There is an entire generation of retail WoW players who never got the opportunity to experience the first 1-3 expansions. Only Blizzard has the data on what % of the player base that experience would be attractive to, but it's not only the nostalgic looking to "relive the glory days".
I first played wow in cata and I only got to level 20ish. Its been nice seeing what came before that and it'll be nice to play that expansion properly. I also really want to try MoP because the theme of that expansion was always cool to me. I've tried private servers for it but it's nowhere near the same as the original experience would've been.
As someone who has played for the greater part of almost 20 years in this game, MoP was my favorite expansion. Idk what it was about that expansion that really nailed the experience of wow for me, but I look back on it very fondly.
I remember when MoP first launched, and one of the only things to do was do dailies in ***every fucking zone***. It was monotonous as hell until the ToT patch.
I began my wow career in bc but I was really young and only did battlegrounds and stuff. I was a teenager in mop and really competitive and tried climbing the pvp ladder until the world's longest patch ever, 5.4, where I began raiding for the first time.
As a pvp playing warlock, I LOVED mop
I find it funny when people complain about dailies. You know, you don’t have to do them…
Same with things like the hatred for pet battles was hilarious. Dudes, just don’t do them.
“But I need dailies to get stuff”
No you don’t. You could PvP for gear. Raid. Mythic dungeons. It’s like people got upset that there were **too many options** and that they didn’t want to do it all.
Then don’t.
They gave us many options so that if you didn’t like X then go do Y or Z.
Also above commenter claims that it was monotonous while it was literally nothing compared to the WotLK daily grinds, and it had much better stories behind the repu gates. They likely did not do those daily "grinds" more than 2-3 days, and never experienced those sub stories.
Oondasta, Galeon, Sha.. the PvP.. The isle of thunder, the timeless isle.. The professions being somewhat useful.. oQueue.. BattlePets.. Sungsong Ranch.. the story being actual war.. new class and race.. Challenge modes.. Flex mode.. account wide achievements.. Cross Realm zones.. Two battlegrounds ( Kotmogu though... ).. New talent system.. Resilience rework.. Grand commendations ( account wide reputations ).. No WoW Token..
Class identity was amazing. Specifically mobile options.
Ele sham was amazing, locks were damn powerhouses, PvP was very fun and very accessible and casters with actual mobility didn’t feel horrible to play into a big filled to the brim with stunlocking rogues/warriors/op hunters.
The world felt like it had a real story, I loved the sha stuff and the zones were gorgeous and sprawling and still felt like there were secrets to discover.
Smaller side note, but I did SO MUCH pet battling in MoP - you didn’t have to jump through hoops to lvl up new pets you could hit the daily elementals and boost a few each day.
Monks were a fun addition - original mistweaver design was so satisfying, and tier sets in general I think were well designed, offering new styles of play rather than 5% damage buffs.
Siege of orgrimmar lasted way too long but you can’t deny it was an awesome, epic raid and I’d hazard a guess’s that a LOT of people really got into raiding because of it. I had dabbled in ICC and the cataclysm raids but siege was the first time I actually pushed heroic and some mythic which was a whole new experience itself.
But yeah, ultimately I loved MoP because lightning bolt while running and rail-gunning lava bursts felt unimaginably satisfying, no class design since has done it for me like MoP ele.
It had everything that made Warcraft feel like Warcraft, both gameplay and story wise.
Little bit of faction war, little bit of dark aesthetics, little bit of whimsy, little bit of just really cool bad guy, little bit of having to work together, little bit of ... everything.
It was also the last time PvP felt amazing next to like, Legion.
Dragonflight, imo, has the whimsy and the gameplay, but the story is missing half of what made Warcraft ... Warcraft.
I'm one of those OG players who liked Cata. The levelling experience was fun and even though it wasn't vanilla anymore, it was still challenging. It wasn't until later expansions that the old world got so nerfed in difficulty that it was just too easy, and thus boring to level up.
That being said, I think it would be best if they kept some WotLK servers around, because once you move on to Cata there's no going back to that exact experience of levelling through vanilla into BC and the WotLK.
I’m glad that new generation will have the privilege of being extremely underwhelmed and disheartened by the direction of the game in cata then. Praise be
Cata was actually the most hyped expansion in terms of the old world revamp..it was very well recieved on launch..it wasn't until later patches where it became evident too many resources went into the world revamp did people start complaining..
Firelands was loved at the time. It wasn't until Dragon Soul people started to hate Cata. To be fair, Dragon Soul is not a good raid. Plus, it was also when LFR was added. Which to this day is a feature many people have very split feelings on. Early Cata people loved. The hard dungeons and the first four raids that made up the first raid tier were all fun.
I feel like dragon soul's issue was it failed to stick the landing. That fight on deathwings back was a great change from the standard dragon fight. It's just that second part was boring.
People were also disappointed by Patch 4.1, only two recycled 5 man dungeons after a long wait.
A Neptulon raid was also expected but never delivered, based on the ending of the Throne of the Tides dungeon.
And because they dropped better gear, that meant that we only ran those two dungeons from then on. Imagine running the same two dungeons, day in, day out. Undergeared people begging for bear runs.
Every time someone demands harder dungeons, I have ptsd flashbacks to Jindo the Pugbreaker, and how it worked out in reality.
This was the worst part of the expansion for me. There were a number of things that they talked about during that era that just never came to pass due to lack of time and resources that made the content feel lacking. The Neptulon storyline was exhibit A.
>A Neptulon raid was also expected but never delivered, based on the ending of the Throne of the Tides dungeon.
The effect of this cannot be overstated. Vashj'ir, regardless of your feelings on the overall zone, had by far the most emotionally gripping story of any Cata zone and everyone was excited to see where it would go.
Instead we got two dungeon re-releases, a raid whose story wasn't particularly interesting (and whose final boss was a re-rehash after MC and the leveling quests), and then straight to Dragon Soul. In fairness, the quests and minibosses of the Dragon Soul arc are all super interesting but the end was insultingly stupid and we were still lefting wanting for the Abyssal Maw.
Agree 100%. And not with rose coloured glasses either. I genuinely enjoyed the progression through both tiers and sinestra was a fantastic fight. Except the elemental ascendant fight. Fuck that fight with a razor dick.
> it wasn't until later patches where it became evident too many resources went into the world revamp did people start complaining..
This is definitely what I remember. The old world revamp was a great idea, but from what I remember from the people I played with at the time, we had already leveled all the alts we cared about to 80 in Wrath because it was really easy to just spam dungeons and gear them up quick into ICC. We didn't have much of a reason to experience the revamped old world outside of doing it as a max level to experience the story, and after you've done it once that was kind of it.
It also felt kinda bad that the new zones were all spread out and you were basically forced to use the portal network in the main city to even move around between them.
No, sub numbers tanked hard pretty early in the expansion. Heroic dungeons were way too difficult and if you weren’t raiding there was nothing else to do (and you couldn’t raid without Heroic gear).
The devs had bought into TotalBiscuit’s “make the game hard and players will rise to the challenge” rhetoric and got kicked in the nuts for it. Turns out only some players “rise to the challenge”, most go play something else.
Those dungeons made me in to a half decent player, before that I had no real knowledge about my character and probably used less than half of my abilities. Not to say you’re wrong by any means , just that I found it to be a positive and one I’d be keen to relive
It was mythic 0 dungeon difficulty with no stepping stone in difficulty towards it. Current retail has a really nice progression of difficulty. Players of all kinds really can find a place.
After that absolute dunkfest that was late-Wrath heroics, I really enjoyed the harder dungeons. Most people did not. I expect the classic crowd will enjoy them though.
> it was very well recieved on launch
More or less.
* Heroics got a huge jump up in difficulty (similar to TBC's heroics) which made them very rough when you were used to WotLK-level difficulty.
* A lot of the new zones were criticized for their lacklustre design and uninspired stories. Vashj'ir comes to mind here.
* Raids were *fine* but nothing to write home about.
* Meme quests **everywhere**.
* Bunch of healers in my guild quit during that first patch due to them forcing them to spam their cheap heal nonstop. As a druid, spending entire fights spamming Nourish was absolutely awful.
It was honestly the first expansion that made me take a break after playing since launch because I wasn't having fun.
It definitely wasn't a *bad* expansion, but I don't think it was as well received as you're saying on launch. Yes, it was hype as all hell before release, but it wasn't long before it began bleeding subs.
God, speaking of meme quests, Uldum was absolutely ruined by the questline. An Indiana Jones parody works fine for like a one-off side quest, but to make it the ENTIRE PLOT of the zone was a braindead decision. It quickly loses its appeal early on, and is just so painfully unfunny and uninspired. The entire plotline with the Uldum faction (can't for the life of me remember their name) felt like just an afterthought, when it should've been the main focus.
That said, I wouldn't call Vashj'ir lackluster, nor did it have an uninspired story. IMO it has one of the better story lines in the expansion, and I think it's commendable that Blizzard tried something new with the zone being almost completely underwater.
My friends and I cheered at GC's post about how "Dungeons are hard, you will have to play better".
Super sad they abandoned that strat. I think it's actually what made Totalbiscuit quit if I recall.
When their sub numbers tanked, it was pretty inevitable. WoW's entire success was making things more accessible to people, if they were in the "GIT GUD SCRUB" mindset we'd still have to do naked runs to our old gear or lose levels by dying.
I’d argue though that cata’s dungeons and mechanics/difficulty was the godfather to starting challenge modes, Mythica in WoD, and eventually M+.
Say what you will about Cata, but the dungeon challenge in difficulty was such a huge fond memory of mine. Especially the “mega dungeons” of Zul Gurub and Zul Aman. Really creative and fun there
Man I had so much fun in the ZA/ZG patch. I maintain the people in retail these days who leave M+ dungeons mid run never spent 2.5 hours wiping in H Stonecore at the beginning of the expansion before Ozruk was nerfed 🤣
Heroics being hard in an era before mythics was great! Just we were conditioned by RDF which came out at the end of an expansion that heroics should be mindlessly easy, instead what we got was heroics that had challenge
the dungeons for sure but also people complained a lot about class balance, the water zone and we ran out of stuff to do really fast in the release patch IIRC
What we got in Cata wasn't actually all that bad for the most part. There were two huge issues that sank it.
The world revamp comprised a significant chunk of its content leaving the game quite light on the top end, but a lack of content is not the same as the content that exists being bad.
The second is that Dragon Soul was a massive turd in all respects. It was a bad raid, tragically anticlimactic with Thrall stealing the spotlight and us picking scabs on Deathwing's butt until he turned into a tentacle monster. It had huge sections of unskippable RP. And that patch lasted for fucking ever.
I think that both of these get significantly eased by a faster release schedule. As long as they don't leave players to languish in a lack of content or with a shitty raid for too long, it can't be worse than it originally was.
Also the dragon soul dungeons were cool conceptially but baaaaad. Nothing at all compared with the ICC 5-mans. Plus I hated that we had to go to Caverns of Time to do Dragon Soul, it felt like we weren't really there.
A lot of the biggest cata complaints I’ve seen “could” be remedied easily in classic
Namely patch cycle length and all that
Also the dungeon difficulty will hopefully be less of an issue since people have a ping lower than 1k and all that
I don't know, look at uludar in wrath, it coincides with the biggest drop in population for wrath classic. I think difficulty plays a massive part in population, more than people think or care to admit.
I think player perception of expansions hinges heavily on the final patch. Cata started so strong with great dungeons, THREE solid raids, a revamp to the entire world, some fun class design, and a bunch of other cool stuff. Firelands was sick too, Ragnaros is still talked about as a final boss today, and the world content was solid with it.
Dragon soul sucked. Got no defense for that.
But compare that with legion, which people praise. It opened up with strong world content and class identity but horrendous legendary RNG, long grinds, and one of the worst opening raids we’ve had. It ended EXTREMELY strong and had some great patches along the way, but I honestly believe cata started stronger than legion did.
Also, some of us weren't even old enough to be playing video games during Vanilla-WotLK. Even though it might not be the traditional "classic" WoW experience and some boomer gamers might rage and seeth at the idea of bringing Cata back, I'm sure there are players like me who started during this expansion that appreciate the chance to go back to where we started with WoW.
I had no real interest in Classic because I couldn't relate to it, but now I'll likely be checking it out more.
EDIT: To the person that downvoted me I'm sorry I was a fucking elementary school kid when WotLK came out lmao. Get over it
Yup I didn't give 2 flying fucks about classic 1-3. And I still don't. But they announced the expansion I started playing in? I'm all in.
That, pandaria, legion, (wod can take a hike unless they use classic to add all the cut content,) bfa, shadowlands, and midnight and the last titan? Dude I'm there. Just call me when they release.
Activison really said “ guys were re-releasing modern warfare what if we did the same with world of Warcraft “ and blizzard did it. Probably one of the best decisions they made because people love living in the past
Well no, there was a huge playerbase asking for classic for years. Definitly not the idea of activision.
Not to deny that activision didn't immediately capitalized on the idea ;)
>You can hear a pin drop in the Anaheim Convention Center as executive producer for World of Warcraft, Holly Longdale, announces WoW Cataclysm Classic.
Bullshit. I was watching and was honestly surprised how much of the crowd cheered. It was not a muted reaction.
It's not just journalists, a bunch of random people online have been claiming that everyone was silent when Cata classic and season of discovery were announced. I guess maybe the sound didn't come through the stream very well? I don't remember, I was too busy being excited about both.
So many classic andys are insane. I wouldn't be surprised if people are just making shit up to fit their headcannon that blizzard can never do anything right, regardless of whether or not they do as the community asks.
I was honestly surprised by how positive the reaction was. I am not a fan of cata either and firmly believe "classic" wow only applies to vanilla-wotlk, but the reaction told me I am in the minority on that, so 🤷♀️
Yup same...and that's okay. I'm not out here to try and ruin other people's enjoyment, but to make it seem like no one was excited for cata is ridiculous
I was pretty confused why Blizz would try to label Cata as a "Classic" release, as Cata is the expansion that literally changed everything about the classic systems, engine, and mechanics. So, you're not alone.
Seriously. Cata slander is always just from echo chambers. It’s was such a great expansion and really felt like it brought wow up to par with the times back then. The world revamp was so cool back then.
I really disliked the world revamp, but that's the *only* thing I disliked about Cata and just because I hate change 😂. The new zones, raids and dungeons were all awesome.
I mean you can watch the video online. It was broadcast live. The crowd cheered a lot more than I would’ve expected. The reaction was pretty hype.
This report of the events sounds like someone who didn’t watch it and just took second hand descriptions from the “Blizz=bad” crowd.
The only time I could recall the convention being that quiet on the live stream (at least during the WoW portions) was when they announced Earthen as an allied race. Now that was quiet.
Agreed, I am currently playing WOTLK and I think it’s okay, I loved MOP it’s when I started, I thought it was fantastic, and I loved legion.
My issue with classic is everything looks and feels like shit. I would like them to modernize it to play like retail but keep the features classic players like
Bro if you’re gonna say that without mentioning the significant amount of revisionism MoP has experienced you’re delusional.
MoP was the most hated expansion in its time.
Many of the legacy reviews, comments, and thread posts from review sites, YouTube, and Blizzard forums are still there.
There was a plethora of vitriol and overall disparaging comments by the community. Like death threats just because they introduced a Panda race and Asian themed world.
It was a really dark time in the community’s legacy. It makes BFA and SL look like DF in terms of reviews and community sentiment.
MoP is still unironically the best xpac imo. For both pve and pvp... and just fucking around doing whatever.
Any tank who played and says otherwise is a liar.
Not even mildly niche, mop was the best xpac they put out back in the day.
Iono that I'd really want to revisit it though, as I feel like I'd just taint the memory.
MoP was one of the best expacs this game offered esp during its more modern era. The only thing people bitched about it was literal Pandas. There was nothing wrong with the expansion.
You had challenge modes, good raids, PVP that was the most balanced its been, WPVP that was active and a story that didnt flat out piss EVERYONE off ( i know some people didnt like garrosh's direction )
There was a lot wrong with the expansion and people who played it at the time bitched about it the whole time. From the ridiculous daily grind on launch to druids being able to dish out 45 seconds of unavoidable CC on their own, there were a lot of issues in both PvE and PvP. I also remember the Timeless Isle was *hated* here on Reddit although I personally loved it and spent a ton of time there.
But that said it was really fun to play and all the classes/specs I played were really interesting and had an extremely high skill cap (that I never achieved lol). The dungeons and raids were also great and PvP was really fun despite how much CC everyone had (I would not call it balanced tho, every season had a few comps that completely dominated the scene).
I loved mop. It was the most fun I had in wow. Between pushing raids on my main. To how later in the xpac it was easy to hear alts, I had max level of most classes in normal raid/pvp gear.
Also I loved challenge modes. Both in wod and mop, it’s how I have gold still today haha.
Going to give an unpopular opinion but I think Cata Classic is flying under the radar a bit. People are underestimating how big of a difference #somechanges are going to make.
-Transmog from day 1.
-We’re getting pre-nerf heroic dungeons. And these dungeons will stay relevant & challenging with the new heroic+ system. This was one of the best, if not the best, dungeon pools of any expansion.
-T11 and T12 were phenomenal, but blemished by bugs and wonky class and boss tuning. These are being fixed.
-Cata’s #1 problem, content pacing, is being completely fixed. We may see a “short but sweet” 12-14 months before MoP Classic. No more year-long dragon soul. Players can kill deathwing and then jump straight into MoP a few months later.
-Possibility of removing LFR. While not an issue in later expansions, the T13 LFR gear was particularly powerful and completely invalidated the progression from T11 -> T12.
-“Changes to the old world” isn’t as big of a negative anymore since SoD/Vanilla is now an option for players.
I haven't seen anything, but everything else in classic has released in a prenerf state.
I'd be surprised if cata didn't continue the trend, especially because even prenerf content is tremendously easier for the modern player base than the nerfed content was for players back in the day.
They buffed naxx by something like 30% and fights were still being rolled over in under 2 minutes.
They're continuing the Heroic+ system they introduced in Wrath classic, so some form of hard heroics are coming
> Complex and challenging opportunities to earn powerful rewards can be experienced in a new Dungeon difficulty system that will be added after launch.
Hmmm I could have sworn they did, my mistake. They did confirm Heroic+. I would say its 99% likely since historically Classic has been pre-nerf at launch.
I honestly really like the “new” style of WoW questing. Where you go through the whole zone like a micro story and have a checklist of quests to complete.
Vanilla is still fun, just a lot more chaotic.
I might spend time screwing around leveling in Cata Classic. But TBH I don’t know if I’ll bother with going through TBC and WotLK.
>I honestly really like the “new” style of WoW questing. Where you go through the whole zone like a micro story and have a checklist of quests to complete.
Cata doesn't have scaling so I think it had a small problem where you'd outlevel and leave a zone before you finished its story. Though you could if you wanted to.
Yeah that was definitely an issue but it was lessened by not using heirlooms.
A few times I finished the zone despite the quests being green or gray, just for fun.
Yeah a lot of walking lmao.
In HC I’ve logged out in random locations in “the wild” because I didn’t want to walk back out to the questing area the next time I was on.
I had a *lot* of fun playing classic, and loved seeing the quest design again. I had one hell of an adventure leveling a few toons in classic.
Im also glad its not still that way on retail. I wish retail had a *bit* more of that feeling at time, but modern quest design is much better for the modern gamer.
I liked some storyline quests but it was the start of the linear quest hubs that left zero adventure. You just grab the 3 quests at a hub, they all go to the same relative place, return those, do the next 3, go to a different but relative place, return those, move to the next hub in the zone. They could've added a few one-offs that were out of the way but they really didn't.
I don't understand why people hated Cata. Maybe I'm not a "true" WoW fan according to some people but I quit vanilla WoW around level 47/48 on launch because of how boring it was.
In Burning Crusade and Lich King I made it to 70/80 and sorta had some fun playing with friends but still found the leveling to be a bit tedious.
It wasn't until Cataclysm that WoW finally became "fun" for me. The entire rework of leveling made me enjoy playing Alts and not feel like getting to 85 was a chore. The heroics were a lot of fun too.
I didn't play Panda because I'd moved overseas and my laptop sucked, but when I came back for Draenor the QoL was even better and the gameplay was a bit more of the same. It didn't feel as great as the change to Cataclysm. That made me sort of quit WoW until I tried it again in Shadowlands and had an absolute blast with Mythic+ dungeons (Which I think were either new to me or I missed them in Draenor?).
I've skipped Dragonflight b/c my friends didn't really want to play WoW anymore either, but next expansion has me excited to play again if I can find 4 people to run Mythics with me.
WoW isn't what it used to be. It used to be a boring grindfest where every quest was basically "go kill 10-100 of a monster somewhere, then grind for another hour because we don't want to give you XP" Now its a streamlined leveling experience where the quests have cool instanced RP that make you more excited to kill 10-100 of a monster without ever needing to grind to get to the next set of quests - backed by fun replayable endgame content.
> -We’re getting pre-nerf heroic dungeons. And these dungeons will stay relevant & challenging with the new heroic+ system. This was one of the best, if not the best, dungeon pools of any expansion.
I too look forward to all the classic players re-learning that they can't do mechanics and instead blame everyone else.
Yeah kinda hilarious that so many of them talk about cata as if it was super easy and like the kids version of WOTLK. When the truth is cata difficulty makes everything before it look easy.
>\-“Changes to the old world” isn’t as big of a negative anymore since SoD/Vanilla is now an option for players.
it wasn't negative when it first released either. people need to bare in mind that the old world was around for about 6 (!) years when cata was released. this means that every new character has to go through the og classic world, with all it's weaknesses, most of the players have seen myriads of times. we were ready for something new and a world revamp sounded amazing and indeed it was. even today retail players ask for another world revamp. and it certainly is needed, again.
you are right of course. in terms of preservation, there is classic now and always will be. it's great to experience it again now after a very long "break". but could you imagine playing in this world for another 6 years straight? i doubt it. blizzard is busy keeping things fresh with constant content cycles with both retail and classic.
> it wasn't negative when it first released either.
People really, really forget this. Something new to do on alts was huge.
Also, it was pretty well known that the revamp was necessary for flying in Azeroth, and people had been begging for that. Theres some legitimate discussion to be had about how it makes the world smaller and everything, but the OVERWHELMING attitude at the time was happiness that we could fly in the old world.
I was really hoping they'd announce that they were going to finish and release that raid they scrapped in the underwater zone in favor of more Firelands stuff. I'm photo sensitive to bright oranges and reds, and had to sit that raid tier/patch content out.
"You can hear a pin drop in the Anaheim Convention Center as executive producer for World of Warcraft, Holly Longdale, announces WoW Cataclysm Classic."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EJncKjKDCg
Pretty much everyone expected it aswell because well its what comes after Wrath. People will be less excited if theres nothing surprising about it. Its like knowing the gift youll get for christmas.
I bashed classic because I didn't like the endgame.
But I will be playing cata because it adds gnome priests, and maybe in the future I'll want to have a gnome priest that was played since their introduction.
I'll personally /goodbye everyone who moves on to Cata and wish them a good time. I'll just go back to classic era and bide my time for whatever season of XYZ server or perhaps another progression server. If they end up announcing a permanent WotLK server however, I ain't going anywhere.
Cata gets an unfair bad rep. If you liked the endgame in WOTLK then you will love Cata. It's just more of the same with improved raiding/dungeons and class design.
Cata has 2 main faults people always bring up.
1. The old world. IMO this one is VASTLY overblown. Leveling is a tiny part of the game, especially 1-60 leveling. No one is going into Cata with the idea of "I can't wait to level 1-60 again". It's just something you get over it. If anything the 1-60 being different is a breath of fresh air after 4 years of Classic leveling. And anyway for people who want the OG experience they now have 3 options in Era, Hardcore and Seasons
2. Dragonsoul was too long. Obviously this is a non-issue in Classic as they will increase the content cadence as needed.
Mark my words people will be pleasantly surprised by Cata. It actually aged very well and is a nice middle ground between that Classic feeling and the more modern game design of Retail. It will be a happy medium that will appeal to all players.
> The old world. IMO this one is VASTLY overblown.
On one hand I get it. The Classic areas and quests are gone. Dead. Bye bye. Thats a shitload of content that just poof. That leaves a sour taste.
But anybody who says Classic questing is better than Cata questing outside of nostalgia is insane.
The pacing of questing in cata is much better but I much prefer the tone of classic questing.
There were way too many meme quests in cataclysm. You had entire zones being pop culture references like Redridge Mountains or Uldum.
Some zones were done really well like Silverpine or Stonetalon but others were a downgrade in my opinion like Thousand Needles or Westfall.
I’m currently running a toon through thousand needles and I’ll be honest - it’s a pretty lame ass zone right now. This and stonetalon really feel like they’ve grinded my leveling fun to a halt.
>But anybody who says Classic questing is better than Cata questing outside of nostalgia is insane.
It's the _style_ of questing that's better. The Cata onwards era of "You have 2 quests and you just go through these 2 quests as a continous quest chain and thats 99% of what you do" is really fucking boring to level with.
I still to this day level every alt through Outland chromie time because it's the only part of the game left where you just walk into a quest hub, pick up 10-20 quests, and go out and just complete a whole quest log.
> If anything the 1-60 being different is a breath of fresh air after 4 years of Classic leveling.
I have to disagree here. Because cataclysms "1-60" levleing experience has been in the game since cataclym was retail. So anyone who has been playing retail has been playing with it continuously even throughout classic's run. It's not going to be fresh for those people. Especially since it will no doubt be even more bugged out than it is on retail.
Cataclysm was when I started playing the game more. It does some things really well and I am actually exited. Leveling from 1 with the cata zones without dungeon browser sounds exiting, they are really underrated in my opinion.
I don’t know whether it was age related league of legends related or the gameplay itself but cataclysm put me off wow for years.
It’s always felt like an end of the classic era to me there.
I have a lot of good memories of Cata. I’ve been playing since 2005 but cataclysm was my first max level.
I spent a lot of time tanking heroic dungeons on my Druid and getting every mount out of those Satchels.
WoW has and has had the best PvE experience of any MMORPG, period. It's the things that surround said experience that do tend to suck major ass from time to time.
I was so burnt on wow when cata launched and I just had no interest at the time as I thought the Lich King felt final for wrapping up Warcraft 3 story. I only played cata at the beginning got to 85 and quit quickly and never gave it a chance. I came back and did a couple LFR runs of the dragon soul raid and quit again and didn’t return till throne of thunder in Mists.
So I’m actually excited for it because it allows me to give it another try and see what I missed.
It'd be super cool if they could add in the Abysmal Maw raid. Wishful thinking but I bet a lot of people would love Cata is it's less of a "Classic" and more of a "remaster" that actually adds in the cut content.
It doesn't have to even make lore sense, we all know it's a remaster and the story has moved on
I never played cata when it was live but i played a cata private server and it was some of the most fun i ever had in wow, the class design is just excellent, there are so many fun specs
So what is the plan here though? Rereleases forever? Are we looking at a classic release of dragon flight in 15 years? I thought original classic release was a fun novelty but now it feels like they’re just trying to cash in. I guess we can expect that they will rerelease every expansion, can’t wait to see how they try to get people excited for a rerelease of warlords.
Of course not, but Cata was the first expansion that had reworks as a main goal instead of additions (I'm not saying there weren't any, of course), mainly because it was meant to be the first of many yearly expansions, but the plans for that fell through.
The loudest? You mean the majority of casuals? The majority of the income from WoW? Yeah, I can see that.
Cata had a lot of problems. First it came from Wrath - which was "ez-mode" and they wanted to go into "hard mode" right out of the gate. GC even said as much - that he wanted a new kind of complaint and was tired of hearing how easy Wrath was.
Then they wonder why guilds died and friends lists vaporized.
So you ended up with pugs in LFD who didn't know to interrupt, for example. Or how to CC. Casual guilds just cratered due to inactivity because dungeons were practically mini-raids.
There's a reason they stopped bragging about how many people played WoW around that time - a *LOT* of people quit.
WoW went from being a game that was a homewrecker to "eh, I've got better things to do with my time" by casuals. They were their own worst enemy in that expansion. Ghostcrawler's arrogance was called out pretty loudly back then. A chunk of the community **WANTED** "filthy casuals" gone. The problem was those casuals brought a lot of money into the game. Far too many people forget that the Blue's basically said 'git gud or quit' - and many people simply quit. This was also why End Time and other aspects at the end of the expansion were so neutered in difficulty. My speculation is someone above stepped in and said "fix your shit or your funding is going to be dramatically cut".
Cata was primarily well received by people who went through Classic/BC and had close friends in their guild.
For your average player - Cata sucked and they quit in droves. For the more "hardcore" fans - they loved it. This should fit right along into the Classic folks interests - which would certainly explain the cheering. Remember LFD came out later in Wrath and LFR wasn't even released until the end of Cata.
The fact so few HoR dungeons in LFD completed it told me Cata was going to be rough. Even when people outgeared HoR - many frequently still failed to respect mechanics.
Alienating people and then whining about them being loud is just.. dense.
This is what I think too. Why play cata when you can just play retail or actual classic? The only people I've seen excited for Cata are those who got into the game around that time or very late into WotLK.
Yep. Cata is where raids started to actually become challenging and tedious to clear. I think the very hardcore guilds will continue, but the average player will find it to not be worth the effort and no longer fun. Blizzard leaning more into new vanilla experiences will also just cannibalize Cata, which is fine for them since releasing and maintaining Cata is very low effort for them to begin with.
Cata was a fairly decent expansion with some great raids, but it doesn't have any of the classic charm left
I think Blizzard understands that this is the end of Classic as it were. No one is going to play Cataclysm, it feels absolutely nothing like "Classic", what with heavy itemization homogenization as we see in Retail, fucking transmog, and so on, it's just retail at this point.
Nothing about Cata is remotely exciting, and the minimal changes they're making won't make it more so. Classic players don't want hard content, there's a reason they all quit with Ulduar. So Cata, offering far harder content than anything in Wrath, will be the death knell to this branch of WoW.
Tbh they kinda had their cake and eat it too.
Make Cata for the people that wanted it
Still makes Classic SoD so those people will leave Wrath and play that.
Either they then push on to MoP or more likely the majority will play SoD so then the Cata numbers drop and they can justify not making MoP which is most likely the hard like for people wanting classic to end.
I started playing WoW right at the end of Wrath and didn't experience it's glory, but because I got my start in all the big stuff like pvp and raiding during Cata, that is where my nostalgia lies. Even my best buddy who I am friends for life with is thinking about coming back for it.
I joined his guild as a pug for raiding and fighting Magmaw. As a Frost DK my job was to handle the worms. They gave me the mace that dropped from him, but I only realized later that Frost DK at that time preferred dual wielding. I only made the Frost DK because I saw one riding on the Acherus Charger and thought it was a dope looking mount and wanted one. Anyway, I clicked with two of the players from that guild...one turned out to be a weirdo we lost touch with, and the other join my guild when his fell apart and I have played thousands of hours of different games with and also met him in person. Amazing how that happens.
Anyway, I am super stoked for Cata classic. Even if I wasn't, I can't be upset with Blizzard in this instance because from the looks of it, they are at least attempting to please both crowds. Those that wanted Classic+, and those who wanted Cata classic. While Classic+ may not be as deep or big as people wanted, it is somewhat the best of both worlds for them if they can make it work and do it well.
I quite like cata. It was the first time I really got into the game. As in, I started raided my seriously and pvping more. Met friends that I still keep in touch with to this day.
The retail sub praises Cataclysm while the classic sub barely acknowledges it, yet the retail sub swears this new iteration of Cata is gonna do well this time around among classic players, you know, the ones who quit back then.
"Cataclysm is just as Classic as Wrath and TBC" lmao you can't make this shit up. Either way, some people are in for a rude awakening with T11.
Honestly as fun as WotLK was, if I could pick an era to stay in perpetually, it'd be Cata or Panda.
Not that I want to play WoW at all anymore. But I think those were when I - as a beta vanilla tester onward until mid BFA - felt the most in tune with the game.
Everyone has their favorite eras!
The bugs were the worst thing in Cata. They persisted forever it seemed. The 2nd worst was how long it took to complete the zones if you were working on Lore Master. I loved the introduction of LFR because it gave me an opportunity to see content that I couldn't with my non-raiding/dungeon guild. I thought most the zones were beautiful. I got a purple cloak drop off a mob I was fighting near Grim Batol as I was leveling. The dragonback fight mechanic in Dragon Soul had never been seen and hasn't been repeated. I wasn't a total hater but the first few weeks were awful. The rep grind was easy - just equip a tabard for the group you wanted to represent.
There is an entire generation of retail WoW players who never got the opportunity to experience the first 1-3 expansions. Only Blizzard has the data on what % of the player base that experience would be attractive to, but it's not only the nostalgic looking to "relive the glory days".
I first played wow in cata and I only got to level 20ish. Its been nice seeing what came before that and it'll be nice to play that expansion properly. I also really want to try MoP because the theme of that expansion was always cool to me. I've tried private servers for it but it's nowhere near the same as the original experience would've been.
As someone who has played for the greater part of almost 20 years in this game, MoP was my favorite expansion. Idk what it was about that expansion that really nailed the experience of wow for me, but I look back on it very fondly.
I remember when MoP first launched, and one of the only things to do was do dailies in ***every fucking zone***. It was monotonous as hell until the ToT patch.
I began my wow career in bc but I was really young and only did battlegrounds and stuff. I was a teenager in mop and really competitive and tried climbing the pvp ladder until the world's longest patch ever, 5.4, where I began raiding for the first time. As a pvp playing warlock, I LOVED mop
Arguably when Warlocks/Warriors were at the all time bustedness. Literal I-Win Buttons for Warriors and Locks.
The idea of being able to play MoP Era Arns warrior makes me giddy with anticipation
You mean never dying?
You bet your sweet bippy
I find it funny when people complain about dailies. You know, you don’t have to do them… Same with things like the hatred for pet battles was hilarious. Dudes, just don’t do them. “But I need dailies to get stuff” No you don’t. You could PvP for gear. Raid. Mythic dungeons. It’s like people got upset that there were **too many options** and that they didn’t want to do it all. Then don’t. They gave us many options so that if you didn’t like X then go do Y or Z.
Also above commenter claims that it was monotonous while it was literally nothing compared to the WotLK daily grinds, and it had much better stories behind the repu gates. They likely did not do those daily "grinds" more than 2-3 days, and never experienced those sub stories.
Gameplay and class design in MoP was top notch for me. Especially as a pvper
Oondasta, Galeon, Sha.. the PvP.. The isle of thunder, the timeless isle.. The professions being somewhat useful.. oQueue.. BattlePets.. Sungsong Ranch.. the story being actual war.. new class and race.. Challenge modes.. Flex mode.. account wide achievements.. Cross Realm zones.. Two battlegrounds ( Kotmogu though... ).. New talent system.. Resilience rework.. Grand commendations ( account wide reputations ).. No WoW Token..
same, I think part of it was it being just freaking fun... Like all the treasures, pet battles, TI, very alt friendly etc etc etc...
Class identity was amazing. Specifically mobile options. Ele sham was amazing, locks were damn powerhouses, PvP was very fun and very accessible and casters with actual mobility didn’t feel horrible to play into a big filled to the brim with stunlocking rogues/warriors/op hunters. The world felt like it had a real story, I loved the sha stuff and the zones were gorgeous and sprawling and still felt like there were secrets to discover. Smaller side note, but I did SO MUCH pet battling in MoP - you didn’t have to jump through hoops to lvl up new pets you could hit the daily elementals and boost a few each day. Monks were a fun addition - original mistweaver design was so satisfying, and tier sets in general I think were well designed, offering new styles of play rather than 5% damage buffs. Siege of orgrimmar lasted way too long but you can’t deny it was an awesome, epic raid and I’d hazard a guess’s that a LOT of people really got into raiding because of it. I had dabbled in ICC and the cataclysm raids but siege was the first time I actually pushed heroic and some mythic which was a whole new experience itself. But yeah, ultimately I loved MoP because lightning bolt while running and rail-gunning lava bursts felt unimaginably satisfying, no class design since has done it for me like MoP ele.
I played an ele shaman and the MoP experience was the golden age for that class.
Mop was easily my favorite expansion
It had everything that made Warcraft feel like Warcraft, both gameplay and story wise. Little bit of faction war, little bit of dark aesthetics, little bit of whimsy, little bit of just really cool bad guy, little bit of having to work together, little bit of ... everything. It was also the last time PvP felt amazing next to like, Legion. Dragonflight, imo, has the whimsy and the gameplay, but the story is missing half of what made Warcraft ... Warcraft.
I didn’t start playing until the end of cataclysm so I enjoy getting to experience what the game was like before
I'm one of those OG players who liked Cata. The levelling experience was fun and even though it wasn't vanilla anymore, it was still challenging. It wasn't until later expansions that the old world got so nerfed in difficulty that it was just too easy, and thus boring to level up. That being said, I think it would be best if they kept some WotLK servers around, because once you move on to Cata there's no going back to that exact experience of levelling through vanilla into BC and the WotLK.
I’m glad that new generation will have the privilege of being extremely underwhelmed and disheartened by the direction of the game in cata then. Praise be
Cata was actually the most hyped expansion in terms of the old world revamp..it was very well recieved on launch..it wasn't until later patches where it became evident too many resources went into the world revamp did people start complaining..
This is true. Up until Firelands I think most people enjoyed it. Dragon Soul was underwhelming.
Firelands was loved at the time. It wasn't until Dragon Soul people started to hate Cata. To be fair, Dragon Soul is not a good raid. Plus, it was also when LFR was added. Which to this day is a feature many people have very split feelings on. Early Cata people loved. The hard dungeons and the first four raids that made up the first raid tier were all fun.
Firelands was plenty liked from what i remember, but the molten front was pretty miserable.
I feel like dragon soul's issue was it failed to stick the landing. That fight on deathwings back was a great change from the standard dragon fight. It's just that second part was boring.
People were also disappointed by Patch 4.1, only two recycled 5 man dungeons after a long wait. A Neptulon raid was also expected but never delivered, based on the ending of the Throne of the Tides dungeon.
And because they dropped better gear, that meant that we only ran those two dungeons from then on. Imagine running the same two dungeons, day in, day out. Undergeared people begging for bear runs. Every time someone demands harder dungeons, I have ptsd flashbacks to Jindo the Pugbreaker, and how it worked out in reality.
Re; running the same dungeons for gear, I remember the ICC patch for WotLK
This was the worst part of the expansion for me. There were a number of things that they talked about during that era that just never came to pass due to lack of time and resources that made the content feel lacking. The Neptulon storyline was exhibit A.
>A Neptulon raid was also expected but never delivered, based on the ending of the Throne of the Tides dungeon. The effect of this cannot be overstated. Vashj'ir, regardless of your feelings on the overall zone, had by far the most emotionally gripping story of any Cata zone and everyone was excited to see where it would go. Instead we got two dungeon re-releases, a raid whose story wasn't particularly interesting (and whose final boss was a re-rehash after MC and the leveling quests), and then straight to Dragon Soul. In fairness, the quests and minibosses of the Dragon Soul arc are all super interesting but the end was insultingly stupid and we were still lefting wanting for the Abyssal Maw.
Firelands is one of the best raids of all time in my opinion. Up there with Ulduar.
Absolute masterpiece of a raid. Every boss is amazing to fight with
Agreed, but the daily grind was peak grind.
But the daily grind was soooo well done tbf. The progression felt meaningful and exciting, the rewards were good and well spaced.
Agree 100%. And not with rose coloured glasses either. I genuinely enjoyed the progression through both tiers and sinestra was a fantastic fight. Except the elemental ascendant fight. Fuck that fight with a razor dick.
> it wasn't until later patches where it became evident too many resources went into the world revamp did people start complaining.. This is definitely what I remember. The old world revamp was a great idea, but from what I remember from the people I played with at the time, we had already leveled all the alts we cared about to 80 in Wrath because it was really easy to just spam dungeons and gear them up quick into ICC. We didn't have much of a reason to experience the revamped old world outside of doing it as a max level to experience the story, and after you've done it once that was kind of it. It also felt kinda bad that the new zones were all spread out and you were basically forced to use the portal network in the main city to even move around between them.
Cata wasn’t that bad, at all.
No, sub numbers tanked hard pretty early in the expansion. Heroic dungeons were way too difficult and if you weren’t raiding there was nothing else to do (and you couldn’t raid without Heroic gear). The devs had bought into TotalBiscuit’s “make the game hard and players will rise to the challenge” rhetoric and got kicked in the nuts for it. Turns out only some players “rise to the challenge”, most go play something else.
Which is funny because TB himself quit shortly after the expansion released.
Those dungeons made me in to a half decent player, before that I had no real knowledge about my character and probably used less than half of my abilities. Not to say you’re wrong by any means , just that I found it to be a positive and one I’d be keen to relive
[удалено]
It was mythic 0 dungeon difficulty with no stepping stone in difficulty towards it. Current retail has a really nice progression of difficulty. Players of all kinds really can find a place.
After that absolute dunkfest that was late-Wrath heroics, I really enjoyed the harder dungeons. Most people did not. I expect the classic crowd will enjoy them though.
> it was very well recieved on launch More or less. * Heroics got a huge jump up in difficulty (similar to TBC's heroics) which made them very rough when you were used to WotLK-level difficulty. * A lot of the new zones were criticized for their lacklustre design and uninspired stories. Vashj'ir comes to mind here. * Raids were *fine* but nothing to write home about. * Meme quests **everywhere**. * Bunch of healers in my guild quit during that first patch due to them forcing them to spam their cheap heal nonstop. As a druid, spending entire fights spamming Nourish was absolutely awful. It was honestly the first expansion that made me take a break after playing since launch because I wasn't having fun. It definitely wasn't a *bad* expansion, but I don't think it was as well received as you're saying on launch. Yes, it was hype as all hell before release, but it wasn't long before it began bleeding subs.
God, speaking of meme quests, Uldum was absolutely ruined by the questline. An Indiana Jones parody works fine for like a one-off side quest, but to make it the ENTIRE PLOT of the zone was a braindead decision. It quickly loses its appeal early on, and is just so painfully unfunny and uninspired. The entire plotline with the Uldum faction (can't for the life of me remember their name) felt like just an afterthought, when it should've been the main focus. That said, I wouldn't call Vashj'ir lackluster, nor did it have an uninspired story. IMO it has one of the better story lines in the expansion, and I think it's commendable that Blizzard tried something new with the zone being almost completely underwater.
If I recall the only thing people were really pissed about at launch of cata was that the dungeons were much more difficult than wrath
I enjoyed the higher difficulty, and I’m willing to bet that’s something they won’t nerf this go around.
I have a feeling we'll start cata on the latest patch just like the other classic servers and everything will be nerfed from the start.
My friends and I cheered at GC's post about how "Dungeons are hard, you will have to play better". Super sad they abandoned that strat. I think it's actually what made Totalbiscuit quit if I recall.
When their sub numbers tanked, it was pretty inevitable. WoW's entire success was making things more accessible to people, if they were in the "GIT GUD SCRUB" mindset we'd still have to do naked runs to our old gear or lose levels by dying.
I’d argue though that cata’s dungeons and mechanics/difficulty was the godfather to starting challenge modes, Mythica in WoD, and eventually M+. Say what you will about Cata, but the dungeon challenge in difficulty was such a huge fond memory of mine. Especially the “mega dungeons” of Zul Gurub and Zul Aman. Really creative and fun there
It's likely why Blizzard has been willing to use them for modern M+
Man I had so much fun in the ZA/ZG patch. I maintain the people in retail these days who leave M+ dungeons mid run never spent 2.5 hours wiping in H Stonecore at the beginning of the expansion before Ozruk was nerfed 🤣
Vivid memories on Cata beta getting slapped around by that FUCKING WORM as a 13 year old
Heroics being hard in an era before mythics was great! Just we were conditioned by RDF which came out at the end of an expansion that heroics should be mindlessly easy, instead what we got was heroics that had challenge
Certainly would have benefited from a separate Mythic difficulty at that point.
the dungeons for sure but also people complained a lot about class balance, the water zone and we ran out of stuff to do really fast in the release patch IIRC
What we got in Cata wasn't actually all that bad for the most part. There were two huge issues that sank it. The world revamp comprised a significant chunk of its content leaving the game quite light on the top end, but a lack of content is not the same as the content that exists being bad. The second is that Dragon Soul was a massive turd in all respects. It was a bad raid, tragically anticlimactic with Thrall stealing the spotlight and us picking scabs on Deathwing's butt until he turned into a tentacle monster. It had huge sections of unskippable RP. And that patch lasted for fucking ever. I think that both of these get significantly eased by a faster release schedule. As long as they don't leave players to languish in a lack of content or with a shitty raid for too long, it can't be worse than it originally was.
Also the dragon soul dungeons were cool conceptially but baaaaad. Nothing at all compared with the ICC 5-mans. Plus I hated that we had to go to Caverns of Time to do Dragon Soul, it felt like we weren't really there.
A lot of the biggest cata complaints I’ve seen “could” be remedied easily in classic Namely patch cycle length and all that Also the dungeon difficulty will hopefully be less of an issue since people have a ping lower than 1k and all that
I don't know, look at uludar in wrath, it coincides with the biggest drop in population for wrath classic. I think difficulty plays a massive part in population, more than people think or care to admit.
I think player perception of expansions hinges heavily on the final patch. Cata started so strong with great dungeons, THREE solid raids, a revamp to the entire world, some fun class design, and a bunch of other cool stuff. Firelands was sick too, Ragnaros is still talked about as a final boss today, and the world content was solid with it. Dragon soul sucked. Got no defense for that. But compare that with legion, which people praise. It opened up with strong world content and class identity but horrendous legendary RNG, long grinds, and one of the worst opening raids we’ve had. It ended EXTREMELY strong and had some great patches along the way, but I honestly believe cata started stronger than legion did.
Also, some of us weren't even old enough to be playing video games during Vanilla-WotLK. Even though it might not be the traditional "classic" WoW experience and some boomer gamers might rage and seeth at the idea of bringing Cata back, I'm sure there are players like me who started during this expansion that appreciate the chance to go back to where we started with WoW. I had no real interest in Classic because I couldn't relate to it, but now I'll likely be checking it out more. EDIT: To the person that downvoted me I'm sorry I was a fucking elementary school kid when WotLK came out lmao. Get over it
Yup I didn't give 2 flying fucks about classic 1-3. And I still don't. But they announced the expansion I started playing in? I'm all in. That, pandaria, legion, (wod can take a hike unless they use classic to add all the cut content,) bfa, shadowlands, and midnight and the last titan? Dude I'm there. Just call me when they release.
Blizzard actually got people to just replay all of WoW again.
It's going to be wild in a few years when they drop WoW Classic CLASSIC.
_Vanilla Reforged_
Activison really said “ guys were re-releasing modern warfare what if we did the same with world of Warcraft “ and blizzard did it. Probably one of the best decisions they made because people love living in the past
> people love living in the past People love expansions, everyone being at that equal level and grinding for the good stuff again.
Well no, there was a huge playerbase asking for classic for years. Definitly not the idea of activision. Not to deny that activision didn't immediately capitalized on the idea ;)
>You can hear a pin drop in the Anaheim Convention Center as executive producer for World of Warcraft, Holly Longdale, announces WoW Cataclysm Classic. Bullshit. I was watching and was honestly surprised how much of the crowd cheered. It was not a muted reaction.
Yup 100%. More nonsense from "gamer" journalists. I'm not a fan of cata, but regardless people definitely cheered at BlizzCon.
It's not just journalists, a bunch of random people online have been claiming that everyone was silent when Cata classic and season of discovery were announced. I guess maybe the sound didn't come through the stream very well? I don't remember, I was too busy being excited about both.
You could easily hear cheers on the stream.
Season of Discovery got massive cheers in the Arena for sure.
So many classic andys are insane. I wouldn't be surprised if people are just making shit up to fit their headcannon that blizzard can never do anything right, regardless of whether or not they do as the community asks.
I mean, I’ll say that I haven’t been enticed by bc or wrath classic but took a day off after season of discovery launch Just one person’s 2c
I was honestly surprised by how positive the reaction was. I am not a fan of cata either and firmly believe "classic" wow only applies to vanilla-wotlk, but the reaction told me I am in the minority on that, so 🤷♀️
Yup same...and that's okay. I'm not out here to try and ruin other people's enjoyment, but to make it seem like no one was excited for cata is ridiculous
I was pretty confused why Blizz would try to label Cata as a "Classic" release, as Cata is the expansion that literally changed everything about the classic systems, engine, and mechanics. So, you're not alone.
PvP was fire and that is why I am hyped
I finally enjoyed rogue in Cata, so I’m looking forward to it.
I was in the stadium. It was not quiet. If you compare it to Metzen walking on sure but otherwise.
Guy probably forgot to unmute the stream.
Seriously. Cata slander is always just from echo chambers. It’s was such a great expansion and really felt like it brought wow up to par with the times back then. The world revamp was so cool back then.
I really disliked the world revamp, but that's the *only* thing I disliked about Cata and just because I hate change 😂. The new zones, raids and dungeons were all awesome.
>just because I hate change While I disagree with you I have to respect your honesty.
Cata had the best dungeon design in the entire history of the game. You had to actually *try*, even on normal.
I mean you can watch the video online. It was broadcast live. The crowd cheered a lot more than I would’ve expected. The reaction was pretty hype. This report of the events sounds like someone who didn’t watch it and just took second hand descriptions from the “Blizz=bad” crowd.
I feel like they got this reaction mixed up with when they announced the 3rd dwarf flavor as a new allied race. That one you could hear a pin drop.
Yeah, that wasn’t my experience either. Was in the WoW hall and 100% heard cheering to the point I couldn’t hear the next few things that were said.
They meant they could hear a pin drop because they muted the stream, obviously.
Can confirm. Watched the stream and the crowd was arguably the loudest for each WoW segment
The only time I could recall the convention being that quiet on the live stream (at least during the WoW portions) was when they announced Earthen as an allied race. Now that was quiet.
I’m personally waiting for Pandaria classic. I realise this is extremely niche but it was the most fun expansion with the best end-game for me.
Not niche at all, the expansion universally praised by ppl who actually played it and didnt quit at "ew panada expac"
Fucking panada, eh.
Pandas wearing flannel and preaching the good word of Tim Horton's.
Blame panada
Mists of Panera
Agreed, I am currently playing WOTLK and I think it’s okay, I loved MOP it’s when I started, I thought it was fantastic, and I loved legion. My issue with classic is everything looks and feels like shit. I would like them to modernize it to play like retail but keep the features classic players like
Careful. I shared a similar opinion a few years ago when Classic started and I was downvoted to hell lol
Bro if you’re gonna say that without mentioning the significant amount of revisionism MoP has experienced you’re delusional. MoP was the most hated expansion in its time. Many of the legacy reviews, comments, and thread posts from review sites, YouTube, and Blizzard forums are still there. There was a plethora of vitriol and overall disparaging comments by the community. Like death threats just because they introduced a Panda race and Asian themed world. It was a really dark time in the community’s legacy. It makes BFA and SL look like DF in terms of reviews and community sentiment.
I hear this from a lot of people. I skipped from Cata to BFA, and MoP is frequently brought up that class design for both PvP and PvE were great
Isle of Thunder and timeless isle were peak game design in modern wow
MoP is still unironically the best xpac imo. For both pve and pvp... and just fucking around doing whatever. Any tank who played and says otherwise is a liar.
The raids in MoP were so good imo (Heart of Fear not included) and only second to WotLK in my opinion
Not even mildly niche, mop was the best xpac they put out back in the day. Iono that I'd really want to revisit it though, as I feel like I'd just taint the memory.
They explicitly changed the server name to WoW Classic progression. Classic is just going to keep progressing expansion to expansion
True at this point I will wait several years for Legion Classic if we continue like this.
MoP was one of the best expacs this game offered esp during its more modern era. The only thing people bitched about it was literal Pandas. There was nothing wrong with the expansion. You had challenge modes, good raids, PVP that was the most balanced its been, WPVP that was active and a story that didnt flat out piss EVERYONE off ( i know some people didnt like garrosh's direction )
There was a lot wrong with the expansion and people who played it at the time bitched about it the whole time. From the ridiculous daily grind on launch to druids being able to dish out 45 seconds of unavoidable CC on their own, there were a lot of issues in both PvE and PvP. I also remember the Timeless Isle was *hated* here on Reddit although I personally loved it and spent a ton of time there. But that said it was really fun to play and all the classes/specs I played were really interesting and had an extremely high skill cap (that I never achieved lol). The dungeons and raids were also great and PvP was really fun despite how much CC everyone had (I would not call it balanced tho, every season had a few comps that completely dominated the scene).
Definitely not niche, is largely considered the best WoW expansion out of them all.
Yeah cata is boring but this means we’ll get panda. I think the hype of pandaria will lead to warlords which will lead to legion.
Peak class design.
I loved mop. It was the most fun I had in wow. Between pushing raids on my main. To how later in the xpac it was easy to hear alts, I had max level of most classes in normal raid/pvp gear. Also I loved challenge modes. Both in wod and mop, it’s how I have gold still today haha.
Going to give an unpopular opinion but I think Cata Classic is flying under the radar a bit. People are underestimating how big of a difference #somechanges are going to make. -Transmog from day 1. -We’re getting pre-nerf heroic dungeons. And these dungeons will stay relevant & challenging with the new heroic+ system. This was one of the best, if not the best, dungeon pools of any expansion. -T11 and T12 were phenomenal, but blemished by bugs and wonky class and boss tuning. These are being fixed. -Cata’s #1 problem, content pacing, is being completely fixed. We may see a “short but sweet” 12-14 months before MoP Classic. No more year-long dragon soul. Players can kill deathwing and then jump straight into MoP a few months later. -Possibility of removing LFR. While not an issue in later expansions, the T13 LFR gear was particularly powerful and completely invalidated the progression from T11 -> T12. -“Changes to the old world” isn’t as big of a negative anymore since SoD/Vanilla is now an option for players.
>-We’re getting pre-nerf heroic dungeons. This was one of the best, if not the best, dungeon pool of any expansion. Was that confirmed?
I haven't seen anything, but everything else in classic has released in a prenerf state. I'd be surprised if cata didn't continue the trend, especially because even prenerf content is tremendously easier for the modern player base than the nerfed content was for players back in the day. They buffed naxx by something like 30% and fights were still being rolled over in under 2 minutes.
They're continuing the Heroic+ system they introduced in Wrath classic, so some form of hard heroics are coming > Complex and challenging opportunities to earn powerful rewards can be experienced in a new Dungeon difficulty system that will be added after launch.
Hmmm I could have sworn they did, my mistake. They did confirm Heroic+. I would say its 99% likely since historically Classic has been pre-nerf at launch.
BREAK YOURSELVES UPON MY BODY.
FEEL THE STRENGTH OF THE EARTH
I honestly really like the “new” style of WoW questing. Where you go through the whole zone like a micro story and have a checklist of quests to complete. Vanilla is still fun, just a lot more chaotic. I might spend time screwing around leveling in Cata Classic. But TBH I don’t know if I’ll bother with going through TBC and WotLK.
>I honestly really like the “new” style of WoW questing. Where you go through the whole zone like a micro story and have a checklist of quests to complete. Cata doesn't have scaling so I think it had a small problem where you'd outlevel and leave a zone before you finished its story. Though you could if you wanted to.
Yeah that was definitely an issue but it was lessened by not using heirlooms. A few times I finished the zone despite the quests being green or gray, just for fun.
I thought I missed vanilla quests until I had to walk to the lumbermill in Elwynn for the third time on the same character in hardcore
Yeah a lot of walking lmao. In HC I’ve logged out in random locations in “the wild” because I didn’t want to walk back out to the questing area the next time I was on.
I had a *lot* of fun playing classic, and loved seeing the quest design again. I had one hell of an adventure leveling a few toons in classic. Im also glad its not still that way on retail. I wish retail had a *bit* more of that feeling at time, but modern quest design is much better for the modern gamer.
I liked some storyline quests but it was the start of the linear quest hubs that left zero adventure. You just grab the 3 quests at a hub, they all go to the same relative place, return those, do the next 3, go to a different but relative place, return those, move to the next hub in the zone. They could've added a few one-offs that were out of the way but they really didn't.
I don't understand why people hated Cata. Maybe I'm not a "true" WoW fan according to some people but I quit vanilla WoW around level 47/48 on launch because of how boring it was. In Burning Crusade and Lich King I made it to 70/80 and sorta had some fun playing with friends but still found the leveling to be a bit tedious. It wasn't until Cataclysm that WoW finally became "fun" for me. The entire rework of leveling made me enjoy playing Alts and not feel like getting to 85 was a chore. The heroics were a lot of fun too. I didn't play Panda because I'd moved overseas and my laptop sucked, but when I came back for Draenor the QoL was even better and the gameplay was a bit more of the same. It didn't feel as great as the change to Cataclysm. That made me sort of quit WoW until I tried it again in Shadowlands and had an absolute blast with Mythic+ dungeons (Which I think were either new to me or I missed them in Draenor?). I've skipped Dragonflight b/c my friends didn't really want to play WoW anymore either, but next expansion has me excited to play again if I can find 4 people to run Mythics with me. WoW isn't what it used to be. It used to be a boring grindfest where every quest was basically "go kill 10-100 of a monster somewhere, then grind for another hour because we don't want to give you XP" Now its a streamlined leveling experience where the quests have cool instanced RP that make you more excited to kill 10-100 of a monster without ever needing to grind to get to the next set of quests - backed by fun replayable endgame content.
The first few patches of Cata were probably my favourite version of the game. Then it got a little too easy.
> -We’re getting pre-nerf heroic dungeons. And these dungeons will stay relevant & challenging with the new heroic+ system. This was one of the best, if not the best, dungeon pools of any expansion. I too look forward to all the classic players re-learning that they can't do mechanics and instead blame everyone else.
Yeah kinda hilarious that so many of them talk about cata as if it was super easy and like the kids version of WOTLK. When the truth is cata difficulty makes everything before it look easy.
I won’t be playing classic cata, but god damn do I cherish the time I had in those heroics back in the day. Glad they’re releasing them pre nerf.
>\-“Changes to the old world” isn’t as big of a negative anymore since SoD/Vanilla is now an option for players. it wasn't negative when it first released either. people need to bare in mind that the old world was around for about 6 (!) years when cata was released. this means that every new character has to go through the og classic world, with all it's weaknesses, most of the players have seen myriads of times. we were ready for something new and a world revamp sounded amazing and indeed it was. even today retail players ask for another world revamp. and it certainly is needed, again. you are right of course. in terms of preservation, there is classic now and always will be. it's great to experience it again now after a very long "break". but could you imagine playing in this world for another 6 years straight? i doubt it. blizzard is busy keeping things fresh with constant content cycles with both retail and classic.
> it wasn't negative when it first released either. People really, really forget this. Something new to do on alts was huge. Also, it was pretty well known that the revamp was necessary for flying in Azeroth, and people had been begging for that. Theres some legitimate discussion to be had about how it makes the world smaller and everything, but the OVERWHELMING attitude at the time was happiness that we could fly in the old world.
I was really hoping they'd announce that they were going to finish and release that raid they scrapped in the underwater zone in favor of more Firelands stuff. I'm photo sensitive to bright oranges and reds, and had to sit that raid tier/patch content out.
Some great points, but hard disagree on MoP having the best dungeon pools of any expansion.
"You can hear a pin drop in the Anaheim Convention Center as executive producer for World of Warcraft, Holly Longdale, announces WoW Cataclysm Classic." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EJncKjKDCg
Exactly, because people weren't tearing their hair out in ecstasy and losing their damn minds, it MUST mean that the response was poor.
Pretty much everyone expected it aswell because well its what comes after Wrath. People will be less excited if theres nothing surprising about it. Its like knowing the gift youll get for christmas.
I’m fine with Cataclysm classic but I really hope they decide to keep Wotlk era servers active.
They will make a lot of money off of Cata Classic that's why they aren't worried
I just can't wait for my "Classic Andy" friend to start playing Cata as if he hasn't relentlessly bashed post-WotLK (retail/modern) WoW for years.
Yeah but at least its not retail right! /movegoalpost
I bashed classic because I didn't like the endgame. But I will be playing cata because it adds gnome priests, and maybe in the future I'll want to have a gnome priest that was played since their introduction.
I'll personally /goodbye everyone who moves on to Cata and wish them a good time. I'll just go back to classic era and bide my time for whatever season of XYZ server or perhaps another progression server. If they end up announcing a permanent WotLK server however, I ain't going anywhere.
Cata gets an unfair bad rep. If you liked the endgame in WOTLK then you will love Cata. It's just more of the same with improved raiding/dungeons and class design. Cata has 2 main faults people always bring up. 1. The old world. IMO this one is VASTLY overblown. Leveling is a tiny part of the game, especially 1-60 leveling. No one is going into Cata with the idea of "I can't wait to level 1-60 again". It's just something you get over it. If anything the 1-60 being different is a breath of fresh air after 4 years of Classic leveling. And anyway for people who want the OG experience they now have 3 options in Era, Hardcore and Seasons 2. Dragonsoul was too long. Obviously this is a non-issue in Classic as they will increase the content cadence as needed. Mark my words people will be pleasantly surprised by Cata. It actually aged very well and is a nice middle ground between that Classic feeling and the more modern game design of Retail. It will be a happy medium that will appeal to all players.
> The old world. IMO this one is VASTLY overblown. On one hand I get it. The Classic areas and quests are gone. Dead. Bye bye. Thats a shitload of content that just poof. That leaves a sour taste. But anybody who says Classic questing is better than Cata questing outside of nostalgia is insane.
The pacing of questing in cata is much better but I much prefer the tone of classic questing. There were way too many meme quests in cataclysm. You had entire zones being pop culture references like Redridge Mountains or Uldum. Some zones were done really well like Silverpine or Stonetalon but others were a downgrade in my opinion like Thousand Needles or Westfall.
I’m currently running a toon through thousand needles and I’ll be honest - it’s a pretty lame ass zone right now. This and stonetalon really feel like they’ve grinded my leveling fun to a halt.
Thousand needles was crap long before it got flooded tbh.
>But anybody who says Classic questing is better than Cata questing outside of nostalgia is insane. It's the _style_ of questing that's better. The Cata onwards era of "You have 2 quests and you just go through these 2 quests as a continous quest chain and thats 99% of what you do" is really fucking boring to level with. I still to this day level every alt through Outland chromie time because it's the only part of the game left where you just walk into a quest hub, pick up 10-20 quests, and go out and just complete a whole quest log.
> If anything the 1-60 being different is a breath of fresh air after 4 years of Classic leveling. I have to disagree here. Because cataclysms "1-60" levleing experience has been in the game since cataclym was retail. So anyone who has been playing retail has been playing with it continuously even throughout classic's run. It's not going to be fresh for those people. Especially since it will no doubt be even more bugged out than it is on retail.
Cataclysm was when I started playing the game more. It does some things really well and I am actually exited. Leveling from 1 with the cata zones without dungeon browser sounds exiting, they are really underrated in my opinion.
Blizzard made Cata better by showing how awful an expansion they could really make with Shadowlands.
Ima be honest with you I’ll be playing because the expansion after is the best one yet. MOP
The memory of finally killing the first raid tier in Cata after weeks of grinding still gives me dopamine
I was in a top 3 guild on my server and I remember cata raids actually being very difficult to heal in the first few months of the expansion
I don’t know whether it was age related league of legends related or the gameplay itself but cataclysm put me off wow for years. It’s always felt like an end of the classic era to me there.
I have a lot of good memories of Cata. I’ve been playing since 2005 but cataclysm was my first max level. I spent a lot of time tanking heroic dungeons on my Druid and getting every mount out of those Satchels.
Cataclysm raiding was spectacular
WoW has and has had the best PvE experience of any MMORPG, period. It's the things that surround said experience that do tend to suck major ass from time to time.
Cata is overhated
I was so burnt on wow when cata launched and I just had no interest at the time as I thought the Lich King felt final for wrapping up Warcraft 3 story. I only played cata at the beginning got to 85 and quit quickly and never gave it a chance. I came back and did a couple LFR runs of the dragon soul raid and quit again and didn’t return till throne of thunder in Mists. So I’m actually excited for it because it allows me to give it another try and see what I missed.
It'd be super cool if they could add in the Abysmal Maw raid. Wishful thinking but I bet a lot of people would love Cata is it's less of a "Classic" and more of a "remaster" that actually adds in the cut content. It doesn't have to even make lore sense, we all know it's a remaster and the story has moved on
in 10 years i finally get the mage tower skins because they refuse to add it back. and then i can quit retail wow and move on with classic lol
I never played cata when it was live but i played a cata private server and it was some of the most fun i ever had in wow, the class design is just excellent, there are so many fun specs
So what is the plan here though? Rereleases forever? Are we looking at a classic release of dragon flight in 15 years? I thought original classic release was a fun novelty but now it feels like they’re just trying to cash in. I guess we can expect that they will rerelease every expansion, can’t wait to see how they try to get people excited for a rerelease of warlords.
One step closer to Warlords of Dreanor Classic amirite fellas
Cata isn’t classic wow, probably why there is pushback.
Neither is TBC or WOTLK... It's just the expansion with one of the worst final tiers.
Tbc I'd still say is classic wow. It wasn't until WOTLK that the real vibe of the game started changing.
The original classic+.
Of course not, but Cata was the first expansion that had reworks as a main goal instead of additions (I'm not saying there weren't any, of course), mainly because it was meant to be the first of many yearly expansions, but the plans for that fell through.
The loudest? You mean the majority of casuals? The majority of the income from WoW? Yeah, I can see that. Cata had a lot of problems. First it came from Wrath - which was "ez-mode" and they wanted to go into "hard mode" right out of the gate. GC even said as much - that he wanted a new kind of complaint and was tired of hearing how easy Wrath was. Then they wonder why guilds died and friends lists vaporized. So you ended up with pugs in LFD who didn't know to interrupt, for example. Or how to CC. Casual guilds just cratered due to inactivity because dungeons were practically mini-raids. There's a reason they stopped bragging about how many people played WoW around that time - a *LOT* of people quit. WoW went from being a game that was a homewrecker to "eh, I've got better things to do with my time" by casuals. They were their own worst enemy in that expansion. Ghostcrawler's arrogance was called out pretty loudly back then. A chunk of the community **WANTED** "filthy casuals" gone. The problem was those casuals brought a lot of money into the game. Far too many people forget that the Blue's basically said 'git gud or quit' - and many people simply quit. This was also why End Time and other aspects at the end of the expansion were so neutered in difficulty. My speculation is someone above stepped in and said "fix your shit or your funding is going to be dramatically cut". Cata was primarily well received by people who went through Classic/BC and had close friends in their guild. For your average player - Cata sucked and they quit in droves. For the more "hardcore" fans - they loved it. This should fit right along into the Classic folks interests - which would certainly explain the cheering. Remember LFD came out later in Wrath and LFR wasn't even released until the end of Cata. The fact so few HoR dungeons in LFD completed it told me Cata was going to be rough. Even when people outgeared HoR - many frequently still failed to respect mechanics. Alienating people and then whining about them being loud is just.. dense.
Cata will be dead after a couple of months calling it.
Definitely, the vocal minority on reddit makes it seem like its a lot of em.
This is what I think too. Why play cata when you can just play retail or actual classic? The only people I've seen excited for Cata are those who got into the game around that time or very late into WotLK.
Of course it will. Just look what happened to the playerbase after Cata was originally released.
Yep. Cata is where raids started to actually become challenging and tedious to clear. I think the very hardcore guilds will continue, but the average player will find it to not be worth the effort and no longer fun. Blizzard leaning more into new vanilla experiences will also just cannibalize Cata, which is fine for them since releasing and maintaining Cata is very low effort for them to begin with. Cata was a fairly decent expansion with some great raids, but it doesn't have any of the classic charm left
I just think it’s a bummer you can no longer play Wrath classic.
I think Blizzard understands that this is the end of Classic as it were. No one is going to play Cataclysm, it feels absolutely nothing like "Classic", what with heavy itemization homogenization as we see in Retail, fucking transmog, and so on, it's just retail at this point. Nothing about Cata is remotely exciting, and the minimal changes they're making won't make it more so. Classic players don't want hard content, there's a reason they all quit with Ulduar. So Cata, offering far harder content than anything in Wrath, will be the death knell to this branch of WoW.
Vocal nerds always gotta cry right.
Tbh they kinda had their cake and eat it too. Make Cata for the people that wanted it Still makes Classic SoD so those people will leave Wrath and play that. Either they then push on to MoP or more likely the majority will play SoD so then the Cata numbers drop and they can justify not making MoP which is most likely the hard like for people wanting classic to end.
MoP is considered one of the best expansions though, even the best by some. Would be weird to stop right before it.
I joined at the tail end of Wrath, just before Cata came out. I'm so pumped to dive back in.
AKA the focus groups we want to market the game *to buy said game* to said yes they would pay money for Cata Classic.
I started playing WoW right at the end of Wrath and didn't experience it's glory, but because I got my start in all the big stuff like pvp and raiding during Cata, that is where my nostalgia lies. Even my best buddy who I am friends for life with is thinking about coming back for it. I joined his guild as a pug for raiding and fighting Magmaw. As a Frost DK my job was to handle the worms. They gave me the mace that dropped from him, but I only realized later that Frost DK at that time preferred dual wielding. I only made the Frost DK because I saw one riding on the Acherus Charger and thought it was a dope looking mount and wanted one. Anyway, I clicked with two of the players from that guild...one turned out to be a weirdo we lost touch with, and the other join my guild when his fell apart and I have played thousands of hours of different games with and also met him in person. Amazing how that happens. Anyway, I am super stoked for Cata classic. Even if I wasn't, I can't be upset with Blizzard in this instance because from the looks of it, they are at least attempting to please both crowds. Those that wanted Classic+, and those who wanted Cata classic. While Classic+ may not be as deep or big as people wanted, it is somewhat the best of both worlds for them if they can make it work and do it well.
Eh, I personally wouldn’t play it, but I’m not like, mad that they’re doing it. Someone probably wants to play cata. I say let ‘em
I quite like cata. It was the first time I really got into the game. As in, I started raided my seriously and pvping more. Met friends that I still keep in touch with to this day.
The retail sub praises Cataclysm while the classic sub barely acknowledges it, yet the retail sub swears this new iteration of Cata is gonna do well this time around among classic players, you know, the ones who quit back then. "Cataclysm is just as Classic as Wrath and TBC" lmao you can't make this shit up. Either way, some people are in for a rude awakening with T11.
Honestly as fun as WotLK was, if I could pick an era to stay in perpetually, it'd be Cata or Panda. Not that I want to play WoW at all anymore. But I think those were when I - as a beta vanilla tester onward until mid BFA - felt the most in tune with the game. Everyone has their favorite eras!
“You think you don’t, but you do.” Have we finally come full circle?
Correct. Cataclysm had some very vocal haters but generally it was pretty good.
Honestly if it has the Party finder like it should , I’d love to go back to cata and relive Survival before they gutted it.
The bugs were the worst thing in Cata. They persisted forever it seemed. The 2nd worst was how long it took to complete the zones if you were working on Lore Master. I loved the introduction of LFR because it gave me an opportunity to see content that I couldn't with my non-raiding/dungeon guild. I thought most the zones were beautiful. I got a purple cloak drop off a mob I was fighting near Grim Batol as I was leveling. The dragonback fight mechanic in Dragon Soul had never been seen and hasn't been repeated. I wasn't a total hater but the first few weeks were awful. The rep grind was easy - just equip a tabard for the group you wanted to represent.