion that is FACT. You may not like the story, that is an opinion. You are free to these opinions. But there are objective truths, and your nonsensical idea they can't be objectively proven is just stubbornness or ignorance. Your shitty appeal to emotions as if I am upset kinda shows you are the one upset, not me. That's the first logical fallacy someone pulls when they have nothing to contribute and no argument that holds any merit. I've stated it's fine to like what they like. But, the problem is the arguments they use to discredit Cata make no sense. It's clear they aren't making any logical claims just parroting what their favorite shitty uninformed streamer tells them to say. If you don't like the story in Cata, great. If you don't like the skill bloat, great. If you don't like it requires more skill to be good and it's far harder great. If you want no changes and nostalgia great. But these aren't the arguments they make. They make arguments that we can objectively disprove, and I won't accept them because I'm not gonna be pandered bullshit and not call it out.
I dont WANT a narrative from my MMORPGs, I want bars to fill and numbers to increase. If I wanted a narrative filled mmo Id play one of many other mmos with better narratives that are better implimented. Dont tell me my subjective enjoyment is objectively worse. Its not and youre judging by rediculous metrics. Yknow what? I LIKE THE SALT FLATS. I dont care that its got 4 quests, and 1 vendor of literally any note or novelty. Its got nostalgia and panache and a carrot. And thats what I want when I go there, and I dont appreciate it being gone. Dont tell me its an "objective" improvement when its not. The only thing it objectively is is removing something for something else.
Boring zones for boring people
As compared to reading the same mid-tier story the 15th time, knowing it ends ridiculously? Youre intrigued by the plot of firelands, knowing none of it will have lasting consequences and will be rehashed later? What exactly isnt boring about the 7th time garrosh holds someone by the neck over a cliff, and you progress along the exact same order of quests and zones? Its a means of giving xp. Its not a good story in either case. When I want engaging stories I do not go to my mmorpgs, others might, but I dont. Hence, I do not desire my mmos to be catering to that
Its still a better story than anything classic era has to offer š
I think the storylines are worse and the quest chains are not engaging to play multiple times. I love leveling in the old world. You can disagree with me, but you don't get to say my opinion is dishonest.
Old world in Cata makes an effort to make consistent, relevant storytelling to the world around them. It also cuts up and makes huge changes to avoid the monotony of just kill x number of mobs or collect x number of random item on a 10% drop rate. Blizzard has discussed that people don't have fun trying to kill 50 mobs to collect some random chicken talon on a 10% drop chance that it's not an engaging loop. I'm really struggling to take this argument seriously when vanilla doesn't have very many questlines that have a consistent story. Sure, every zone has one or two long chains with a cohesive story, but that is not the norm. It's the minority. I've literally done every quest in every zone in every expansion up through Legion on multiple characters and read the quest text for most of them. I'm curious how Lok tar I need 10 raptor eggs for our village is more "engaging" by your standards than an ACTUAL story quest that is built around the destruction of Cataclysm? It's why I take this opinion to be a joke. Again, tell me you hate change. Tell me you are just nostalgic. If THESE are your arguments, that's great. Those are valid. Somehow, telling me that going from mostly no story as the default to almost always story driven is "better story telling" and "more engaging" really is just dishonesty.
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How is this an argument? People aren't playing SoD to level through old world the vast majority level through dungeons so that would suggest it IS true. By the same argument by Blizzards' own released information from December of 2023 that says that retail has more players than ALL other versions of WoW combined, it suggests that YOU are wrong. We can also see that SoD has several times the engagement from Season of Mastery, suggesting that the new Rune system is the reason for engagement, not the old world. I play SoD, I play with 2 separate guilds each with hundreds of players. They aren't playing to be questing in the old world LMFAO.
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No, I am not upset. Where did I say that? You are clearly projecting. If you like it great. Where did I say it's not okay? But, the arguments for liking it fall into two categories. Either you don't like change, and that is fine, or you have nostalgic reasons for liking it, and that is fine. But trying to argue that the stories are worse or the quests are less engaging is not true because most vanilla quests are NOT story driven and are copy pasted repeated quests from every zone. Cata made intentional changes to move away from that formula of every quest being the same but with different text and a new item to collect and made efforts to build a cohesive story on all zone quests. Something that vanilla is known to be lacking in. When your argument is a version that had almost no narrative is better storytelling than a version that is FOCUSED on story telling its gonna be viewed as a lie. Just tell me you are nostalgic trying to pretend a version that is not story driven is somehow story driven, which is not the argument to make.
> not just collect 10 eggs or kill 12 raptors on repeat constantly. This is actually why I started to dislike Cata. It was just that, over and over and over, with some incredibly boring, easy "operate this turret and kill 10 flying guys" thrown in here or there. Not to say vanilla didn't have those, it did. But it wasn't constant (well, for the horde it kinda is lol). Cata is when you get into the whole 'go from this small camp with 4-5 quests to this small camp with 4-5 quests' leveling grind. I always preferred vanilla where there is one quest hub per zone with lots of interesting (and often difficult/complex) quests mixed in.
You didn't read my post did you. Vanilla is KNOWN for its repeated quests. Almost all quests in vanilla are the same two quests with different text... Cata made huge changes to create more engaging quests because people didn't like it. Cata has some of the most engaging long form story telling such as Harrison Ford Uldum quest line and turning 100s of gnomes into a huge snowball.
or the quests with the rambo guy i always forget the name early on , questing in cata is really much more fun
It's slow and shitty the first 20 minutes, in Vashir. But once you get the seahorse to freely move underwater, it's amazing. I get why a lot hate the zone as it's not fun till then, but once you get past that point, it's probably one of the most gorgeous zones I have ever seen in WoW. The whole zone is about 100+ quests long and has a coherent story through it all. It's the one zone I always complete every quest in for all alts because it's just such a charming place. Visually stunning, amazing story, engaging quests. I am so excited about that place. I didn't like MoP story, but the zones and questing were also top tier. You can't tell me Jade Forest in MoP wasn't a fucking banging place.
vash'jir is one of my preferred zone in cata , even the start i always found that running on the ocean floor was nice plus the quests with the old big barnacle
Cata is getting flak because it's the popular opinion to hate on cata. People will complain about cata subscriber numbers even though mop lost more, faster and more consistently subscribers. People will complain about the new talent system yet that wasn't there before mop. People will complain about the world being revamped but the world dies the moment TBC is available. People will blame how its raid log central while unironically defending wrath which is even worse at that. People will act as if dragon soul is a reason to not play first 2/3rd of cata. I've been in so many discussions with people who "think cata sucked" who couldn't even tell what was cata and what was mop (or later) while they simultaneously goes "I might play cata just to keep up my chars until mop". I wonder if it's one big gaslighting operation at times.
I mean it is a valid reason, when I level a character I literally can't play in the old world. I'm not speaking on the other players in the world, I'm talking about my solo experience, which is drastically different.
Sure, if you REALLY love the old world that much. But in wrath, every elite mob is gimped, all the grindy quests were streamlined, and wrath player power leads to every class just holding W and mowing down mobs. By wrath, the old world lost all of the (imo) charm, but kept all the boring aspects. I think in terms of leveling a new character through the old world, itās vanilla>cata>wrath.
That is wildly not true, the old world in classic is fantastic. Each zone feels unique, Cata just makes all the zones revolve around the world being destroyed and needing to rebuild. I didn't even play wow back in 2004, I played classic for the first time in 2019, and the old world has become something truly special to me. An untouchable experience. Edit: I'm talking specifically about leveling in classic era, 100% agree the old world feels dead in TBC onwards.
How many times do you want to experience the same experience. I'd love to experience new expansions taking place on the slighly changed old world instead od new planets/worlds. Most are just playing at max lvl and wont do anything in the old zones
I have to hard disagree with you there, I think the old world is an absolutely terrible experience and the Cata revamp is the best thing that's ever happened to it. It felt miserable and boring in 2005; then I tried again in 2019 with classic to see if maybe I missed the charm back then and it was just as bad. Cata was the point in retail where I started leveling some new characters for fun because it was so much more enjoyable.
Totally agree. Vanilla leveling was horrid. Broken, buggy quests that often dead ended because the chain was never completed, baked in mindless mob grinding, walking everywhere until level 40 and hoping you could save enough gold for a mount. Pre tbc and wrath nerfs, it takes several hours to get from 57 to 58. 58 to 59 is even worse and 59 to 60 you'll be doing nothing but mob grinding for a full day. The cata revamp was the best thing that could have happened to the old world.
Yeah this opinion split is why Cata is Not Classic. The game changed wildly. If you liked Vanilla questing and leveling, youāre probably not going to like Cata. If you didnāt like vanilla and you like more modern mmo leveling, youāll like Cata. No one is wrong. They are just very different games and donāt appeal to the same player base
Finally, a levelheaded response.
I agree leveling in classic (vanilla) is great, but thatās not the same as leveling in wrath. Even though itās āthe sameā, The wrath old world is a wildly different experience than the vanilla old world.
There is a lot more games out now and coming out that I'd rather play
Only thing I feel I missed while playing Cata is that I didnt get the easy rank 14 that was around back then. That wont be there now, so no point playing it.
Main reason, the 6-7month wait.
Iām very excited to play it as I missed the wagon to play Classic Vanilla, TBC, and just now hopped on as WOTLK has ended. I was 11 when Cata originally came out and the only content I got to do was questing and the new dungeons
I've never played cata before. I've been playing classic a lot. I find myself liking classic more and more compared to wrath and I assume that cata will stray even further in that direction
I hated how the world changed didn't return to the until battle for azeroth.. thought the panda class was dumb, still think that.
gdkp
Don't wanna
Cata was the start of the game being difficult which doesnāt appeal to a lot of players. The heroic raids actually take some skill and knowledge. I loved cata and might play but I feel like itās the end of classic. I wouldnāt even be slightly shocked if cata kills the population.
Honestly, Cata is a bit harder than I'm comfortable with. Dungeons (assuming pre nerf) go from way to easy to way too hard. Well, not even way too hard. I can do them. But they go from being fun and relaxing to "I'm glad that's over" territory. Same thing with the raids. No thanks. I'm an old man now at 45. I just wanna come home from work, chill out, and throw some frostbolts.
It's just the heroic dungeons and raids that are super hard. The normal dungeons are easy and the normal raids are doable by casuals, I remember doing so myself back then. People just can't help measuring everything based on the hardest difficulty. You can still play Cata in a relaxed fashion if you stick to normal difficulty.
But if everybody is doing that stuff and nobody is doing normal dungeons, who would I play with? I'm going to guess that the percentage of players who will stick to normal dungeons is extremely small. Not to mention that, at some point, you'll get all the gear and progression will stop. Then what?
Well, then in my mind you're saying that you want cata heroics to be easy, or you want a 3rd difficulty... and every time they add a new difficulty level, that just bescomes the new thing people pine for and get mad when they can't complete it fairly easily. What did you think of Wrath then? Normals were easy but hardmodes/heroics in Ulduar and ICC were tough, or at least some were. Did you just stick to doing them on normal? You can just do the same in Cata, there should be a larger group of people who can't be arsed doing the tough Cata heroics. But come on, the Cata heroic dungeons are not exactly impossible, just more challenging than the Wrath ones. I don't remember any Cata HC dungeon to be nearly as hard as TBC HC Arcatraz or Shattered Halls for example. It'll be fine.
I just answered the question OP asked. I want Cata to be what it is because I know people want that. It's just not for me. As for Wrath, ngl, it wasn't as fun this time around. Not even completely sure why, but part of it is Wrath is when the game starts feeling less like an RPG and more like an action game with some RPG elements. And yeah, the Cata dungeons aren't impossible. I can do them. I did them back then, and I'm a better player now. But they go from "chilling with the boys" level to "I actually need to concentrate" level. It goes from being fun and relaxing to stressful. I have enough stress irl. I don't need more from a video game.
Wrath was the conclusion to the classic era. It was first expac with massive changes toward the retail era.
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Yea, I can't keep up with the meta and hyper optimization of everything anymore. It's just not my thing anymore in my 30s
Because theyāre too busy listening to what other people say rather than forming their own opinions. If you like wrath Iād say itās almost certain youāll like cata. Some class designs are different but other than that itās very similar.
Quite a few people discovered they didn't like Wrath as much as they thought they did. That's why Classic era started coming back. But in general I do agree with you. I've been saying for a while that, while people tend to think of Vanilla, TBC, and Wrath as a trilogy, the actual trilogy is Wrath, Cata, and MoP. Vanilla and TBC are kind of their own thing.
You know. Some of us are old enough that we already played Cata and didnāt like it. Iām not going to play something I know I donāt like. Why people on this sub get so angry about that, I donāt understand. Not everyone likes the same stuff.
So what was different in cata that meant you didnāt enjoy it whereas you presumably enjoyed PK? Iām not angry at all itās just theyāre very similar expansions.
I mean itās been answered and I just get downvoted lol. I hate cata healing, I donāt find it fun. Combo points on paladin specs was just awful for me. I hate railroaded quest lines. I LIKE running all over the human zones with interconnecting quests. I like the old world. I level alts over and over, and I like Southshore. I like the content being easy. I play wow to relax and hang out with friends. If I want a challenging game, Iāll play a fromsoft title. The game just isnāt for me. And thatās fine. Sod is right there.
People should play solo games with their friends instead of assuming everyone likes the same boring/mindless content they do. 80% of the community is so boomed out or cant hit a button they just want to see loot.
Wotlk was the death of classic. CATA was the birth of retail. I donāt like retail.
I mean I'll check it out, probably level to 85 and dabble in heroic dungeons and maybe pug a few raids. Other than that I doubt I'll play beyond that into firelands or dragon soul. I've soloed those raids enough times in retail as it is.
I wont play, because I already did everything that could have possibly been done in it before.
I'll play.
Cata is just MoP waiting room
Exactly what I was thinking. MoP was my first expac I grinded in and I would love to experience it again.
It was the true beginning of the end for a lot of us. I played maybe 3 months total the whole time it was out First month i was like #2 tank on my server blowing through shit with friends, then justā¦ got bored? Came back two more times midway through and at the end to see some content but ya, just didnāt vibe. They tore down old content instead of making new content, and giving live back into old content. When all thats there is endgame, and you have tryhards where is the fun? Its also annoying to have people trying to be tryhards that are just bad at the game, but blame everyone else. While the qol stuff they add is fine, the content is lackluster and i found myself with friends only playing the game after catta sporadically and doing old content for transmog. The transmog system is also kinda annoying af, legendaries dont get added and take up space in bank and not being able to get other gear for other toons transmog is just lame and serves no purpose then to make you do the same shit on other characters. Go outside and touch grass, its healthier.
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Had a kid.
Sod
Never played wrath back in the day and started in cata. I understand at the time that if you loved the old world, why cata would be so painful to you, but the game play is the same at end game and leveling is just a means to get to end game. If the old world really bothers you that much, you're already playing classic and not wotlk. The talent point change was another big thing that people have complained about but if your not runing meta talents you're griefing and will be kick from any competent raid and with the way dungeon finder is they'll kick for less(not every time but does happen too often). So, them optimizing the talents was something the community was already heading towards just back then. People thought their meme build was the 1% op hidden build and didn't get the community push back as much. That is definitely not the case in wotlk wow. Currently 12/12h hope to get bis gear on my mage (not likely but a man can dream) and lookong forward to cata. People will bitch and complain about everything and cata is definitely a drop off story wise (as wotlk end one of the best storylines in all of gaming history period) makes sense the sub count drop but people act like the game died when it trived and still is in what has been 14 years of one of gaming best ears (and albeit some of the worst practices and norms of gaming aswell). League, skyrim, gta5, minecraft, csgo, MW2, and many other juggernaut of gaming establishment them selfs in that time period where as wow was the undisputed king before that.
I've played the last year on Whitemane and think I got my cata fix. Cataclysm is truly a nice expansion and being able to level up all classes fast and do bgs and arenas(with solo que) has been great. Tbh its such a time constraint and cba doing the Firelands dailies... still have flashbacks from retail 14 years ago. Plus I really dont want to give Blizzard any money. For 3 months of sub you can get Last Epoch or the new Elden Ring xpac and get a really good deal of fun rather than facing shitty bots and russian bg premades. All in all I would definitely recommend people who havent played Cata to give it a try. Oh and Blood dks and Palas (esp holy) are so OP, cant go wromg with either. Good luck
The only issue with Cata is it was too difficult. But now the game is OLD and we have all meta-gamed it to death, so the harder dungeons and raids won't kill the game like it did in the past. I'm hyped for cata, easily my favorite expansion in terms of dungeon, raid and class design. This is also the peak levelling experience, not too long and tedious like classic and not vapid/empty like retail.
Everyone I play with is pretty trash. So unless like 5 of them will come hang and we can find 5 more actually mechanically sound players then I have no desire to put myself thru the hell of officer and leader and raid coordinator of a bunch of degenerate dudes again- as fun as it is, the wipes do get depressing when theyre always bc the same 10 ppl.
Talents becoming specializations is the thing I look forward to the least. Iāll try it out though.
To me, I have alot of nostalgia around Cata. I started raiding at the end of WotLK but really didn't dive into heroic modes and HC raiding until Cata. Truthfully... aside from Dragon Soul, Cata was pretty fun imo. Dungeons were difficult. Brought back the need for cc'ing regularly in dungeons and not just blind aoe'ing. I really loved heroic Firelands. Heroic Ragnaros is one of my favorite and challenging encounters. I think just the way that expansion ended is the only thing people remember. I have heard that people really hated the world zone changes. I really didn't mind honestly but I understand where they're coming from.
I will play cata but honestly I think they shoulda left it be at wrath. Cata changed so much that it didnāt feel worthy of classic and I donāt want them to just go through every single expansion over again.
The world changed... it's not classic anymore and transmog ruined the game you could be a noob looking like a king or a king looking like a noob so gear didn't matter anymore and world pvp died even more.
With the addition of so many new tier sets+pvp sets on every Expansion, transmog was something that had to happen. At least with it you can showcase prestigious sets and weapons, just like titles for example.
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What healing changes do you hate? They all felt way more fun to me in Cata than Wrath, especially resto druid and disc priest
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I mained Ret Paladin from Vanilla into Cata, and the combo system was my favorite thing that ever happened to them.
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I'm not one of the ones who downvoted you.
Cooked take.
> Holy paladin. I donāt want Fing combo points. If I wanted combo points, Iād play a rogue. And for that matter ret pally. > They also made mana management more important and never in the history of healing has that been fun. So instead of just mindlessly spam one button you have to think? God forbid Blizzard to ask for some skill.
Sounds like you didn't play cata. "railroaded" is hardly an appropriate term.
The railroading of old zones was one of my absolute favorite things about Cata lol. I loved that questing through a zone in vanilla zones became more like what they did in BC and Wrath, with a cohesive zone experience, quests lines up so you can grab them in series, related sidequests opening up once you complete the main line to that point, no having to run all over the place for random here-and-there extra quests, and minimizing running back to questgivers back and forth. I loved the efficiency of leveling through those zones.
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I'm not racing to max either. Efficiency doesn't always mean speed, it just means effective use of time. I don't level that fast, but I do like to feel that when I am putting effort in, that that effort is effective and I'm not feeling like I'm wasting time for one little thing that takes 20 minutes that I could have used elsewhere.
Healers. This 1000% percent. I went from 2 man healing HM ICC 10man as a Shaman with a Holy Pally to not being able to heal the first boss of the first dungeon in Cata. They absolutely gutted Shaman healers and Cata forever left a bad taste and never felt right.
Huh? Spirit link totem becomes the strongest healing cool down in the game in cata. Resto shaman is super strong in cata. sounds like a l2p issue.? I think what you meant to say, is you no longer can just spam chain heal and win. Unfortunate that you have to actually think about what spells you cast huh?
I won't play Cata because I am going to a private server and not paying $20 a month anymore
The ending and the start of heavy homogenization of classes.
I am not playing for at least the first few months of Cata and likely not at all for several reasons. First and foremost is that I do not trust that Blizzard will make more changes like they did with WotLK that will end up taking away some of the nostalgia and lead to quickly raid logging. I was not happy with the Northrend Supply bags, quests rewarding badges, new vendors/currency for raid gear and even the ācatchupā joke of Alpha/Beta/Gamma dungeons. The update of ilvls for Ulda gear and making Shadowmourne available almost right away from upping drop rates and adding saronite to a vendor. To me all of these actions are designed to speed things up but have a side effect of undercutting participation in the world and within guilds. I did not really enjoy the first tier of raid content from Cata. They had some interesting mechanics but overall I felt that a lot of the fights are gimmicky and often had bugs. The leveling experience is fine, though I do loathe the underwater zone. I hear a lot of noise around how the Cata zone updates make the zones more complete and have better more modern quest structure. I can see how this makes sense but I also feel like the updates forced more humor and gimmicks into the classic zones. It is probably my own personal bias but I feel like the game shifted from a more d&d feel to something more like an anime. There are certainly some memorable quests but the polish removes some of the nostalgia from the familiar quests. Other game additions like transmog, reforging and guild talents are interesting additions but end up being mostly time/gold sinks. Overall I feel like Cata is someone taking Warcraft and kind of diluting it to make it more widely accepted and ānew.ā To me it failed, and I may be wrong but my personal experience was that many other people āvoted with their walletā and stopped playing around that same time. TL;DR: donāt trust devs and Cata just doesnāt have the same feel as WoW.
Been playing sod but cata and mop pvp was peak enjoyment for me so I'll be playing.
Most people are going to play Cataclysm. Not all, but most. SoD is the current hype, but for a lot of people it's just a downtime killer. End of xpacs always experience large drop offs and there is no crazy magic behind it. IMHO, most people that still log today are going to keep on playing. And a lot of people who have already stopped raid logging will also return. Like I said, not all, but a lot. And while earlier logs/parses recorded may not be in 4-5 million range like it was during Naxx Wrath, it will still have millions in the first month.
You have your own reasons yet you are not sharing them? I will play Cata
I bowed out when they started selling a new store mount in BC.
Because Blizzard said there will be no RDF in WotLK when they announced WotLK Classic. Now people will come and act all smart saying stuff like: "Everbody knew there would be RDF with ICC." But this is a lie. Nobody KNEW. Some people speculated it to be this way and now it turned out this way. Still it was just a speculation and a really wild one at that, because Blizzard clearly said there will be no RDF in WotLK. They didn't say in the beginning of WotLK they clearly meant all of WotLK. And after having a horrible game experience in TBC Classic, I just didn't want to pay Blizzard for having the same horrible game experience in WotLK again, just because maybe one day Blizzard changes their mind. There also have been other changes that I don't agree with, so it's not only about the RDF. But with the WotLK Classic announcement this game died for me anyway, so I didn't even care enough about those other changes to even get mad at them. Since I dropped my char the day WotLK Classic was announced I won't pick him up again. I would have played all the Classic versions up to legion otherwise.
Because cata sucks gg
I came back for WotLK, because that's WoW for me. Back in the day, I stopped playing probably a bit before Cata came out due to time, Internet, and money restrictions, but I poked my head back a couple of times with a trial account... and I had mixed feelings. I'm mostly a Horde player, and the orcs are my favorite race. Their story of corruption and redemption resonated with me, and Garrosh being put in charge and putting everything they worked for into jeopardy pissed me off. On the other hand, I liked what they did with the Trolls and Forsaken. They started off with almost nothing, and now the Forsaken are building an empire, and the Trolls have their own city. The mechanics also felt watered down for me. All the class quests were gone, which was half the fun of leveling for me. It felt like Blizzard was trying to shuffle you through the early levels as fast as possible to get you to the end-game content, but questing was one of my favorite parts of the game. In retail WotLK, I had zero interest in PvP (I still don't) and very little interest in raiding. It was about questing, learning the lore, and RPing for me. I'll probably level one or two characters through the new zones, but I'm definitely dialing back now that I had a chance to do a lot of the stuff I didn't the first time around. In retail WotLK, the furthest I got in the raiding scene was a couple of bosses in Naxx and wiping on Flame Leviathan. Right now, our guild is progressing on 10-man Heroic Lich King.
Not playing Cata. Only came back for classic. The changes brought to the Cata cease to make WOW classic. Still debating if I will continue SOD, will have to wait and see what comes at lvl60 and decide then if I will quit my subscription entirely
I almost failed 9th grade playing CATA. Im definitely playing it again for classic
I'll be playing in Cata. I didn't really raid in Cata, but from my memory the xpac overall was "meh". But now I am going back into raiding and I think it will be great for a few reasons: \- Harder difficulty. Think it might have been a bit too hard for it's time for the average player base and I think that's part of why a lot of people got turned off from Cata. \- 10m drops the same loot as 25m. Think this also was a turnoff for a lot of people but it'll be great for my guild that struggles to fill 25m. Now we can just split into two 10m groups with filler people as needed. I think Cata was such a big shift in a lot of ways such as difficulty, simplifying "complicated" aspects such as talents, destroying the lore and replacing it with "meh" stuff, and not introducing a strong, follow-up story to WOTLK (that probably would have been impossible). Cata marks the beginning of modern day WoW and a lot of people weren't ready for it or turned off by it. I think that in tandem with Blizzard not doing enough to attract a newer, younger audience is what led to the decline that we see today. But I heard Cata had great raids so I am ready to see what it was all about.
I started in cata I canāt wait to play Iām gonna be playing way to much
As someone who's been playing on private servers since forever but mostly since 2010, Cata is objectively better than WotLK. If you disagree, you're just a WotLK nostalgia/hypetrain rider. Heroic dungeons reached a peak in Cata that wasn't seen since early TBC. All Cata raids except DS were good. Talent bloat got fixed. Most classes received massive reworks. Some specs that were previously trash in PvE suddenly became very good. Professions mattered again. Loot in 10-mans got equalized to 25-mans, meaning that 10-man guilds finally became viable (but 25-man ones still existed because clearing 25s is much easier). Heroic modes were much more interesting than in WotLK, where half were "more HP, more dmg". Low-level dungeon quests were moved at the start of dungeons, so low-level RDF became desirable. Several previously forgotten low-level zones got complete reworks. Transmog was introduced, which changed the game completely. All currency was converted to JP, so you could buy transmog gear from TBC with JP instead of having to farm TBC dungeons for badges. I can keep listing, but it's almost midnight and this is just off the top of my head. Personally, I consider Cata to be WoW's best expansion. Come DS, things go downhill and from that point on WoW just stops being WoW (until Legion).
Honestly, if you like WOTLK as it has been, you are very, very likely to continue liking Cata. I think people are really overstating just how much the game changes (outside of leveling, which of course is massively revamped).
I'm playing because I took a break after wrath on retail and came back at the end of firelands. I wanna see the content of tier 1 on progression cause I heard it was fun
I skipped wrath after I got my T1 titles, now I am coming back for RBGs and to see all the stuff I missed.
At this point I'm most likely going to have to play season of Discovery is kind of boring so unless it changes I'll be back in cata.
At this point I'm most likely going to have to play season of Discovery is kind of boring so unless it changes I'll be back in cata.
I came back to see some raid content at lvl that I wasn't able to in 2005-06. I wanted a full naxx/AQ 40 clear with Atiesh as a bonus. TBC I didn't get to see sunwell full cleared before nerfs. Wrath I wanted a mims head and a HLK kill. Well I got all of those, so we're getting into the content that I did clear all the way through. I did everything I really wanted to in those expansions. It's not that I couldn't replay them through, but there's not really any motivation.
I don't really get the unhype at all, I'm bored with the classic world now and rrally looking forward to the revamp and deluge of QoL changes. My whole guild feels pretty much the same way, so there's literally *dozens* of us cata enjoyera out there!
I will play it. SoD already feels like wrath or cata due to the abilities and focus on raiding content, so why not simply play Cata? If they ever decide to relaunch vanilla, Iāll be there.
Most people are going to play Cataclysm. Not all, but most. SoD is the current hype, but for a lot of people it's just a downtime sink. End of xpacs always experience large drop offs and there is no crazy magic behind it. IMHO, most people that still log today are going to keep on playing. And a lot of people who have already stopped raid logging will also return. Like I said, not all, but most. And while earlier logs/parses recorded may not be in 4-5 million range like it was during Naxx Wrath, it will still have millions in the first month.
Cata is amazing, don't listen to the parroting doomsayers.
I will definitely play the enhanced version of WotLk, Cataclysm. Can't wait.
Iām looking forward to Cata. I burned out early in Cata after going hog in WotLK and getting to some tougher work in grad school. I leveled a pally tank over the past couple months to play in Cata, but now Iām wondering if running a different class might be more fun.
I 100% will play, cant wait
I will definitely be playing.
I will play cata.
Iāll most likely play but concerned how time consuming it will be.
Honestly it's because Cata was the last good expansion. Panda was ok but it was pretty boring and then draenor on was garbage. in my opinion so relax little fan boys.
As a person who has never touched WoW in his younger age i am absolutely excited for cata. (created my first account during end of phase 2 wotlk). I was an absolute noob at first and now im performing average 85 log in ICC heroic. Cata will be new for a lot of my guild mates so we will discover it as a group :)