This video was unscripted, as you guys can probably tell, so apologies if it's kind of a long rant. Was there anything else that I missed that could be said? 🤔
I liked cata 😊 Even if lfr is there and still is i choose not to use it :) I think it probly be more playing cata then we think, I know I will and my wife liked cata also so she will join 😊
your audio and visual are out of sync, not sure if you realized that. I played cata, but was on the path of quitting wow; the game stopped caring about people who played for immersion.
You could've mentioned how much of Cata ended up on the cutting room floor, even more so than with Wrath before it. The Skardyn, cursed underground dwarves of Grim Batol, the Abyssal Maw raid to bring Neptulon and Ozumat's conflict in the Throne of the Tides to a proper conclusion... Grim Batol was supposed to be a raid instead of a 5-man, but we got Bastion of Twilight instead.
Preached nothing but the truth. 🙌 the people who don't like to hear it just don't like to/want to understand it, or just didn't get to experience that shift for themselves.. maybe they will now? But to be fair too, i'm sure they're going to accelerate the patch times this time around... hopefully we get a cata classic with #somechanges, but ones that try to keep the soul of the game intact.
The world revamp really did not sit well with me. It was neat going through it once, but on subsequent characters, I quickly came to miss the calmer, more adventurous tone that the old world had. The revamp made everything hectic, made everything a crisis. I was just going from one disaster to the next, with no sign of it getting better anywhere, aside from some lip service. I guess I just liked the feeling of being some mook going on an adventure more than being some sort of crisis worker.
Also sucks that instead of every zone having a more localized and self contained story, everything is about the cataclysm and how it changed the world.
Exactly. Cata quests aren't an adventure, they're overblown crises where everything is simultaneously super important and tongue-in-cheek, not to mention the pacing. Vanilla quests felt like setting off into the unknown on an adventure; sure it could be slow, but it felt more meaningful.
Yea not only did it make it so new players couldn't experience a lot of old content but the early 2010s period was just a bad time for mmo design everything had to be linear and simple i think if they revamped it again it would be better (ok maybe not since blizzard has gone down hill since the big drama) .or at least they should have revamped the world either before 2008 or after 2013
This was NOT the cataclysm announcement you showed in the beginning, it was announced by Holly Longdale and people did cheer. I get the point people are generally less excited, i am not that excited as well. But i felt the need to correct that.
Yeah I was there and people did cheer from across the convention but we all expected it so it was less reason to cheer. The other announcements were actually new.
@@kelotane Almost all quests in Eastern Kingdom and Kalimdor have been replaced with new ones. The quests became linear and streamlined. All the interconnection in the world was gone, which sent you across the continents, no quests which required certain items.
Cataclysm was the start of arcade style gaming. The MMORPG model was discarded and instant action was embraced with Cataclysm and that’s why the game had a decline in players. I could imagine the developers sitting together with marketing and someone saying “let’s have some kewl new zones with fire and lightning! Underwater and the whole Azeroth in turmoil! That’s cool and hip!” And someone higher up than them going “sounds great, let’s do it!”
As a mostly solo player with not a lot of free time, I really enjoyed cata because of the more linear approach and less group content requirements. I'm not saying this was good for wow as a whole but for the players like me, it was a perk.
@@queenmarsiabecause mmo need to have Always 5h peer day minimum for having thé rigth to play ? If the déveloper thinked like you every mmo will be in déficit and trash.
My main issue with Cataclysm was everything that it came with and that came after. The old world, gone. Phasing prevalent throughout the zones, very contained storylines that didn't span multiple zones any more (for the most part) and way too many pop culture references. It wouldn't be so bad if all the following world-changing events that happened in the game weren't able to be undone through Bronze Time Magic, but the old world is gone. I hate these inconsistencies with Blizzard. If they gave you the option to change the world back through a Bronze Dragon NPC in Retail, that'd be fantastic.
@Hawkknight vanilla zones where self contained or the same for every character only the 20-30 lvl are actually following a faction story , other zones like tanaris , un goro or even plagueland have the SAME quest for both faction , u are on complete crack to say that the charm and adventure are lost on cata any horde player will tell u the questiline where garrosh throws a guy off the thousan needle elevator for killing innocent PEAK story telling and charm
He didn't even directly mention the loss of class identity. With cataclysm, all classes got abilities seen in other classes and lost their uniqueness. Together with the loss of class-exclusive quests and content, old players lost their sense of self-identity and self-importance.
This was and still is the biggest probem for me, it took my favorite classes and made them boring and totally unrecognizable. Even before the Cata launch I knew this was gonna be a problem for me.
so untrue is hurts to read, what it did it made classes not madatory for raid or dungeon content it allowed classes that were never taken to have their spot "o you have good logs and dmg on your arcane mage sorry man but we need lust so i cant take you" how many times i seen these on stories just like it was bad to have shaman for horde and pally to only alliance.O and forgot if u planning to play SOD might as well dont kus u have the same problem there
@@Evirthewarrior another falsehood, hunter had focus , druid balance had to literally balance their use of light and shadow they even got a slider to show it ,rogue combat it good u can actually aoe properly not every 2m , ret pally where not only auto attack get dmg there was more to it, only one u might have me is pally THAT IT
@juanrollel3693 every class was revamped, they all were simplified and streamlined. They all got cooldowns to deal with their situations they found themselves in. Most of the classes played basically the same. If you knew how to play a couple of different classes, you could translate that to every other class and be good. Basically every class overlapped with every other class. And they completely ruined warrior, my main class with colossus smash and having it be the absolute core of your DPS. If you didn't hit your smash and raging blows after it right your DPS fell off a cliff. It was absolute trash.
Best thing that ever came out of Cataclysm for me was discovering UA-camrs like Totalbiscuit and Jesse Cox when I was a kid. And thus my true childhood began!
I love Jesse and TB (RIP😢). Ironically, Jesse isn't coming back to WoW anytime soon. He's moved onto other games, and I can't even imagine how disappointed TB would be with the current state of the game.
Streamlining dungeon groups, more streamlined questing...cata was one of my favorite expansions (up until the content drought). If you had actual time to do classic era's on the 2nd go around, lucky you. With a job and family etc. I don't have time for all that grinding BS at this point. Cata kept me playing by starting to reduce the "required" hours. Some valid points (though I'd argue a few of these are just "I hate change" which alot of people do and that is a valid feeling). Its absolutely a culture shift from the old world, but one I think a company had to make to stay competitive and moving forward.
A major reason why TBC and WOTLK classic failed in my opinion is that the community has min-maxed every possible aspect to skip as much stuff as possible and to play as little as possible while getting as much loot as possible. You can pretty much play 2 or 3 hours a week per character in WOTLK if you have a solid raid group and do all current content. I get not having to grind online, but the raid log mindset makes the world feel dead and is why the classic releases feel so much worse than the original play through back in the 2000's.
@@SwiggityswaggerWell said, it's like the majority of players nowadays care more about getting max level and getting the best loot than actually PLAYING THE GAME.
9:53 Garrosh called Sylvanas WHAT? Nixxiom, I play this PG13 rated game since 2023 with my infant son and we've never seen this happen in our playthrough. We hope that it is not true otherwise we'd complain about such heinous crimes on our X accounts and get it immediately removed.
Cataclysm’s biggest problem was scale. They spread out their effort across a lot of content without any depth in a certain area, lore is barely explained much less built up. The new zones had nearly no side-content or are worth revisiting after their short quest lines are finished. Gilneas and the Goblin zones are so emphasized yet neither Gilneas or either of the Goblin zones are even available in game after their intro quests.. we get a small refresh of only two capital cities instead of something amazing like Shattrath or Dalaran. The list goes on, Cataclysm felt hollow and sad.
my parents wouldnt buy me a subscription back in the day, and when cata was the newest expansion i finally was able to afford it with my own money so i will give it at least a try, just for my own noastalgia
Most of what you went over is true and I tend to agree with it, especially that it's a complete departure. However the difficulty point is a bit more complex, this is a time where the raids became also much harder with mecanics being less forgiving. The levelling became easier and soloable, but then people reached the end game and realized it took much more time and effort to progress into the end game content. I believe this made a huge impact on the player base. 10 man raids used to be chill but in Cata the mecanics were so unforgiving at times lots of raids disbanded or focused on 25 just to be able to progress because losing a dps or two was death sentence in most fights. Maybe it's just personnal experience but it happened in 3 different guild I've been in as a full time raid healer.
10 man and 25 man were about the same difficulty, unlike before cata. Often 10 man was actually harder, at least up to al'akir. And heroic 5 mans on launch were significantly harder than in wotlk. On release, it seemed like blizz was ramping up the difficulty back to tbc levels. This might be also one of the reasons why the expansion was disliked. Me personally, I loved it.
Not super interested in cata classic, but back in the day the new 1-60 leveling was actually really fun. Also Vashj'ir is still my favorite wow zone to this day.
Yea, I never ran into any of the janky pvp people talked about. But its soo different and fun. It also felt like 3 different zones with each of the layers you descend to.@@luvhair255
@@belstar1128 I just liked that they mixed things up a bit. I didn't mind it much on replay. Maybe I'm biased in some way but I realize it was rather basic.
I was one of the many guys who peaced out during cata. And I think those points are all accurate or sound accurate, many points I would not even had thought about since, well I never got that far into cata. I did a little bit of leveling up and some dungeons and that was about it. But I do remember making some new chars like a Troll druid, a Goblin shaman and a Worgen ... Warrior? I think... But I also did not enjoy the new leveling. Like the game was full of NPCs but not players. And that is the problem for me. I don'T want to have npcs standing all around the place I want to meet players... and where are those players? They are not here because their are on a different instance of the game... Whoever came up with this shitty layering thing should have been airlocked.
they made it, because low lvl areas were dead. Its not like on hc, where everyone keeps dying and is being forced to re-level new chars. Endgame prog needs so much time invested, that not many people will go and make third or fifth or tenth alt. That creates problem, where for new players, game seems dead. And if you have new main town, like dalaran in wotlk, or shatt in tbc, or dala in legion (+ classhalls), or your own hideout in warlords, or the two cities in bfa, orobos in SL or the furryscalydraketown in DF... old towns will end up being empty, unlike in cata and vanilla, where everyone is in towns, afk waiting for dungon, AH or BG.
Personally I would disagree with the talent system being changed for the worse in Cataclysm. The old talent system (which saw its last iteration in Wotlk) wasn't particularly engaging either. Taking 5 points across 5 levels all to slot points in the same talent each giving you 2% additional damage is not an improvement I would say. The 5 point talents were, as far as I can recall, removed and turned into 3 point talents (at most) and the progression of the talents overall felt more significant. Not to mention, choosing a specialisation felt more significant as well. You unlock your talents at level 10, yet in wotlk, you don't "feel" like you are that specialisation until level 20 to 30 when you finally get something representative or gameplay altering. I understand the RPG element of "making you feel like you're growing in power with respect to your level" but choosing to commit to a certain specialisation carries no weight until 10 to 20 levels after you unlock your talents. The one point I do concede is that with the change of the talents, dual speccing became impossible which shut the door on a lot of creative builds from back in the day, but even then, dual speccing was almost completely gone by the time of wotlk.
You're the perfect example of a person who should stick to playing action rpg type games. Anyone who prefers the new talent system is not actually a fan of classic rpgs. You're looking for a completely different type of experience.
@erebus79 And what exactly makes classic wotlk a "classic RPG"? If we're going by the tabletop example of RPGs, then every level should feel significant. Giving players breadcrumbs every level, and a loaf once every 20 or so levels is not the same as a classic tabletop RPG if we're going by talents. Abilities are debatably even worse with you getting your core spells early and the only thing you have to look forward to for the next 10 or so levels being spell rank upgrades, or getting them so late you have to suffer all the way to endgame. In Cataclysm, every level you either gain a new spell, passive or talent point; which of these two systems making levelling up feel more significant? If I want to play a classic RPG, I'll get off the computer, round up friends and play Dnd or pathfinder, or play Baldur's Gate at least. All that being said, was the grind of levelling enjoyable? In my opinion no, it was far too easy for how rewarding it was, but that doesn't diminish the fact that some systems were improved. At least present an argument instead of a snarky conclusion you've justified in your own head and put on a public forum in response to some dude explaining his own thoughts. Or just play what you like and stop being rude to others who enjoy some systems you might not like.
I've been saying this since BCC was announced. Everyone was excited to experience BC and WotLK again, but few stopped to think about what comes after that; Cataclysm causing the game to nosedive _again._ Blizzard had the perfect chance to do something interesting with Classic, but they took the easy route of re-releasing old content (which the playerbase wanted (until now)). In my mind, the perfect form of WoW Classic would be a return to the old _style_ of WoW, but with _new content._ This isn't untested; Old School Runescape did exactly this, and is still healthy 10 years after launch. OSRS also did something interesting with its quests, becoming almost an alternate timeline/narrative. Classic could have done some really cool stuff with the Infinite Dragonflight in an alternate timeline set before the Dark Portal reopened.
Imagine if WoW Classic had done this: after Vanilla Classic, instead of faithfully recreating BC, there are some subtle changes to the story. Why is it different? This gets the loreheads theorizing. Then, second Classic expansion it's revealed in the cinematic that someone's messing with the timelines; maybe the factions get a warning about the Lich King's invasion. Intriguing! And third expansion, Deathwing is straight up executed before he wakes up, and it's an all out war with the Infinite Dragonflight. Maybe there's even some crossover mechanics/narrative with retail (say, a Bronze dragon in a retail questline defects to the Infinite, and then becomes a raid boss in Classic). How cool would that be? Very cool, I think, and if Blizzard stuck to the Vanilla/BC/WotLK style of quests and the social aspect, I think most people would be happy even if they don't get the exact same experience as they had back in the day. But instead we got re-released BC, re-released WotLK, and now we'll get re-released Cata.
@@3XC4L1B3RWell said. I'd have no issue if they just kept WoW the same through to WoTLK but create a whole different Cataclysm "Classic" expansion. It's just a f*cking lazy cash grab, Blizzard are a bunch of sellouts.
@@3XC4L1B3R I love cataclysm, but to keep with the 'classic' feel, that idea is amazing. It's definitely a totally different game once cata begins..and as someone who played most in mop I'm honestly not interested in it..the story is amazing but the talent system and class changes, especially after they've revamped it in dragonflight to be more how it used to...man it would suck. There's no reason to re-release anything..just go to a private server if you like that expansion lol. Hopefully with with this classic+ they're trying out they figure out what works and what the community likes and makes something awesome out of it. My hopes aren't that up though.
Absolutely! Lich King did many things right, like character design, itemisation, crafting and some of the world building, but Northrend felt less like a world at times, but a theme park designed entirely around the player. Which, ironically, was something people said about WoW Vanilla when it was released. If I have to play these dumb vehicle sections in Boren Tundra or wherever, I'll delete my entire account >:((
I see it like this. Vanilla had some sandbox elements which made the game feel like a living world. Over time those things vanished, TBC with flying which killed world pvp and aided bots in utterly vacuuming all nodes for the rest of time, but we still had the old leveling experience, but it still had some MMORPG aspects. Wotlk had a greater emphasis on great storytelling and epic raids, arenas was super fun, but same stuff as TBC and in the end they added the dungeon finder, which some people like, but like it or not, it completely stripped the entire world naked of people and on top of flying mounts, you won't see a soul while leveling anymore. In Cata, they strip some class fantasy, they make everything streamlined, old world is destroyed, itemization and gimmicky stuff is removed, there are no longer quests or cool trinkets, consumes from quests which you will keep forever, nope removed. AND they added flying to Azeroth. Like you said, Cata is the nail in the coffin of what made WoW an MMORPG, but they were building towards that ever since TBC. I like aspects of all the expansions, but from a pure world, sandbox, sense of adventure and wonder standpoint, Vanilla was the only era of WoW that truly encapsulated that.
*"but they were building towards that ever since TBC."* The only detrimental thing TBC added was flying mounts as you noted but you seem to have forgotten they were initially neutered in attempt to balance them with ground mounts (base flying was 60% speed while 280% was ludicrously expensive for the average player in 2007 WoW). W*tlk buffed base flying to 150% while showering you with enough gold that epic flying was a given at 80, making that irrelevant. W*tlk turned most classes into demigods that could solo group quests and elites easily, making those irrelevant. W*tlk added RDF which allowed assholes who would have been filtered by 5 seconds of /w suddenly get into any 5-man group they wanted and dungeons were nerfed as a result, making those irrelevant. W*tlk introduced the concept of *skipping entire raid tiers* by adding new badge gear every update, making previous raids irrelevant. I hope you can see the trend, vanilla andy. The list is longer but the point is clear: it was w*tlk that warped the game into the abomination that became c*taclysm, not TBC.
@@MNAHN-T.GOF-NN and wotlk reached a ground breaking number of population which meant it was positively received which also means the popular opinion is that wotlk is better than vanilla
@@MNAHN-T.GOF-NN Speed has nothing to do with my argument. The fact that no one was playing in the world anymore, made it feel empty. TBC has very few cool unique items, no interesting trinkets or stuff to help you in wPvP or cool QoL that isn't just something lame, but it's not like that would've helped anyway when everyone was flying around anyway, making the world useless to interact with. Although I do agree Wotlk added way more to the eventual death of the MMO aspect, it already started in TBC. And like I already said, I like a ton of stuff in both those expansions, my argument is that there were already elements early on in TBC which steered the game in a certain direction. Flying mounts is the biggest one.
@@Thrall966 "popular means good!" You must be a justin bieber fan. Anyway, every WoW-subscriber chart in existence shows that WoW reached ~12m subs when wotlk was released *and then the growth stopped dead in its tracks.* The only population-growth wotlk saw happened when 3.3 and ICC released where 500k raidloggers resubbed, so your statement is wrong - the game *had already* reached groundbreaking player numbers by the time wrath landed, but wrath itself barely brought in any more. Have fun with that info.
Wrath had the lich king's involvement and often presence in almost every relevant zone. Meanwhile Deathwing kept such a low profile that it was almost like a kid who went into hiding after breaking windows in the neighborhood.
If you were to level regularly through the eastern kingdoms or kalimdor, the quests still have the cataclysm texts ,so it's not even the feel classic is supposed to give as well. So essentially to me, we're still in cataclysm, not even the expacs afterwards.
I never played Cata back in the day, so I'm interested to see where it goes. The culture and landscape of MMO's in general has changed completely in the last 15 or so years too, the same people playing in 2004-2010 are mostly likely not the same people in 2023. There's a lot you can attribute to this, but from my time with late TBC and Wrath classic, whatever culture existed back in OG WoW is certainly something I haven't really seen today. Everyone was just interested in minmaxing and racing to the end, the experience kinda feels shit and toxic tbh
@@Joshk-q2d Yeah none of my friends I would have played with back then have played WoW in a good 10 years or more and as it stands I don't really keep in contact with them anyway, Life will do that over the span of 2 decades I guess. lol
for all of your information, this guy does not play the game, he did not bring any points on the gameplay, cata gameplay is extremely similar to wotlk gameplay, but in cata you had more than 1 decent raid and overall much better pvp, more challenging heroic dungeon experience, and since we are talking about cata classic and not cata from back then, why would you expect blizzard to do a 1 year patch 4.3? in current wotlk classic nobody interacts with the outside world, people only raidlog, buy gold, bots harvest your herbs, fresh people spam gamma dungeons, its not even the original wotlk experience because of the gammas, even though without those wotlk classic would've been mid, if any of you want to see unbiased opinion on cataclysm, I just recommend you MetaGoblin's 100 hour cataclysm gameplay video, its more informative and provides you actual points why cataclysm is just overhated
Not disagreeing with you at all, but the clip you showed wasn’t from the actual announcement. At 3:50 in this video of opening ceremony ua-cam.com/video/F1pkwARaVAY/v-deo.htmlsi=hZktdOOICb1Nai3J is where she announces Cata Classic and people did seem excited. I was there in person as well. Still doesn’t make your points any less valid. I played back in the day and I enjoyed it, but yeah it is missing a bit of that magic.
While I agree at 100% with everything you said (I quit WoW mid Cataclysm as well), I think it's fair to say that the reaction on this video about Blizzcon's Cataclysm announcement isn't the actual one. She was just repeating what Holly said, she did make the real announcement, and people went crazy on that.
Cata was the first expansion that I really took a long break from the game and was the starting point of my waning interest of WoW. Though looking backing, I imagine 2010 being my first year out of high school may have had something to do with it? Either way, I didn't think Cata was worth my big boy money then and I still don't think it's worth my big boy money now.
I don't care what anybody says I loved cata. I started in vanilla and by the time wrath of the lich King ended I was tired of the same old quest, so it was a breath of fresh air. I also enjoyed the talent tree changes. Mop is where they started to lose me though.
Another major issue with Cat was the NPC heroes took center stage in the story. This was an issue with the end of Wrath and Bolvar taking the helm and Tirion getting credit for killing Arthas and it continued into Cat. We do all the work, but the NPC heroes get all the credit. Our character is no where to be seen in the big story cutscenes that drive the main narrative forward. This trivializes the player and makes it feel like we are bystanders and less important, which in tern causes a disconnect between the player and the game world. One of the main reasons people love Classic is because everything we do in the world revolves around us the players and our actions, which is one of the primary things that roots us into the World of Warcraft.
How can you write such a long post and be 180 incorrect? Old WoW was never about "CHAMPIONS THE WOONS!" it was the exact opposite, Wotlk sucked because it brought the whole stupid "CHAMPIONS!" anime storytelling and people hated it...
I was too young at the time to properly appreciate WOTLK, but Cata was the first expansion I got into and could partake in end-game content. For me, this is quite a nostalgic expansion. I don't get the issues though as I've been playing WOTLK and have just found my self bursting through to lvl 80 with LFD and then realised I didn't actually enjoy the experience.
Unpopular opinion: i'm absolutely hyped for Cataclysm! I have fond memories of it, even though playing it again won't be a 1:1 experience, I'm looking forward to experience it again on the opposite faction with the folks I've met over the past few years.
@@hasaki_oce4611because they Always upset when something change or is new. We must never lisen them because they destroy the game Always like the first part of tlk without the dungeon finder
Cata felt kind of light in world content. That was confirmed in MOP. There were TONS of things to do in MOP solo than compared to Cata. In Cata there was the Fireland dailies, and Archeology. In MOP, they were an excess of things to do at launch, and more importantly, solo areas with storylines were added every patch in MOP. The Timeless Isle was fantastic!
One of my favorite things about Classic was all the inconsistancy of leveling out in the open world. It helped keep things fresh not knowing where that next quest would take you. Combined with the actual randomness of the world itself, I was super excited to see that the next expansion's theme was adding _even more_ chaos to it. You wouldn't believe how sad I felt when I realized that it was the exact opposite. 💔
This is a brilliant point. We all need to be more understanding of the changes in WoW, because its abundantly clear that we enjoyed and miss parts of older expansions that were objectively bad, and which we would today complain about miserably if it happened in any other game.
I've been thinking about this expansion for a while. I played it on a free server and I still remember the pain when I got to Darkshore for the first time seeing it destroyed. It was nostalgia that got ruined for me. I think what would make Cata more interesting is when Deathwing is dealt with, to go back to everything that was destroyed by him an repair it back. We could get the nice graphics update and our favourite locations as well. :) Just a thought.
Modern Blizz can't be trusted with such things, and neither can Retail Andys. They both want that treadmill gameplay, and anything even remotely inconvenient will either be streamlined or removed. It's part of why I don't play anymore.
@Thrall966 with DF being the new leveling experience starting with TWW... I'm not really sure what they have planned for old world. Seriously, I think it means lvl scaling on df content and who knows with the prior zones. It would be nice to see something done with them. Those zones are largely empty. Except shadowlands zones oddly enough. I visited there the other night and there was a ton of peeps doing stuff out there. Least on Mok'.
@MbBadd I know bastion so far is dragging, but yeah I can see this. There is a lot to do out there. I started it so I can explore the Ardenweald. There is soo much rep to grind out there tho. -.-
you know the answer Nixxiom. Cataclysm was ironically the beginning of the end for World of Warcraft as we knew it. the downward spiral into oblivion started in Cataclysm, which is why Classic should stop in Wrath. I quit as soon as I saw what Cataclysm was gonna be. My mistake was coming back in 5.4 though. That is my biggest WoW regret. I quit SWTOR to go back to get ready for WoD. the only new zone I really liked was that Indiana Jones one on Kalimdor.. don't remember the name right now... Uldum?
I mean I was 12-14 during TBC-WOTLK and didn't really know how to play mmos at all. So cata for me was when the game clicked and I was able to get to max level, gear up and raid consistently in a guild. I do remember not being a huge fan of the world changes the second time around leveling an alt but there's no question we were all hyped as hell when the cata trailer originally dropped. I have good memories with cata but I agree that its not classic anymore lol.
Ooohh I get… when I was a kid I had a bad case of fanboyism and was blinded by the worgen and goblin races. But to the part I wasn’t paying much attention to during that expansion, Blizzard had essentially entered the “Pander-Verse” and it didn’t end well for them. I do miss the old ways of questing. When potions, cooking, enchants and etc, really all professions were useful. Everything felt like survival because it was.
You don't need any of those to level still in classic, you feel like you do but you don't really, it's a low skill and difficulty game really. Still can be enjoyed but let's be realistic about it.
Same the only reason why i care about it, is the hope that one day we'll get a Classic Legion. Unfortunately this also means Classic WOD, but fuck it, i'm willing to push through it.
@@Quark214Honestly I like all the expansions. I just think there's so much we missed out on with all the expansion releases that a lot of us got left behind. So having an option to experience the old content as it was is a great opportunity.
@@Quark214Man, imagine if they said "Fuck it, we're fixing WOD classic" and actually finished the expansion this time around. WoD had great potential, but it was lacking content and was too focused on garrisons
"Nobody" is a very strong word. Cata was my favorite expansion, full-stop. That said... I am fully, completely, wholeheartedly of the opinion that they should make it possible to remain in Wrath without ever moving to Cata, kinda similar to that older system they had for Classic where there were realms for each expansion and you could move characters from one to the next. If they drew a line between Wrath and Cata that you can decide to cross or not, I think it'd be a very good overall experience.
To me it confirms that the Classic team are not really on the same wave length as the Classic players. The whole point of classic was because people wanted the vanilla experience, as it is a completely unique experience to retail. At this point, you may as well just play retail.
I loved Cata back in the day. All The new zones that called back to mystery zones that weren't developed yet but were still on the map. The raiding wasn't too bad but I was never a big raider. The new continents never upset me as I was never story driven while I was leveling a toon so a more fast paced leveling revamp was perfect for me.
i think first phase cataclysm had some of the best pve content in wow seriously those first "Overtuned Heroics" where some of the funnest dungeons i've played, it quickly took a nosedive with firelands and dragon soul tho
Yup, the world was made easier but dungeons and raids were definitively harder. I was very happy with that tbh. Baffles me when Classic purists talk about social involvement in the game... Do you guys play the same game i am? It's mostly GDKP crap and no need for guilds anymore. The original vanilla experience as we knew it is gone and we have to accept that.
@@patrickmartel3949 right? I love when people say "we want the CLASSIC experience!" when the classic experience has been GDKP's, mage boosting, and gold farming bots since 2020 at best. Classic was incredibly fun for the first few months but eventually it very quickly devolved into "pay gold for leves/gear/etc". They had to reintroduce RDF because it was too difficult to find any kind of dungeon group for low level dungeons. But they'll blame everything on Cataclysm because that's "when the game got bad" when really it was the community, and it's always been the community
Wrath baby is a term for players who played WoW for the first time when WotLK launched. It had nothing to do with the whining about the difficulty spike, and it isn't like anything before WotLK was anywhere near as difficult either.
Tbh, one of the issues was that it was hard to find a good guild to raid with and Pugs became absolutely infested with people that thought they were too good to listen to anyone or talk to anyone. We couldn't finish content because of that. That would be the reason I complained about raids and dungeons.
@@patrickmartel3949 yeah it has been gone for 15 years buddy lol. Classic era has been out for 4 years bro yeah like GDKP is nothing now.. watch 2 days in cata and gdkp will pop up too
So they killed wow with cataclysm and now they want to kill classic wow with Cataclysm 🤣 insane. I remember stepping into the updated world and absolutely hating it. I spent 5 years in the vanilla world and everything changed… it’s worse than when they change the layout of my grocery stores lmao fk I’m old.
Garrosh calling Sylvanas a b!ch was a certified gamer moment and is honestly one of the moments that made me fall in love in WoW. (mostly because i'm a sylvanas fan and I was like 'wait how dare you!')
You nailed it. They streamlined leveling. Shrunk the world. After the first run through, made Azeroth boring. I think the main group of people who wanted Classic Cata were those who started playing during it as they have nostalgia for it.
I will never forget when Cata was leaked as the next expac. Everyone knew Deathwing was coming back, but not how. My sister, who was around 11 or 12 at the time, and I were speculating how he would destroy the world. We were joking around and trying to think of the dumbest methods we could. She said he would poop out of a volcano. Never thought that the dumbest idea a child could think of would actual end up being the case. It's the only good memory I have about Cata.
i had to close Asmon's react video and come to the source, i didnt want Baldy trying to defend pokimon's cookie scam or hassan's capitalistic grifting in the middle of this sweet ass video.
It ruined the talent trees, had a weird level cap increase of 5 instead of 10, limited talents like you said. I didn't mind the world revamp but totally understand the way others felt about it. But yeah overall just like you said, it felt like a different game.
I played live Cata. I didn't enjoy it and came back to wotlk servers. Yes. My old guild was farming 25 HC DS with no problems. But the pvp was totally destroyed by OP rogues, a new "holy power" idea of paladins, and more. Nobody needed a warrior. Rogues were simply better. I hope Blizz will give us a dedicated wotlk server. Otherwise, I will play on private servers. Again.
Cata was the start of the end of WOW. LFR was a huge mistake and Blizzard's handling of the bug release of it by banning all the top raiding guilds for their error was CLASSIC Blizzard. Banning Paragon and other top raiding guilds for your screw up...
I and several of my friends are looking forward to Cata. I'm extremely excited! Cata was peak class design for most classes, and all the classes felt really polished and fun to play. I couldn't commit to just 1 or 2 classes, so I played literally all of them. The one and only thing I didn't like about Cata was the world revamp. Everything else, though? Chef's kiss from me. Extremely fun raids and dungeons, imo. Not to mention Transmog and Reforging!
Cataclysm has a special place in my heart as it was the first expansion I ever started Roleplaying. A hobby that has carried into my professional life today. I owe a lot to that expansion. Also Worgen and Goblins are cool as hell ;)
How fucking dare you call Cataclysm great it's such a horrible expansion good lord you dare call yourself a GAMER? I spit towards your general direction like oh my god bruv you ain't fr fr no cap.
I really enjoyed the destruction ... as a concept. I wanted to heal the world though and you couldn't. It didn't feel like there was any option to win. Sure, we could defeat the next big bad. But that didn't matter. The Malygos fight was a great example of being able to fix things without breaking the world. Cata was the expansion I spent a lot of time asking friends what part of a quest they were on to figure out if we could play together. Almost never did, probably due to me being a casual player and being always slightly behind. It sounded great to be able to level up on my own more easily. And I did. And it was boring. No one was anywhere. I used to fill raid groups for winter grasp and so wanted more stuff like that. But nope. Everything is on fire and I'm alone trying to put it out.
Like a lot of people, cataclysm is when I quit WoW for the first time. I don't think I can give an exact reason why I quit. It's something about the cultural zeitgeist that changed. Maybe the fact that the world became more connected from 2004 to the release of Cata. WoW wasn't the only place online where you could connect to your friends... I don't know but it just felt different
I personally got my drivers license right before it released and when I came back I found it a former shell of what it once was. No one told me, I had 0 input from others, I logged on, played for maybe 30min, saw the shotty new talent system among some other things and decided I hadn’t been missing out on anything and didn’t come back until classic. They make it all oversimplified. Just like Diablo 4 and forcing you to only use 6 spells
"Nobody" - I know quite a few people who apparently don't exist. I get it. The haters are LOUDER. But the ones who are looking forward to Cataclysm still, you know... exist. We just aren't obnoxiously screaming about it.
Pretty crazy thinking back how other types of gaming at the time Cata released influenced their entire design process. They def started to follow the mobile gaming route in the game.
I'm personally excited to see what Cata is going to be like this time around. The potential of letting Blizzard make some changes to smooth things out.. A lot of people were excited for Wrath and didn't make it past the first phase.. and frankly are carrying that hate over into Cata imo. It's easy to see why they would do it.. there's more interest there than people realize. I'd be willing to bet a lot of people are afraid to support Cata due to the hate it gets.
Honestly, the real reason cata was so hated back then was mainly because of lack of content. Especially about half way into the expansion. That mixed with the new world none wanted to level up alts in. I remember just hating not having anything to do. People were just standing in their Main cities trying to figure out what to do. Running around in circles like never before. If they compress this time window by.. A lot, i think cata can actually be a fun experience.
I had left during Cataclysm as well, only returning with Warlords for a bit, then leaving and just now returning near the end of Dragonflight. One thing about Cata that you didn't mention, was the lack of existence of a city hub for all factions. Dalaran was the famous hub for Lich King, and of course Shattarath for TBC before that. Cata just made Stormwind and Orggrimar the hubs again for alliance and horde. Or maybe you wandered a bit, but it wasn't like there was a common hub for the expansion like there was before.
I really dont get whats the point of classic continue going, in approx 1.5 is MOP and whats next? 6.0, did blizzard forgot why people want classic? because 6.0 suck. then whats next? 7.0 8.0, you seriously going to call those expansions "Classic"?
I honestly think what happened is they started on cata classic way before HC and the classic+ talks really started popping off, and it was just too late to change course. It’s also why I believe they made a “season of discovery” and not a full fledged classic+ that literally everyone was on the same page for. I think they gonna use SoD as a test for a future classic+, at least that’s my hope, because a seasonal mmo just sucks imo. It’s also why I believe they doing staggered level caps, because they didn’t have the content anywhere near done for when they wanted to put it out. I honestly don’t know who they thought they talked to or what community they listened too, just a simple UA-cam search would of told you that literally nobody really wanted cata, for the simple fact it isn’t “classic”. It was in fact one of the main reasons we ended up having the drive for classic servers to begin with, to return to the pre cata world. I’ve been playing classic hard since it came out, but I think I’m just heading back to retail for the time being.
So, I guess everyone from 4 years ago who protested against the idea of Cata suddenly had an epiphany and now want cata? Lol. This community is laughable. Wow will crash and burn if this identity crisis continues.
Wrong. I am excited for Cata Classic. In fact, I am more excited for it than for Retail, and I can't wait for MoP Classic, where I can finally get the cool Challenge Sets again.
That overwhelming majority of players you're talking about is actually a smaller subset of very loud ultra fans of Classic as classic. (And I do think they should keep Wrath or whatever era open for these players) Not only do I live far away from BlizzCon, even if I lived near Anaheim I wouldn't attend... It's just not me. I'm not surprised if many that attended are fans of Classic being classic... Wrath really isn't that good either, they should have stopped at Classic then! The fact is that there's a big chunk of players who really would like to see the game continue into Cata. These are not the highly vocal - toxic fanboys - we've had to deal with throughout Classic, TBC and not WOTLK. I'm sure we'll see a drop in players, but I honestly can wait to get rid of these players! Utilizing modern tech they can easily make Cata an enjoyable experience without risking dead/empty servers.
Everything you said that was "bad" about the new zones and the sundered world can easily be said about the "Classic" world. In some ways, the old world was just as "broken" the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th time through it.
Yeah, its a very nostalgic focused take on whats "Bad" about the Catacylsm zones. In any objective measure, the new zones are better: The questing is more streamlined, theres better story, the quest items are actually usable, and its just a much more fun and focused experience. But its "different" from the Vanilla zones, so its bad for many of the old Vanilla people.
@@RyanSaotomeor it was just boring due to no one being around because of the instanced zones. Glad there were some people who liked it. I certainly liked the streamlining. But it wasn't as social and LFR got stupid toxic really fast.
Playing classic era. Loving it all over again. Relaxing, fun socializing with grouping randos up for questing and dungeons, crafting is fun and a money maker...you feel more in the world.
@@Thrall966 when i was playing in cata join puges people in top 83 in world. got ask for no ach. they just want too look at my gear befor i join. would play the full 2-3hours out people leaving. and rember running people that could barly stay out fire. insted rage and kick them. learn them how play. you know like playing to get along people. insted rage in in vent. insted of get so mad in vent or discord. that you get lable a tarde leader. and get vidoes about rage on vent put up on youtube.
Its funny. I quit shortly after MoP came out. Ive always blamed that expansion for it but in listening to this I realize that Cata was the expansion that burned me out. I have a lot of fond memories of Cata. For a guy with severe social anxiety I loved the group finder content. I still prefer MMO's like that. But that last patch especially...I think it had the largest impact on my quitting. I remember just logging in day after day just walking around the town. Most of my friends had stopped playing waiting for MoP. There really was NOTHING to do. I never found that passion ever again for WoW to this day. I cant even play Classic it just doenst hit the same for me today as it did then.
Yea the period was very boring i was still new to the game if you don't count my brief time in 2008. but it felt like the game was dying i had explored all of the world and levelled every class to max and mop was still months away. every time there was a minor hot fix i looked for minor changes .when mop came out i was very strange to see that the game actually changed
@@ambridge6645 I can't describe properly how it felt like a completely different game at Cata. A lot of us didn't like the new game. You heard the part about how Hour of Twilight lasted for over 8 months while also making the basic game easier, which means people that the core audience that had played WoW for years progressed faster and got bored faster. My friends resorted to archaeology and complained about it the entire time, and dailies were super boring and didn't feel rewarding. Given the stories in the zones were so required and linear, it was super boring to grind alts through the same content over and over again. It is like going on a railroad ride for every alt after. TBCs last patch lasted for 6 months, but it also gave Shattered Sun Offensive dailies, engaging raids and lore that got old a lot slower.
So what's the overall plan? Eventually this will just catch up to retail, right? Is there going to be an option to clone characters in these previous expansions?
I think mop is a pretty natural stopping point, to see wod classic id truly be scratching my head, but after playing some mop privates I think it definitely has a place, still far superior than sod aka vanilla with retail runes
@@shanehodges6980 If they make WoD servers I will laugh my ass so hard. Honestly the only other expansions left deserving of their own servers would be MOP and Legion. Everything else is good radiance. We have BC. We have Wraith. Give us Mists and Legion and people will be happy. DO NOT bring back WOD!
I agree completely with everything you said here and it’s sad that not many people remember these traits about the expansion back in the day. Willingly and blissfully ignoring the issues that faced the game.
If I recall correctly Deathwing's goal was to bring about the Hour of Twilight, get revenge, and free the Old Gods. Also I actually really love that the game got easier and more single player friendly because I personally was suffering when I was giving Classic a try. My only friend for classic quit because of the Hong Kong Stuff, there were no arrows to help me (I am bad with directions), and when I asked for help in game I was ignored/not acknowledged. That all being said I do appreciate your video and I respect your opinion.
I know that feeling. It's a bit crazy that nobody even took the time to even respond. I can totally understand where that sours the experience of something that is supposed to be focused on community and grouping and guilds. The community makes the game fun. I too am bad with directions, so I do understand how figuring out where to go would take longer, and I'd get lost all the time. Those two compounded would feel pretty miserable. Having a friend usually makes getting lost bearable.
@@luvhair255 It sucks cause I am a Cata baby and wanted to see what all the hype was about. I was also running around as a warrior so I had no heals, no support, and had my character eating health foods like he was starving
This is such an L take, I'm sorry. I understand that everyone has their own opinions - but the game is called WORLD of WARcraft and it is an MMO. If you struggle with massively multiplayer environments, if you struggle with roleplay scenarios, if you struggle with building bonds and friendships, if you struggle with the concepts of battle and trials and war, then MMORPGs are not for you, specifically this game. If you need a more "solo player experience" in order to enjoy something, then there's a very very very long list of solo RPGs you can play instead, or just go play retail. It's become World of Friendlycraft/Easycraft over the years.
The paladin pals quest line through plague lands will forever be a core joy for me for Cataclysm though. I loved that journey with that caravan of misfits and its charm. I just wish instead of little buffs and trinkets to use in the zone you could have asked one of the members to join you as a tag along as an ally for more utility. If Wow ever comes to xbox I would be excited to see that dwarf and blood elf again.
not saying you're wrong, but complaining about "being led from quest to quest to quest" is kinda ridiculous when the sponsor of your channel is zygor's. Where "choosing your own adventure" means following the arrow in the "Barrens (14-18) guide". Sorry man, that had me crack up, ngl.
I am way more excited for Cata classic then for any classic before or SoD combined. It actually finally made me go play wrath classic to prepare for Cata. But then again, I am a nobody, so checks out.
I’m extremely excited for Cata. The first two tiers were some of my favorite times playing wow. WotLK had Ulduar and ICC going for it and that’s it. It had some of the dullest uninspired zones, the easiest most boring dungeons, and would flip flop between amazing and dog water every other tier for its raids. Cataclysm started strong and because it ended with a whimper people don’t look at it as fondly.
A majority of people do not want this, it needs to fail hard. I hate to say it but hubris needs to be humbled, and people need to tell Blizzard if they do this they will cancel their subs. Cataclysm is available in current retail.
Yeah, Cata did many things wrong, revamped world was huge pain, no class quests, Q elites from group quest were change into normal mobs, loss of stat-talents, many items lost puprose etc. Only one good feature was raid finder, because every player, no matter of time, class, spec or skill, could play the raid. I was in the raiding guild with nice people and I was still rather playing with random ppl in raid finder, because it was more chill, less time consuming and hunting best gear in WoW did not make any sense, when with each patch is your gear less effective.
I have fond memories of being booted from Grim Batol for being a complete garbage healer even tho i was an amazing healer in WOTLK, but the changes that came to the healing destroyed me and forced me to quit the game for around a year. Now i look back on it, the changes where actually quite good and I realised that the healing i was doing at the end of WOTLK required zero skill wotsoever.
I do see the point since going into classic is kind of like going into retail. But im still pretty excited. I love cata and me and my buddies plan to play a bunch of it
@DeeFourCee true, but it is still gonna be fun to play it as its current again. A lot of the raids from cata were fun. Also they said they are making changes to it so im excited to see those as well
@@Scottisticand nothing forcing you to play it. This vocal minority hating on cata rereleasing is kinda growing old. For plenty of people they are looking forward to experiencing it without one shotting the content.
@@nofoxgiven6561 actually you are taking away the game I want to play, Wotlk classic, for this non-classic era rehash which will completely destroy the world, mess with the sociability of the game, ruin the talent system, erase a lot of the zone stories and even some dungeon/raids. You say Cata is a “vocal minority” yet cata why was cata so hated in the past? It had issues. It ruined what was good about wow beforehand. Did it have good content and some nice class design? Sure. BUT it irreparably changed the game for the worst which reflected on player numbers
@@Scottistic Cry me a river buddy, played classic since 2020 and I kinda thought tbc and wotlk were mid af. Blizzard already nerfed the old world when we went into tbc prepatch, wrath introduced and kept heirlooms. Dungeon finder killed whatever "social" aspect there was of standing in dalaran yelling "LF TANK FOR XYZ DUNGEON" Soon as that was added again people started harping over gearscore like gammas arent a complete joke of difficulty. Catas talent system doesnt change much and while I dont like lfr I dont think it ruined the game. I look at the game and just see players killing the game more than any system blizzard added. If I log into wrath right now there are 50 different gdkps being advertised, no groups listed, leveling through dungeons outside of being a healer/tank is still a pain. So no I dont mind that the precious old world got shattered so leveling was less of an issue, I dont disagree that some of the cata reworked stories sucked, but so did some of the classic ones.
To me Cata went down not just because of its content but also cos' around that time (2010-2012) we are getting more and more very popular free games like League, CS, Dota, etc. I had friends who played WoW in Cata but we quit a bit cos theres just other games we can play for free and with more people in our friend group/class at the time. WoW after Wrath was going to decline no matter what expansion was next and now we are still here where there is just so much other games to play.
IMO, Blizz should have skipped Cata, and introduced Mist Of Pandaria, but also left Cata questline open for people to explore if they wanted to. I mainly think that its the water zone that people really don't want to go through again!
This video was unscripted, as you guys can probably tell, so apologies if it's kind of a long rant. Was there anything else that I missed that could be said? 🤔
Hei nixxiom😊 love your content 😊 looking foward to see your next video where you tell us about alt army inn cata ;)
I liked cata 😊 Even if lfr is there and still is i choose not to use it :) I think it probly be more playing cata then we think, I know I will and my wife liked cata also so she will join 😊
your audio and visual are out of sync, not sure if you realized that. I played cata, but was on the path of quitting wow; the game stopped caring about people who played for immersion.
You could've mentioned how much of Cata ended up on the cutting room floor, even more so than with Wrath before it. The Skardyn, cursed underground dwarves of Grim Batol, the Abyssal Maw raid to bring Neptulon and Ozumat's conflict in the Throne of the Tides to a proper conclusion...
Grim Batol was supposed to be a raid instead of a 5-man, but we got Bastion of Twilight instead.
Preached nothing but the truth. 🙌 the people who don't like to hear it just don't like to/want to understand it, or just didn't get to experience that shift for themselves.. maybe they will now? But to be fair too, i'm sure they're going to accelerate the patch times this time around... hopefully we get a cata classic with #somechanges, but ones that try to keep the soul of the game intact.
The world revamp really did not sit well with me. It was neat going through it once, but on subsequent characters, I quickly came to miss the calmer, more adventurous tone that the old world had. The revamp made everything hectic, made everything a crisis. I was just going from one disaster to the next, with no sign of it getting better anywhere, aside from some lip service. I guess I just liked the feeling of being some mook going on an adventure more than being some sort of crisis worker.
Also it was way too easy, too many stupid vehicle quests, and too many pop culture references (like Rambo mowing down hordes of Orcs... really?).
That sums up how I felt about the pacing in the new old world. The good thing Cataclysm did bring was flying to Azeroth.
Also sucks that instead of every zone having a more localized and self contained story, everything is about the cataclysm and how it changed the world.
Exactly. Cata quests aren't an adventure, they're overblown crises where everything is simultaneously super important and tongue-in-cheek, not to mention the pacing. Vanilla quests felt like setting off into the unknown on an adventure; sure it could be slow, but it felt more meaningful.
Yea not only did it make it so new players couldn't experience a lot of old content but the early 2010s period was just a bad time for mmo design everything had to be linear and simple i think if they revamped it again it would be better (ok maybe not since blizzard has gone down hill since the big drama) .or at least they should have revamped the world either before 2008 or after 2013
This was NOT the cataclysm announcement you showed in the beginning, it was announced by Holly Longdale and people did cheer. I get the point people are generally less excited, i am not that excited as well. But i felt the need to correct that.
Yup, that clip is deceptive for sure.
classic ol' misleading of information to support his opinion. The cataclysm announcement trailer was hype af
Yeah I was there and people did cheer from across the convention but we all expected it so it was less reason to cheer. The other announcements were actually new.
I watched the Blizzcon panel stream and thought it was the announcement because I didn't hear anything either. Must've been a different portion?
@@luvhair255the actual announcement in the opening was full of cheer.
the damage caused was cool, a major problem imo was that they never let any of that damage heal
The biggest damage they dealt was to quests.
@@brianviktor8212 what's wrong with quests in cata?
No the BIGGEST damage was the class reworks making them shit and boring.
@@kelotane Almost all quests in Eastern Kingdom and Kalimdor have been replaced with new ones. The quests became linear and streamlined. All the interconnection in the world was gone, which sent you across the continents, no quests which required certain items.
The Desolace has entered the chat.
Cataclysm was the start of arcade style gaming. The MMORPG model was discarded and instant action was embraced with Cataclysm and that’s why the game had a decline in players. I could imagine the developers sitting together with marketing and someone saying “let’s have some kewl new zones with fire and lightning! Underwater and the whole Azeroth in turmoil! That’s cool and hip!” And someone higher up than them going “sounds great, let’s do it!”
As a mostly solo player with not a lot of free time, I really enjoyed cata because of the more linear approach and less group content requirements. I'm not saying this was good for wow as a whole but for the players like me, it was a perk.
You should really play some single-player rpgs then. You would definitely enjoy them more than an mmo.
@jakemiller6677 I do but wow is the only mmo I'm really into but I don't stay subbed all year. I re up a couple months then take a few months off.
mmos arent for you then, you cant go to a burger joint and expect them
to serve you pasta.
@@queenmarsiabecause mmo need to have Always 5h peer day minimum for having thé rigth to play ?
If the déveloper thinked like you every mmo will be in déficit and trash.
@@wakpuissant5780 arguing about mmos clearly arent for you either
My main issue with Cataclysm was everything that it came with and that came after.
The old world, gone. Phasing prevalent throughout the zones, very contained storylines that didn't span multiple zones any more (for the most part) and way too many pop culture references.
It wouldn't be so bad if all the following world-changing events that happened in the game weren't able to be undone through Bronze Time Magic, but the old world is gone.
I hate these inconsistencies with Blizzard. If they gave you the option to change the world back through a Bronze Dragon NPC in Retail, that'd be fantastic.
The Cata zones are better than vanilla zones. IF flying was deleted Cata would be better.
somezones became better. some did not. i loved the lordaren part in cataclysm tho
@@dargurt
@Hawkknight vanilla zones where self contained or the same for every character only the 20-30 lvl are actually following a faction story , other zones like tanaris , un goro or even plagueland have the SAME quest for both faction , u are on complete crack to say that the charm and adventure are lost on cata any horde player will tell u the questiline where garrosh throws a guy off the thousan needle elevator for killing innocent PEAK story telling and charm
@Hawkknight JUST LIKE VANILLA like man you ppl dont think for 1 second
Yea it left a permanent mark on the game
He didn't even directly mention the loss of class identity.
With cataclysm, all classes got abilities seen in other classes and lost their uniqueness.
Together with the loss of class-exclusive quests and content, old players lost their sense of self-identity and self-importance.
This was and still is the biggest probem for me, it took my favorite classes and made them boring and totally unrecognizable. Even before the Cata launch I knew this was gonna be a problem for me.
so untrue is hurts to read, what it did it made classes not madatory for raid or dungeon content it allowed classes that were never taken to have their spot "o you have good logs and dmg on your arcane mage sorry man but we need lust so i cant take you" how many times i seen these on stories just like it was bad to have shaman for horde and pally to only alliance.O and forgot if u planning to play SOD might as well dont kus u have the same problem there
@@juanrollel3693most classes literally started to play the same, they got "combo points" and spenders and gainers. It was so generic.
@@Evirthewarrior another falsehood, hunter had focus , druid balance had to literally balance their use of light and shadow they even got a slider to show it ,rogue combat it good u can actually aoe properly not every 2m , ret pally where not only auto attack get dmg there was more to it, only one u might have me is pally THAT IT
@juanrollel3693 every class was revamped, they all were simplified and streamlined. They all got cooldowns to deal with their situations they found themselves in. Most of the classes played basically the same. If you knew how to play a couple of different classes, you could translate that to every other class and be good. Basically every class overlapped with every other class.
And they completely ruined warrior, my main class with colossus smash and having it be the absolute core of your DPS. If you didn't hit your smash and raging blows after it right your DPS fell off a cliff. It was absolute trash.
Best thing that ever came out of Cataclysm for me was discovering UA-camrs like Totalbiscuit and Jesse Cox when I was a kid. And thus my true childhood began!
I miss totalbiscuit I loved his reviews
shame Jesse Cox turned out to be an utter nonce
I love Jesse and TB (RIP😢).
Ironically, Jesse isn't coming back to WoW anytime soon. He's moved onto other games, and I can't even imagine how disappointed TB would be with the current state of the game.
@@Boozebedrunk he did them right
Yogscast cata videos are also a gem to this day and forth
Streamlining dungeon groups, more streamlined questing...cata was one of my favorite expansions (up until the content drought). If you had actual time to do classic era's on the 2nd go around, lucky you. With a job and family etc. I don't have time for all that grinding BS at this point. Cata kept me playing by starting to reduce the "required" hours. Some valid points (though I'd argue a few of these are just "I hate change" which alot of people do and that is a valid feeling). Its absolutely a culture shift from the old world, but one I think a company had to make to stay competitive and moving forward.
only takes 7 a hours a week to be a top 500 of any spec. thats no time at all
A major reason why TBC and WOTLK classic failed in my opinion is that the community has min-maxed every possible aspect to skip as much stuff as possible and to play as little as possible while getting as much loot as possible. You can pretty much play 2 or 3 hours a week per character in WOTLK if you have a solid raid group and do all current content. I get not having to grind online, but the raid log mindset makes the world feel dead and is why the classic releases feel so much worse than the original play through back in the 2000's.
@@SwiggityswaggerWell said, it's like the majority of players nowadays care more about getting max level and getting the best loot than actually PLAYING THE GAME.
9:53 Garrosh called Sylvanas WHAT? Nixxiom, I play this PG13 rated game since 2023 with my infant son and we've never seen this happen in our playthrough. We hope that it is not true otherwise we'd complain about such heinous crimes on our X accounts and get it immediately removed.
Cataclysm’s biggest problem was scale. They spread out their effort across a lot of content without any depth in a certain area, lore is barely explained much less built up. The new zones had nearly no side-content or are worth revisiting after their short quest lines are finished. Gilneas and the Goblin zones are so emphasized yet neither Gilneas or either of the Goblin zones are even available in game after their intro quests.. we get a small refresh of only two capital cities instead of something amazing like Shattrath or Dalaran. The list goes on, Cataclysm felt hollow and sad.
Next its World of Warcraft : Warlords of Draenor Classic! We re going back to Garrison bois!
Casually forgot about MoP, huh?
Unironically would love a MoP or WoD classic
I hate how the damage from cata was never altered or fixed or ANYTHING we just have a constant, inescapable reminder that it happened and I hate it
my parents wouldnt buy me a subscription back in the day, and when cata was the newest expansion i finally was able to afford it with my own money so i will give it at least a try, just for my own noastalgia
Most of what you went over is true and I tend to agree with it, especially that it's a complete departure. However the difficulty point is a bit more complex, this is a time where the raids became also much harder with mecanics being less forgiving. The levelling became easier and soloable, but then people reached the end game and realized it took much more time and effort to progress into the end game content. I believe this made a huge impact on the player base. 10 man raids used to be chill but in Cata the mecanics were so unforgiving at times lots of raids disbanded or focused on 25 just to be able to progress because losing a dps or two was death sentence in most fights. Maybe it's just personnal experience but it happened in 3 different guild I've been in as a full time raid healer.
Nixxom is one of those classic Andys that thinks classic raids are hard so I wouldn't put much stock in any of his opinions on difficultie...
10 man and 25 man were about the same difficulty, unlike before cata. Often 10 man was actually harder, at least up to al'akir. And heroic 5 mans on launch were significantly harder than in wotlk. On release, it seemed like blizz was ramping up the difficulty back to tbc levels. This might be also one of the reasons why the expansion was disliked. Me personally, I loved it.
you just listed all reasons for why I liked Cata
Not super interested in cata classic, but back in the day the new 1-60 leveling was actually really fun. Also Vashj'ir is still my favorite wow zone to this day.
Dude Vash'jir is great.
Yea, I never ran into any of the janky pvp people talked about. But its soo different and fun. It also felt like 3 different zones with each of the layers you descend to.@@luvhair255
Vashj'ir looks cool but the content is kind of dull
@@belstar1128 I just liked that they mixed things up a bit. I didn't mind it much on replay. Maybe I'm biased in some way but I realize it was rather basic.
You raise fair points, the only thing that we shouldn't forget is that all these convenience changes were asked a lot by players back in the day.
I was one of the many guys who peaced out during cata. And I think those points are all accurate or sound accurate, many points I would not even had thought about since, well I never got that far into cata. I did a little bit of leveling up and some dungeons and that was about it. But I do remember making some new chars like a Troll druid, a Goblin shaman and a Worgen ... Warrior? I think...
But I also did not enjoy the new leveling. Like the game was full of NPCs but not players. And that is the problem for me. I don'T want to have npcs standing all around the place I want to meet players... and where are those players? They are not here because their are on a different instance of the game... Whoever came up with this shitty layering thing should have been airlocked.
they made it, because low lvl areas were dead. Its not like on hc, where everyone keeps dying and is being forced to re-level new chars.
Endgame prog needs so much time invested, that not many people will go and make third or fifth or tenth alt. That creates problem, where for new players, game seems dead. And if you have new main town, like dalaran in wotlk, or shatt in tbc, or dala in legion (+ classhalls), or your own hideout in warlords, or the two cities in bfa, orobos in SL or the furryscalydraketown in DF... old towns will end up being empty, unlike in cata and vanilla, where everyone is in towns, afk waiting for dungon, AH or BG.
Personally I would disagree with the talent system being changed for the worse in Cataclysm. The old talent system (which saw its last iteration in Wotlk) wasn't particularly engaging either. Taking 5 points across 5 levels all to slot points in the same talent each giving you 2% additional damage is not an improvement I would say. The 5 point talents were, as far as I can recall, removed and turned into 3 point talents (at most) and the progression of the talents overall felt more significant. Not to mention, choosing a specialisation felt more significant as well. You unlock your talents at level 10, yet in wotlk, you don't "feel" like you are that specialisation until level 20 to 30 when you finally get something representative or gameplay altering. I understand the RPG element of "making you feel like you're growing in power with respect to your level" but choosing to commit to a certain specialisation carries no weight until 10 to 20 levels after you unlock your talents.
The one point I do concede is that with the change of the talents, dual speccing became impossible which shut the door on a lot of creative builds from back in the day, but even then, dual speccing was almost completely gone by the time of wotlk.
You're the perfect example of a person who should stick to playing action rpg type games. Anyone who prefers the new talent system is not actually a fan of classic rpgs. You're looking for a completely different type of experience.
@erebus79 And what exactly makes classic wotlk a "classic RPG"? If we're going by the tabletop example of RPGs, then every level should feel significant. Giving players breadcrumbs every level, and a loaf once every 20 or so levels is not the same as a classic tabletop RPG if we're going by talents. Abilities are debatably even worse with you getting your core spells early and the only thing you have to look forward to for the next 10 or so levels being spell rank upgrades, or getting them so late you have to suffer all the way to endgame. In Cataclysm, every level you either gain a new spell, passive or talent point; which of these two systems making levelling up feel more significant? If I want to play a classic RPG, I'll get off the computer, round up friends and play Dnd or pathfinder, or play Baldur's Gate at least. All that being said, was the grind of levelling enjoyable? In my opinion no, it was far too easy for how rewarding it was, but that doesn't diminish the fact that some systems were improved.
At least present an argument instead of a snarky conclusion you've justified in your own head and put on a public forum in response to some dude explaining his own thoughts. Or just play what you like and stop being rude to others who enjoy some systems you might not like.
I've been saying this since BCC was announced. Everyone was excited to experience BC and WotLK again, but few stopped to think about what comes after that; Cataclysm causing the game to nosedive _again._ Blizzard had the perfect chance to do something interesting with Classic, but they took the easy route of re-releasing old content (which the playerbase wanted (until now)).
In my mind, the perfect form of WoW Classic would be a return to the old _style_ of WoW, but with _new content._ This isn't untested; Old School Runescape did exactly this, and is still healthy 10 years after launch. OSRS also did something interesting with its quests, becoming almost an alternate timeline/narrative. Classic could have done some really cool stuff with the Infinite Dragonflight in an alternate timeline set before the Dark Portal reopened.
Imagine if WoW Classic had done this: after Vanilla Classic, instead of faithfully recreating BC, there are some subtle changes to the story. Why is it different? This gets the loreheads theorizing. Then, second Classic expansion it's revealed in the cinematic that someone's messing with the timelines; maybe the factions get a warning about the Lich King's invasion. Intriguing! And third expansion, Deathwing is straight up executed before he wakes up, and it's an all out war with the Infinite Dragonflight. Maybe there's even some crossover mechanics/narrative with retail (say, a Bronze dragon in a retail questline defects to the Infinite, and then becomes a raid boss in Classic).
How cool would that be? Very cool, I think, and if Blizzard stuck to the Vanilla/BC/WotLK style of quests and the social aspect, I think most people would be happy even if they don't get the exact same experience as they had back in the day. But instead we got re-released BC, re-released WotLK, and now we'll get re-released Cata.
@@3XC4L1B3RWell said. I'd have no issue if they just kept WoW the same through to WoTLK but create a whole different Cataclysm "Classic" expansion. It's just a f*cking lazy cash grab, Blizzard are a bunch of sellouts.
@@3XC4L1B3R I love cataclysm, but to keep with the 'classic' feel, that idea is amazing. It's definitely a totally different game once cata begins..and as someone who played most in mop I'm honestly not interested in it..the story is amazing but the talent system and class changes, especially after they've revamped it in dragonflight to be more how it used to...man it would suck. There's no reason to re-release anything..just go to a private server if you like that expansion lol. Hopefully with with this classic+ they're trying out they figure out what works and what the community likes and makes something awesome out of it. My hopes aren't that up though.
EverQuest did similar things where there is crossover between 1 and 2 but they keep their own timelines for the most part
To be fair, some of this problems started to appear already in Wotlk, Cata just made it more apparent.
Absolutely! Lich King did many things right, like character design, itemisation, crafting and some of the world building, but Northrend felt less like a world at times, but a theme park designed entirely around the player. Which, ironically, was something people said about WoW Vanilla when it was released.
If I have to play these dumb vehicle sections in Boren Tundra or wherever, I'll delete my entire account >:((
I see it like this. Vanilla had some sandbox elements which made the game feel like a living world. Over time those things vanished, TBC with flying which killed world pvp and aided bots in utterly vacuuming all nodes for the rest of time, but we still had the old leveling experience, but it still had some MMORPG aspects. Wotlk had a greater emphasis on great storytelling and epic raids, arenas was super fun, but same stuff as TBC and in the end they added the dungeon finder, which some people like, but like it or not, it completely stripped the entire world naked of people and on top of flying mounts, you won't see a soul while leveling anymore. In Cata, they strip some class fantasy, they make everything streamlined, old world is destroyed, itemization and gimmicky stuff is removed, there are no longer quests or cool trinkets, consumes from quests which you will keep forever, nope removed. AND they added flying to Azeroth.
Like you said, Cata is the nail in the coffin of what made WoW an MMORPG, but they were building towards that ever since TBC. I like aspects of all the expansions, but from a pure world, sandbox, sense of adventure and wonder standpoint, Vanilla was the only era of WoW that truly encapsulated that.
CataHYPE
*"but they were building towards that ever since TBC."*
The only detrimental thing TBC added was flying mounts as you noted but you seem to have forgotten they were initially neutered in attempt to balance them with ground mounts (base flying was 60% speed while 280% was ludicrously expensive for the average player in 2007 WoW).
W*tlk buffed base flying to 150% while showering you with enough gold that epic flying was a given at 80, making that irrelevant.
W*tlk turned most classes into demigods that could solo group quests and elites easily, making those irrelevant.
W*tlk added RDF which allowed assholes who would have been filtered by 5 seconds of /w suddenly get into any 5-man group they wanted and dungeons were nerfed as a result, making those irrelevant.
W*tlk introduced the concept of *skipping entire raid tiers* by adding new badge gear every update, making previous raids irrelevant.
I hope you can see the trend, vanilla andy. The list is longer but the point is clear: it was w*tlk that warped the game into the abomination that became c*taclysm, not TBC.
@@MNAHN-T.GOF-NN and wotlk reached a ground breaking number of population which meant it was positively received which also means the popular opinion is that wotlk is better than vanilla
@@MNAHN-T.GOF-NN Speed has nothing to do with my argument. The fact that no one was playing in the world anymore, made it feel empty. TBC has very few cool unique items, no interesting trinkets or stuff to help you in wPvP or cool QoL that isn't just something lame, but it's not like that would've helped anyway when everyone was flying around anyway, making the world useless to interact with. Although I do agree Wotlk added way more to the eventual death of the MMO aspect, it already started in TBC.
And like I already said, I like a ton of stuff in both those expansions, my argument is that there were already elements early on in TBC which steered the game in a certain direction. Flying mounts is the biggest one.
@@Thrall966 "popular means good!"
You must be a justin bieber fan. Anyway, every WoW-subscriber chart in existence shows that WoW reached ~12m subs when wotlk was released *and then the growth stopped dead in its tracks.* The only population-growth wotlk saw happened when 3.3 and ICC released where 500k raidloggers resubbed, so your statement is wrong - the game *had already* reached groundbreaking player numbers by the time wrath landed, but wrath itself barely brought in any more.
Have fun with that info.
Wrath had the lich king's involvement and often presence in almost every relevant zone. Meanwhile Deathwing kept such a low profile that it was almost like a kid who went into hiding after breaking windows in the neighborhood.
because we did the thing. in WotlK. Arthas was the reason many of us played or got into WoW. we wanted to see the ending of Arthas storyline
If you were to level regularly through the eastern kingdoms or kalimdor, the quests still have the cataclysm texts ,so it's not even the feel classic is supposed to give as well. So essentially to me, we're still in cataclysm, not even the expacs afterwards.
What?!
I never played Cata back in the day, so I'm interested to see where it goes. The culture and landscape of MMO's in general has changed completely in the last 15 or so years too, the same people playing in 2004-2010 are mostly likely not the same people in 2023. There's a lot you can attribute to this, but from my time with late TBC and Wrath classic, whatever culture existed back in OG WoW is certainly something I haven't really seen today. Everyone was just interested in minmaxing and racing to the end, the experience kinda feels shit and toxic tbh
@@Joshk-q2d Yeah none of my friends I would have played with back then have played WoW in a good 10 years or more and as it stands I don't really keep in contact with them anyway, Life will do that over the span of 2 decades I guess. lol
we had time 10 years ago, now the world is changing. noone wants to waste hours leveling
for all of your information, this guy does not play the game, he did not bring any points on the gameplay, cata gameplay is extremely similar to wotlk gameplay, but in cata you had more than 1 decent raid and overall much better pvp, more challenging heroic dungeon experience, and since we are talking about cata classic and not cata from back then, why would you expect blizzard to do a 1 year patch 4.3? in current wotlk classic nobody interacts with the outside world, people only raidlog, buy gold, bots harvest your herbs, fresh people spam gamma dungeons, its not even the original wotlk experience because of the gammas, even though without those wotlk classic would've been mid, if any of you want to see unbiased opinion on cataclysm, I just recommend you MetaGoblin's 100 hour cataclysm gameplay video, its more informative and provides you actual points why cataclysm is just overhated
Not disagreeing with you at all, but the clip you showed wasn’t from the actual announcement. At 3:50 in this video of opening ceremony ua-cam.com/video/F1pkwARaVAY/v-deo.htmlsi=hZktdOOICb1Nai3J is where she announces Cata Classic and people did seem excited. I was there in person as well. Still doesn’t make your points any less valid. I played back in the day and I enjoyed it, but yeah it is missing a bit of that magic.
While I agree at 100% with everything you said (I quit WoW mid Cataclysm as well), I think it's fair to say that the reaction on this video about Blizzcon's Cataclysm announcement isn't the actual one. She was just repeating what Holly said, she did make the real announcement, and people went crazy on that.
Cata was the first expansion that I really took a long break from the game and was the starting point of my waning interest of WoW. Though looking backing, I imagine 2010 being my first year out of high school may have had something to do with it? Either way, I didn't think Cata was worth my big boy money then and I still don't think it's worth my big boy money now.
i dont think you have big boy money if 10$ is alot to you.
Then you're dumb because cata was amazing.
I don't care what anybody says I loved cata. I started in vanilla and by the time wrath of the lich King ended I was tired of the same old quest, so it was a breath of fresh air. I also enjoyed the talent tree changes. Mop is where they started to lose me though.
Another major issue with Cat was the NPC heroes took center stage in the story. This was an issue with the end of Wrath and Bolvar taking the helm and Tirion getting credit for killing Arthas and it continued into Cat. We do all the work, but the NPC heroes get all the credit. Our character is no where to be seen in the big story cutscenes that drive the main narrative forward. This trivializes the player and makes it feel like we are bystanders and less important, which in tern causes a disconnect between the player and the game world. One of the main reasons people love Classic is because everything we do in the world revolves around us the players and our actions, which is one of the primary things that roots us into the World of Warcraft.
How can you write such a long post and be 180 incorrect? Old WoW was never about "CHAMPIONS THE WOONS!" it was the exact opposite, Wotlk sucked because it brought the whole stupid "CHAMPIONS!" anime storytelling and people hated it...
Big disagree, our characters were NEVER considered to be the heroes.
I was too young at the time to properly appreciate WOTLK, but Cata was the first expansion I got into and could partake in end-game content. For me, this is quite a nostalgic expansion. I don't get the issues though as I've been playing WOTLK and have just found my self bursting through to lvl 80 with LFD and then realised I didn't actually enjoy the experience.
its kind of a shame you started in cata,as you couldnt really apreciate the changes unless you played pre cata
@deenman23 I played wotlk from release. I never took part in raids/ end game content, I did the 1-80 grind on multiple characters.
Unpopular opinion: i'm absolutely hyped for Cataclysm! I have fond memories of it, even though playing it again won't be a 1:1 experience, I'm looking forward to experience it again on the opposite faction with the folks I've met over the past few years.
For sure, if vanilla is Japan and Cata is UK, Wotlk is somewhere around France. I don't know why the current wrath players are so upset lol.
@@hasaki_oce4611because they Always upset when something change or is new. We must never lisen them because they destroy the game Always like the first part of tlk without the dungeon finder
Cata felt kind of light in world content. That was confirmed in MOP. There were TONS of things to do in MOP solo than compared to Cata. In Cata there was the Fireland dailies, and Archeology. In MOP, they were an excess of things to do at launch, and more importantly, solo areas with storylines were added every patch in MOP. The Timeless Isle was fantastic!
MOP has SOOO much content it's actually insane when compared on recent expacs.
@@snazzydrew exactly but ppl hate it cause "pandas"
@@Orly90the theme wasn't everyone's favourite and i can totally understand that, myself included.
Elite rares in mop are practically souls boss lite
@@Watskeburt there’s more things to worry about than pandas
One of my favorite things about Classic was all the inconsistancy of leveling out in the open world. It helped keep things fresh not knowing where that next quest would take you. Combined with the actual randomness of the world itself, I was super excited to see that the next expansion's theme was adding _even more_ chaos to it.
You wouldn't believe how sad I felt when I realized that it was the exact opposite. 💔
Yep, all on rails
This is a brilliant point. We all need to be more understanding of the changes in WoW, because its abundantly clear that we enjoyed and miss parts of older expansions that were objectively bad, and which we would today complain about miserably if it happened in any other game.
Hell yeah brother!
I've been thinking about this expansion for a while. I played it on a free server and I still remember the pain when I got to Darkshore for the first time seeing it destroyed. It was nostalgia that got ruined for me. I think what would make Cata more interesting is when Deathwing is dealt with, to go back to everything that was destroyed by him an repair it back. We could get the nice graphics update and our favourite locations as well. :) Just a thought.
Modern Blizz can't be trusted with such things, and neither can Retail Andys. They both want that treadmill gameplay, and anything even remotely inconvenient will either be streamlined or removed. It's part of why I don't play anymore.
I Hope that will be happening in the world saga in retail . They mentioned slow world revamp . They are revamping zones every expansions
@Thrall966 with DF being the new leveling experience starting with TWW... I'm not really sure what they have planned for old world. Seriously, I think it means lvl scaling on df content and who knows with the prior zones. It would be nice to see something done with them. Those zones are largely empty. Except shadowlands zones oddly enough. I visited there the other night and there was a ton of peeps doing stuff out there. Least on Mok'.
@@barrelracer318 That's cause the shadowlands leveling, despite the expansion being meh, was actually really good.
@MbBadd I know bastion so far is dragging, but yeah I can see this. There is a lot to do out there. I started it so I can explore the Ardenweald. There is soo much rep to grind out there tho. -.-
you know the answer Nixxiom. Cataclysm was ironically the beginning of the end for World of Warcraft as we knew it. the downward spiral into oblivion started in Cataclysm, which is why Classic should stop in Wrath. I quit as soon as I saw what Cataclysm was gonna be. My mistake was coming back in 5.4 though. That is my biggest WoW regret. I quit SWTOR to go back to get ready for WoD.
the only new zone I really liked was that Indiana Jones one on Kalimdor.. don't remember the name right now... Uldum?
I mean I was 12-14 during TBC-WOTLK and didn't really know how to play mmos at all. So cata for me was when the game clicked and I was able to get to max level, gear up and raid consistently in a guild. I do remember not being a huge fan of the world changes the second time around leveling an alt but there's no question we were all hyped as hell when the cata trailer originally dropped. I have good memories with cata but I agree that its not classic anymore lol.
Ooohh I get… when I was a kid I had a bad case of fanboyism and was blinded by the worgen and goblin races.
But to the part I wasn’t paying much attention to during that expansion, Blizzard had essentially entered the “Pander-Verse” and it didn’t end well for them.
I do miss the old ways of questing. When potions, cooking, enchants and etc, really all professions were useful.
Everything felt like survival because it was.
You don't need any of those to level still in classic, you feel like you do but you don't really, it's a low skill and difficulty game really. Still can be enjoyed but let's be realistic about it.
Im personally exited for cata classic.
(mainly because it moves us closer to legion which was the best expansion).
Same the only reason why i care about it, is the hope that one day we'll get a Classic Legion. Unfortunately this also means Classic WOD, but fuck it, i'm willing to push through it.
@@Quark214Honestly I like all the expansions. I just think there's so much we missed out on with all the expansion releases that a lot of us got left behind. So having an option to experience the old content as it was is a great opportunity.
@@Quark214Man, imagine if they said "Fuck it, we're fixing WOD classic" and actually finished the expansion this time around. WoD had great potential, but it was lacking content and was too focused on garrisons
people who claim Legion was best expansion are either drug addicts or have half of their brain missing.
"Nobody" is a very strong word. Cata was my favorite expansion, full-stop.
That said... I am fully, completely, wholeheartedly of the opinion that they should make it possible to remain in Wrath without ever moving to Cata, kinda similar to that older system they had for Classic where there were realms for each expansion and you could move characters from one to the next. If they drew a line between Wrath and Cata that you can decide to cross or not, I think it'd be a very good overall experience.
To me it confirms that the Classic team are not really on the same wave length as the Classic players. The whole point of classic was because people wanted the vanilla experience, as it is a completely unique experience to retail. At this point, you may as well just play retail.
For casual player like me, I hope they don't shutdown wrath Classic bcause of Cata.
I loved Cata back in the day. All The new zones that called back to mystery zones that weren't developed yet but were still on the map. The raiding wasn't too bad but I was never a big raider. The new continents never upset me as I was never story driven while I was leveling a toon so a more fast paced leveling revamp was perfect for me.
i think first phase cataclysm had some of the best pve content in wow seriously those first "Overtuned Heroics" where some of the funnest dungeons i've played, it quickly took a nosedive with firelands and dragon soul tho
There was also a major difficulty spike with a lot of content like dungeons. I remember a lot of complaining and that's were wraith baby came from
Yup, the world was made easier but dungeons and raids were definitively harder.
I was very happy with that tbh.
Baffles me when Classic purists talk about social involvement in the game...
Do you guys play the same game i am?
It's mostly GDKP crap and no need for guilds anymore.
The original vanilla experience as we knew it is gone and we have to accept that.
@@patrickmartel3949 right? I love when people say "we want the CLASSIC experience!" when the classic experience has been GDKP's, mage boosting, and gold farming bots since 2020 at best. Classic was incredibly fun for the first few months but eventually it very quickly devolved into "pay gold for leves/gear/etc". They had to reintroduce RDF because it was too difficult to find any kind of dungeon group for low level dungeons.
But they'll blame everything on Cataclysm because that's "when the game got bad" when really it was the community, and it's always been the community
Wrath baby is a term for players who played WoW for the first time when WotLK launched. It had nothing to do with the whining about the difficulty spike, and it isn't like anything before WotLK was anywhere near as difficult either.
Tbh, one of the issues was that it was hard to find a good guild to raid with and Pugs became absolutely infested with people that thought they were too good to listen to anyone or talk to anyone. We couldn't finish content because of that. That would be the reason I complained about raids and dungeons.
@@patrickmartel3949 yeah it has been gone for 15 years buddy lol. Classic era has been out for 4 years bro yeah like GDKP is nothing now.. watch 2 days in cata and gdkp will pop up too
Hey we took your awesome world of warcraft and replaced all quests with Star Trek and Indiana Jones references
So they killed wow with cataclysm and now they want to kill classic wow with Cataclysm 🤣 insane. I remember stepping into the updated world and absolutely hating it. I spent 5 years in the vanilla world and everything changed… it’s worse than when they change the layout of my grocery stores lmao fk I’m old.
Garrosh calling Sylvanas a b!ch was a certified gamer moment and is honestly one of the moments that made me fall in love in WoW. (mostly because i'm a sylvanas fan and I was like 'wait how dare you!')
They removed that later on and edited the line in game. Curious if they'll have him speak the edited line or original
Hot take: lfd/lfr in itself didn't destroy the community, it only exposed how fibble it was and how toxic a lot of people actually were.
You nailed it. They streamlined leveling. Shrunk the world. After the first run through, made Azeroth boring. I think the main group of people who wanted Classic Cata were those who started playing during it as they have nostalgia for it.
I will never forget when Cata was leaked as the next expac. Everyone knew Deathwing was coming back, but not how. My sister, who was around 11 or 12 at the time, and I were speculating how he would destroy the world. We were joking around and trying to think of the dumbest methods we could. She said he would poop out of a volcano. Never thought that the dumbest idea a child could think of would actual end up being the case. It's the only good memory I have about Cata.
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
i had to close Asmon's react video and come to the source, i didnt want Baldy trying to defend pokimon's cookie scam or hassan's capitalistic grifting in the middle of this sweet ass video.
Cant wait for a video, close to cata release, titled "why cataclysm classic is a good thing"
Best things about Catta for me is transmog and Blood Elf Warriors!
I love Worgen as well.
It ruined the talent trees, had a weird level cap increase of 5 instead of 10, limited talents like you said. I didn't mind the world revamp but totally understand the way others felt about it. But yeah overall just like you said, it felt like a different game.
This man doesnt mind the whole classic world becoming fucked up but is bothered by a weird level cap increase lol
@@Dangerous1939 At the time it wasn't a big deal to me. It streamlined questing and leveling. Weird diss attempt but you do you.
@@ambridge6645 They could've been alright if you weren't forced to go down one tree to unlock the others
@@ambridge6645 That's an opinion mate, not a fact.
Pinpointed a lot of good points. I loved the new races but I hated the world revamp quite quickly.
I played live Cata. I didn't enjoy it and came back to wotlk servers. Yes. My old guild was farming 25 HC DS with no problems. But the pvp was totally destroyed by OP rogues, a new "holy power" idea of paladins, and more. Nobody needed a warrior. Rogues were simply better. I hope Blizz will give us a dedicated wotlk server. Otherwise, I will play on private servers. Again.
Cata was the start of the end of WOW. LFR was a huge mistake and Blizzard's handling of the bug release of it by banning all the top raiding guilds for their error was CLASSIC Blizzard. Banning Paragon and other top raiding guilds for your screw up...
I and several of my friends are looking forward to Cata. I'm extremely excited! Cata was peak class design for most classes, and all the classes felt really polished and fun to play. I couldn't commit to just 1 or 2 classes, so I played literally all of them. The one and only thing I didn't like about Cata was the world revamp. Everything else, though? Chef's kiss from me. Extremely fun raids and dungeons, imo. Not to mention Transmog and Reforging!
Cataclysm has a special place in my heart as it was the first expansion I ever started Roleplaying.
A hobby that has carried into my professional life today. I owe a lot to that expansion. Also Worgen and Goblins are cool as hell ;)
freak
I agree man, what a degenerate
How fucking dare you call Cataclysm great it's such a horrible expansion good lord you dare call yourself a GAMER? I spit towards your general direction like oh my god bruv you ain't fr fr no cap.
I feel like more people are excited that Cata is coming so they get MOP compared to people who are excited for Cata itself.
This. I would love to experience MoP from the beginning. I skipped most of MoP returning to the game when it was almost over.
i just started playing wrath 3 weeks ago, should i just quit? this doesnt give me much drive to keep playing.
Why
You didn't bring up the fact that this was the expansion that they started focusing WAY too much on daily quests
"a love letter to the wow community"
it cant get more hypocritical than that
I really enjoyed the destruction ... as a concept.
I wanted to heal the world though and you couldn't. It didn't feel like there was any option to win.
Sure, we could defeat the next big bad. But that didn't matter.
The Malygos fight was a great example of being able to fix things without breaking the world.
Cata was the expansion I spent a lot of time asking friends what part of a quest they were on to figure out if we could play together. Almost never did, probably due to me being a casual player and being always slightly behind.
It sounded great to be able to level up on my own more easily. And I did.
And it was boring.
No one was anywhere.
I used to fill raid groups for winter grasp and so wanted more stuff like that.
But nope. Everything is on fire and I'm alone trying to put it out.
Why so many spaces?? It was hard to read!
Like a lot of people, cataclysm is when I quit WoW for the first time. I don't think I can give an exact reason why I quit. It's something about the cultural zeitgeist that changed. Maybe the fact that the world became more connected from 2004 to the release of Cata. WoW wasn't the only place online where you could connect to your friends... I don't know but it just felt different
I personally got my drivers license right before it released and when I came back I found it a former shell of what it once was. No one told me, I had 0 input from others, I logged on, played for maybe 30min, saw the shotty new talent system among some other things and decided I hadn’t been missing out on anything and didn’t come back until classic. They make it all oversimplified. Just like Diablo 4 and forcing you to only use 6 spells
"Nobody" - I know quite a few people who apparently don't exist.
I get it. The haters are LOUDER. But the ones who are looking forward to Cataclysm still, you know... exist. We just aren't obnoxiously screaming about it.
Exactly! 💯 haters gonna hate, Cataclysm was a good expansion. Probably last one of that scale and quality that the original WoW team worked on
For anyone who remembers, this was the expansion that caused the late TotalBiscuit to leave WoW for good, he left because they made the game too easy.
I really liked cata at the beginning the raids were good and the dungeons were challenging. But it fell apart quickly.
Pretty crazy thinking back how other types of gaming at the time Cata released influenced their entire design process. They def started to follow the mobile gaming route in the game.
There was no mobile gaming trend in 2008/2009 when they were developing. Hardly anyone had a smart phone at that point yet.
@@whale-psychiatrist I think it's being confused with Legion lol literal mobile app
Cata was more like a console game approach not a mobile game...
Back then Mass Effect was a thing.
I'm personally excited to see what Cata is going to be like this time around. The potential of letting Blizzard make some changes to smooth things out.. A lot of people were excited for Wrath and didn't make it past the first phase.. and frankly are carrying that hate over into Cata imo. It's easy to see why they would do it.. there's more interest there than people realize. I'd be willing to bet a lot of people are afraid to support Cata due to the hate it gets.
Cata was the beginning of the streamlining and homogenisation of various gameplay experiences.
Cataclysm is the time i stopped played WoW and Ive started at the true beggining the clasic clasic WoW. Cataclysm is only bad memories.
Honestly, the real reason cata was so hated back then was mainly because of lack of content. Especially about half way into the expansion. That mixed with the new world none wanted to level up alts in. I remember just hating not having anything to do. People were just standing in their Main cities trying to figure out what to do. Running around in circles like never before. If they compress this time window by.. A lot, i think cata can actually be a fun experience.
I had left during Cataclysm as well, only returning with Warlords for a bit, then leaving and just now returning near the end of Dragonflight.
One thing about Cata that you didn't mention, was the lack of existence of a city hub for all factions. Dalaran was the famous hub for Lich King, and of course Shattarath for TBC before that. Cata just made Stormwind and Orggrimar the hubs again for alliance and horde. Or maybe you wandered a bit, but it wasn't like there was a common hub for the expansion like there was before.
I really dont get whats the point of classic continue going, in approx 1.5 is MOP and whats next? 6.0, did blizzard forgot why people want classic? because 6.0 suck. then whats next? 7.0 8.0, you seriously going to call those expansions "Classic"?
I honestly think what happened is they started on cata classic way before HC and the classic+ talks really started popping off, and it was just too late to change course. It’s also why I believe they made a “season of discovery” and not a full fledged classic+ that literally everyone was on the same page for. I think they gonna use SoD as a test for a future classic+, at least that’s my hope, because a seasonal mmo just sucks imo. It’s also why I believe they doing staggered level caps, because they didn’t have the content anywhere near done for when they wanted to put it out. I honestly don’t know who they thought they talked to or what community they listened too, just a simple UA-cam search would of told you that literally nobody really wanted cata, for the simple fact it isn’t “classic”. It was in fact one of the main reasons we ended up having the drive for classic servers to begin with, to return to the pre cata world. I’ve been playing classic hard since it came out, but I think I’m just heading back to retail for the time being.
They sent out inquiries to many players. Sorry you weren't one of them :)
what do you mean “literally everyone was on the same page on”? everyone has a different idea of what they want from classic+
So, I guess everyone from 4 years ago who protested against the idea of Cata suddenly had an epiphany and now want cata? Lol. This community is laughable. Wow will crash and burn if this identity crisis continues.
Wrong. I am excited for Cata Classic. In fact, I am more excited for it than for Retail, and I can't wait for MoP Classic, where I can finally get the cool Challenge Sets again.
That overwhelming majority of players you're talking about is actually a smaller subset of very loud ultra fans of Classic as classic. (And I do think they should keep Wrath or whatever era open for these players)
Not only do I live far away from BlizzCon, even if I lived near Anaheim I wouldn't attend... It's just not me.
I'm not surprised if many that attended are fans of Classic being classic... Wrath really isn't that good either, they should have stopped at Classic then!
The fact is that there's a big chunk of players who really would like to see the game continue into Cata.
These are not the highly vocal - toxic fanboys - we've had to deal with throughout Classic, TBC and not WOTLK.
I'm sure we'll see a drop in players, but I honestly can wait to get rid of these players!
Utilizing modern tech they can easily make Cata an enjoyable experience without risking dead/empty servers.
Everything you said that was "bad" about the new zones and the sundered world can easily be said about the "Classic" world. In some ways, the old world was just as "broken" the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th time through it.
Yeah, its a very nostalgic focused take on whats "Bad" about the Catacylsm zones. In any objective measure, the new zones are better: The questing is more streamlined, theres better story, the quest items are actually usable, and its just a much more fun and focused experience. But its "different" from the Vanilla zones, so its bad for many of the old Vanilla people.
@@RyanSaotomeor it was just boring due to no one being around because of the instanced zones.
Glad there were some people who liked it. I certainly liked the streamlining. But it wasn't as social and LFR got stupid toxic really fast.
Playing classic era. Loving it all over again. Relaxing, fun socializing with grouping randos up for questing and dungeons, crafting is fun and a money maker...you feel more in the world.
I don’t agree . Everyone is elitist in classic era literally unplayable . I gave it a shot multiple times but people weren’t welcoming at all
@@Thrall966 Come to Whitemane horde side and join Sovereign, We are on point
@@Thrall966 when i was playing in cata join puges people in top 83 in world. got ask for no ach. they just want too look at my gear befor i join. would play the full 2-3hours out people leaving. and rember running people that could barly stay out fire. insted rage and kick them. learn them how play. you know like playing to get along people. insted rage in in vent. insted of get so mad in vent or discord. that you get lable a tarde leader. and get vidoes about rage on vent put up on youtube.
@@Thrall966 80% of raid leader in wotlk if it was real vanili. would people putting out vidoes about loser rage at person die in vidoe game.
@@Thrall966 stay in retail kid
Its funny. I quit shortly after MoP came out. Ive always blamed that expansion for it but in listening to this I realize that Cata was the expansion that burned me out. I have a lot of fond memories of Cata. For a guy with severe social anxiety I loved the group finder content. I still prefer MMO's like that. But that last patch especially...I think it had the largest impact on my quitting. I remember just logging in day after day just walking around the town. Most of my friends had stopped playing waiting for MoP. There really was NOTHING to do. I never found that passion ever again for WoW to this day. I cant even play Classic it just doenst hit the same for me today as it did then.
I keep hearing Mists was actually pretty fun, but after early Cata I refused to touch any retail WoW so you're probably correct.
Yea the period was very boring i was still new to the game if you don't count my brief time in 2008. but it felt like the game was dying i had explored all of the world and levelled every class to max and mop was still months away. every time there was a minor hot fix i looked for minor changes .when mop came out i was very strange to see that the game actually changed
@@ambridge6645 I can't describe properly how it felt like a completely different game at Cata. A lot of us didn't like the new game. You heard the part about how Hour of Twilight lasted for over 8 months while also making the basic game easier, which means people that the core audience that had played WoW for years progressed faster and got bored faster. My friends resorted to archaeology and complained about it the entire time, and dailies were super boring and didn't feel rewarding. Given the stories in the zones were so required and linear, it was super boring to grind alts through the same content over and over again. It is like going on a railroad ride for every alt after. TBCs last patch lasted for 6 months, but it also gave Shattered Sun Offensive dailies, engaging raids and lore that got old a lot slower.
Cataclysm was Activation's revision of WoW. It was badly implemented they could have added a lot new raid and dungeon content for it.
So what's the overall plan? Eventually this will just catch up to retail, right? Is there going to be an option to clone characters in these previous expansions?
I think mop is a pretty natural stopping point, to see wod classic id truly be scratching my head, but after playing some mop privates I think it definitely has a place, still far superior than sod aka vanilla with retail runes
@@shanehodges6980 If they make WoD servers I will laugh my ass so hard. Honestly the only other expansions left deserving of their own servers would be MOP and Legion. Everything else is good radiance. We have BC. We have Wraith. Give us Mists and Legion and people will be happy. DO NOT bring back WOD!
I agree completely with everything you said here and it’s sad that not many people remember these traits about the expansion back in the day. Willingly and blissfully ignoring the issues that faced the game.
If I recall correctly Deathwing's goal was to bring about the Hour of Twilight, get revenge, and free the Old Gods. Also I actually really love that the game got easier and more single player friendly because I personally was suffering when I was giving Classic a try. My only friend for classic quit because of the Hong Kong Stuff, there were no arrows to help me (I am bad with directions), and when I asked for help in game I was ignored/not acknowledged.
That all being said I do appreciate your video and I respect your opinion.
You are not recalling correctly
@@nunyabidness8281 enlighten me than
I know that feeling. It's a bit crazy that nobody even took the time to even respond. I can totally understand where that sours the experience of something that is supposed to be focused on community and grouping and guilds. The community makes the game fun. I too am bad with directions, so I do understand how figuring out where to go would take longer, and I'd get lost all the time. Those two compounded would feel pretty miserable. Having a friend usually makes getting lost bearable.
@@luvhair255 It sucks cause I am a Cata baby and wanted to see what all the hype was about. I was also running around as a warrior so I had no heals, no support, and had my character eating health foods like he was starving
This is such an L take, I'm sorry. I understand that everyone has their own opinions - but the game is called WORLD of WARcraft and it is an MMO. If you struggle with massively multiplayer environments, if you struggle with roleplay scenarios, if you struggle with building bonds and friendships, if you struggle with the concepts of battle and trials and war, then MMORPGs are not for you, specifically this game.
If you need a more "solo player experience" in order to enjoy something, then there's a very very very long list of solo RPGs you can play instead, or just go play retail. It's become World of Friendlycraft/Easycraft over the years.
The paladin pals quest line through plague lands will forever be a core joy for me for Cataclysm though. I loved that journey with that caravan of misfits and its charm. I just wish instead of little buffs and trinkets to use in the zone you could have asked one of the members to join you as a tag along as an ally for more utility.
If Wow ever comes to xbox I would be excited to see that dwarf and blood elf again.
not saying you're wrong, but complaining about "being led from quest to quest to quest" is kinda ridiculous when the sponsor of your channel is zygor's. Where "choosing your own adventure" means following the arrow in the "Barrens (14-18) guide". Sorry man, that had me crack up, ngl.
Cataclysm was the end of wow as a real multiplayer game.
I’m excited. I loved cata. That’s when I finally got started raiding instead of strictly doing pvp.
Agreed. Im hyped
I am way more excited for Cata classic then for any classic before or SoD combined. It actually finally made me go play wrath classic to prepare for Cata.
But then again, I am a nobody, so checks out.
I’m extremely excited for Cata. The first two tiers were some of my favorite times playing wow. WotLK had Ulduar and ICC going for it and that’s it. It had some of the dullest uninspired zones, the easiest most boring dungeons, and would flip flop between amazing and dog water every other tier for its raids. Cataclysm started strong and because it ended with a whimper people don’t look at it as fondly.
A majority of people do not want this, it needs to fail hard. I hate to say it but hubris needs to be humbled, and people need to tell Blizzard if they do this they will cancel their subs. Cataclysm is available in current retail.
Yeah, Cata did many things wrong, revamped world was huge pain, no class quests, Q elites from group quest were change into normal mobs, loss of stat-talents, many items lost puprose etc.
Only one good feature was raid finder, because every player, no matter of time, class, spec or skill, could play the raid.
I was in the raiding guild with nice people and I was still rather playing with random ppl in raid finder, because it was more chill, less time consuming and hunting best gear in WoW did not make any sense, when with each patch is your gear less effective.
I have fond memories of being booted from Grim Batol for being a complete garbage healer even tho i was an amazing healer in WOTLK, but the changes that came to the healing destroyed me and forced me to quit the game for around a year. Now i look back on it, the changes where actually quite good and I realised that the healing i was doing at the end of WOTLK required zero skill wotsoever.
I do see the point since going into classic is kind of like going into retail. But im still pretty excited. I love cata and me and my buddies plan to play a bunch of it
And nothing stopping you from playing cata stuff on retail. The point of classic was to play WoW as it was originally made before cata changed it all
@DeeFourCee true, but it is still gonna be fun to play it as its current again. A lot of the raids from cata were fun.
Also they said they are making changes to it so im excited to see those as well
@@Scottisticand nothing forcing you to play it. This vocal minority hating on cata rereleasing is kinda growing old. For plenty of people they are looking forward to experiencing it without one shotting the content.
@@nofoxgiven6561 actually you are taking away the game I want to play, Wotlk classic, for this non-classic era rehash which will completely destroy the world, mess with the sociability of the game, ruin the talent system, erase a lot of the zone stories and even some dungeon/raids.
You say Cata is a “vocal minority” yet cata why was cata so hated in the past? It had issues. It ruined what was good about wow beforehand. Did it have good content and some nice class design? Sure. BUT it irreparably changed the game for the worst which reflected on player numbers
@@Scottistic Cry me a river buddy, played classic since 2020 and I kinda thought tbc and wotlk were mid af. Blizzard already nerfed the old world when we went into tbc prepatch, wrath introduced and kept heirlooms. Dungeon finder killed whatever "social" aspect there was of standing in dalaran yelling "LF TANK FOR XYZ DUNGEON" Soon as that was added again people started harping over gearscore like gammas arent a complete joke of difficulty. Catas talent system doesnt change much and while I dont like lfr I dont think it ruined the game. I look at the game and just see players killing the game more than any system blizzard added. If I log into wrath right now there are 50 different gdkps being advertised, no groups listed, leveling through dungeons outside of being a healer/tank is still a pain. So no I dont mind that the precious old world got shattered so leveling was less of an issue, I dont disagree that some of the cata reworked stories sucked, but so did some of the classic ones.
To me Cata went down not just because of its content but also cos' around that time (2010-2012) we are getting more and more very popular free games like League, CS, Dota, etc. I had friends who played WoW in Cata but we quit a bit cos theres just other games we can play for free and with more people in our friend group/class at the time. WoW after Wrath was going to decline no matter what expansion was next and now we are still here where there is just so much other games to play.
IMO, Blizz should have skipped Cata, and introduced Mist Of Pandaria, but also left Cata questline open for people to explore if they wanted to. I mainly think that its the water zone that people really don't want to go through again!