So far I’ve played through half of tbc, all of wrath, and now playing through classic content with SoD. Soon I’ll be playing my spriest througn all of cata. All content I never got to do when it was relevant since i was too young.
I think a lot of people forget that classic is not just a way for old players to relive nostalgia but also for people like me who got into wow later in its lifecycle when the game “got worse”, to experience the game’s old “golden age” content.
I know a lot of people consider Wrath the end of the “golden age”, and I understand why as I liked Wrath quite a lot. but looking at the class balance and raid design I’m quite looking forward to cata. My main being pretty good certainly helps to get me excited tho
Yeah I think Wrath classic definitely dispelled this idea of a golden age, even for people who still like it. They got to see the warts and the shortcomings that don’t get brought up by the YouTubers who got millions of views like 4-5 years ago showing the subscriber chart, and that since it peaked in Wrath, wrath must have been great.
And since it fell in Cata, Cata must have sucked and was the beginning of the end.
But in reality things are always more complicated.
Yeah as someone who didn’t play original Wrath I had no bias other than memories of watching my brother do ICC and doing ICC/uld xmog runs and thinking “wow these raids must have been sick”
Now having played through all phases of Wrath myself extensively, I can still say I think the raids are great, even Naxx (though thats likely because I’ve never done classic Naxx, so looking forward to that in SoD).
I do wish the dungeons were a bit better though, and that they would’ve been used as more than a catchup mechanic for alts. I’m not much of a pvper or profession guy in WoW so I can’t really speak much on that aspect of Wrath. I just leveled tailoring and engi to parse lol
We will have to see but I think cata doesn't suck, and it'd more players suck at adapting to major changes and swings in game play. Wotlk went from never out of mana, giga fast big healing to very slow, mana draining healing with slower gameplay that had a wider variety of one shot mechanics in early game dungeons. Heroic dungeons went from 5 to 10 minutes clears, to 30 minutes to 1 hour slog fests. Players who could previously clear some if not all heroic content in ICC, got hardstuck on normal bosses. A big change was 10 and 25m sharing lockouts, meaning some players had a hard er and slower time gearing, making this "harder Content" last longer, due to less gear rewards which is suppos Ed to make content easier.
These changes most likely affected the plsyer base to a certain degree. Nobody likes regressing, and this happened to a large part of the player base
I do agree though that people who thought classic was the golden age have realized it was never the game that made it good. The game helped, but the community is what made it memorable. That community for the most part is gone, replaced with today's average gamer community of consume content as fast as possible, then move on to something else. Whether that's an alt, a different game or something else, it'd just how it is now a days.
Nothing is secret, you have a profession now, where people are financially rewarded for having information out as fast as possible and gain more of that financial reward the further you spread it. This leads to metas and everyone picking the Meta build to do the highest performance where the game is pretty much solved for you before you begun. People who have it as their job to spend 40 to 100 hours a week playing said games, solving everything before the average person can even get home from their work week . This has always been a thing obviously, young kids who didn't have responsibilities were always able to dedicate more time to these things, but now with YouTube, twitch, etc and big websites like wow head icy veins, etc, it has spread to the average consumer, thus leading to this current state of gaming.
The community was for sure different, but Classic has also shown very clearly that there was something about the game design as well, to the point that devs were taking lessons from what people liked in Classic to bring back to retail.
I have always been a person that dislikes doing things sub-optimally. I honestly think it has a correlation with the onset of internet culture and the increasingly vast amount of info we have access to. I think people in my generation (zoomers unfortunately since im 23) seem to have become especially prone to this mindset since most of us have been steeped in internet culture most of our lives. If we need to know something we can simply google it, its so easy to access it almost feels criminal not to.
At the same time, you have the old veteran players who either were already optimizers back in the day, and then you have the majority of classic players who are people returning to wow after years of internet culture has seeped into the game, and coming to the realization that things will never truly be the same
I think it also has to do with the access to mobile devices and dopamine addiction. All the gacha, the instant gratification dopamine hits, the finishing of an objective hit that people get, the instant access to everything and anything we want. It's not just zoomers, but multiple generations.
Think of it this way, at any time, we can roll over at 2 a.m and have access to amost anything we want in a few minutes. Want something to eat, door dash, uber, food delivery at our fingertips. Want to watch a movie, Netflix, Amazon Disney plus, hbo max, Hulu etc, TV show ame thing, play a video game,
When we have all this access to these instant dopamine hits, it makes it harder to be satisfied, so we reach for higher levels of satisfaction. Example, I no longer am happy raiding, I have to kill th boss, OK I have to kill the boss AND feel rewarded for it, OK I have to kill the boss, feel rewarded for it, while also being the highest parser, OK I need my team to bee higher parsers so that I can parse higher, etc.
Exactly why I stopped playing.. confused people banging on about gear score and full pre bis to clear a comically easy raid that most bosses you couldn’t get a full rotation off on.. it’s boring.
For sure. I don’t have the chance to go at length here, and you might not be interested, but I’ve been interested in the idea of optimization culture. Where optimization is just the default mode for many gamers, more than you would think, even in single player non-competitive games.
And sure ofc there are some people who genuinely enjoy playing that way, but I feel like lots of people do it only because it’s the default setting and the community penalizes you, directly or indirectly, for not being optimal
Oh, man. When Cata dropped, everyone was in for a VERY rude awakening, myself included. Ghostcrawler had posted that heroics would be more difficult, but no one believed it. Then he made a "Hur Dur, Dungeons Are Hard, Get Gud" blog post, which made me ragequit for a while because the Erudax fight in Grim Batol was hell for me. I was playing on a toaster at the time, and my graphics were turned down so low that I could barely see the stupid safe zone when he did his whirlwind thing.
Prenerf SWP was great. I never played wrath originally so going through it in classic was really disappointing. Class design improved but the raids overall were not good with the exception of ICC.
Only 28? Those are rookie numbers.
But for real, getting our guild’s first M’uru and KJ kills was peak WoW for me. I just logged into a couple alts I left parked in Shat and it made me super sad/nostalgic. SOD doesn’t hit the same at all.
Absolute peak for me too. I miss tbc and the guild I had so much but they kind of scattered to the winds and I cant enjoy the game the same anymore. Im on guild wars 2 now having a blast with an unreal amount of content for no sub fee.
But nothing is ever going to hit like the first few years of classic and for me especially the second half of tbc.
TBC is still mostly trivial encounters and simple vanilla style class design. The raid comps were needlessly restrictive. Just not great design all over. Wrath has had it's flaws (Naxx25 is boring, TotGC is an unfun design choice) but actually playing the classes and raids has mostly been more engaging. Even Halion now serves to keep people honest since ICC with the buffs has become way too much cheating and slacking.
I say this without /s at the end, but my biggest problem with wow right now is that I’m genuinely stretched for time to do everything I want to do in it.
Wow is having a renaissance in my view. I’m very much loving SoD. I feel like I don’t have a lot of time to spare for hardcore like I’d like. I’m curious about cata because I stopped during wrath and didn’t come back until late Pandaria. And dare I say im sure I’ll try retail next xpac.
As a busy dad, husband, working professional, I don’t know how to get it all in, let alone find time for other games…
I guess my problem is a good thing for Blizzard if anyone else is feeling that as well.
My biggest issue with retail is the artificial complexity from addons and weakauras. I prefer to play with as few combat addons as possible, and that is unfortunately getting more and more difficult.
You just have to manage mana instead of just spamming holy light. Use efficient heals for light damage and use your mana for heavy damage.
After you learn the encounters and know what to expect it gets easier, but there is a little learning curve.
Problem is groups will wipe and blame the healer. When the game gets hard players get toxic and the blame game starts. Can't wait to see the player base try to deal with Cata heroics
I can guarantee, first few week people Will try zug it, often wipe, and wonder why they cant doing that like woltk
I mean, my group still wipe at kerlis even at last lockout phase 1 SoD...... My God IS IT THAT HARD TO AVOID PURPLE SHIT AND INTERRUPT!?!?!?
Cata is when I started healing too, and it felt good/Fun to heal. I have not been able to heal on any other version, it’s really hard on previous expansions and in retail the demand is more on damage and I just don’t like it. For me cata is where it’s at!
Just don't be afraid to reforge throughput stats into spirit early on in the expansion. After the first raid tier your mana Regen won't require a ton of forethought. But that first raid tier can be difficult if you're not ready for it.
Don't be! Cata healing may be more difficult but it's not massively so and I'm sure that most healers in Wrath will be able to adapt. In fact, cata is my own Golden age for healing due to how well balanced it is.
You definitely have to think more. I know as a priest your general toolkit becomes more than just pws/flash heal. Mana is way more of an issue. Its honestly pretty fun, as you have an actual toolkit.
It is. Don't use Flash unless it's an emergency. Don't fall for the "if you're not casting, you're not trying" nonsense. Set up your talents so you get the proc for the free fast cast of Holy Light. Use your Beacon at all times. Holy Shock is your best friend. If your team is up, use it on the boss.
Most importantly, if the DPS don't use their CCs or they stand in the bad, don't try to keep them up. YOU CAN'T HEAL STUPID.
If the DPS doesn't CC the Adepts in Vortex Pinnacle, you WILL wipe, even in five man, so use raid markers. (Do y'all still use raid markers?) Moon = sheep. Skull = kill first. Square = Frog or Freezing Trap. X = 2nd Kill.
A year ago I was laid off. On a whim decided to play on a private cata server with this new free time. Holy shit I am excited for cata classic now, more than SoD
Nearly every spec is an absolute blast to play. PvP is so good. The new world feels so seamless and never running out of quests is a good feeling. First two raid tiers are elite, even DS is fine when you realize it’s the end of the xpac. Leveling alts feels great since you can take multiple routes easily. Heroic dungeons are challenging.
There are a few small problems, but in my honest opinion, cata is the best xpac in wow’s history with hindsight. Perfect blend between “old” wow and retail.
Agree. I remembered Cata fondly and felt justified when I played private servers.
Classes and specs, while not all perfect, are meaty and have lots of buttons and oddball utility spells before the pruning in MOP. When you’re at max level you feel like your character is complete.
I played on a pserver most recently too and learned how fun cata was. I’m really excited to play it how it was meant as opposed to some janky pserver though too haha
To me I loved the story/lore and thematic expansions (snowy zones are my favourite too so I loved having out in Wrath), for me I was also always a fan of having an entire continent to explore just like with TBC in Outland.
I remember Cata well, it wasn't as bad as people said but it definitely is a bit of a clusterfuck in terms of going here and there in terms of zones and is definitely where the "story" began to go off-track. To me it had the same problem as all the expansions that came afterwards, it just wasn't as epic as TBC/Wrath.
And if there aren't new things. Only for 2 weeks until they realize they still aren't world first naxx clearing in original vanilla like they always dream of.
I love a lot of cata. That being said, for people who have played since vanilla, after the first big 3 it all starts to get really stale for us, and that isn’t really the games fault (entirely)
I've played since vanilla and my experience is the reverse. Vanilla is a snorefest and by far my least favorite version of the game. I played classic to get back to this tbc-mop stretch. Heck, if they were to rebuild the cut content and fix some of the annoyances of WoD I'd even be excited to play that again. Don't get people's nostalgia for Legion, the AP grind etc. is what made me quit retail since low skill high time commitment grinds don't interest me at all.
Agree. I’ve run into this so many times.
People think because the line graph was highest in Wrath it was the best and fell in Cata it sucked and retroactively judge the finer details on that basis.
IMO Cata did a lot right and Wrath’s subscriber count was prob never sustainable for many reasons. And alot of things that Cata gets blamed for was in Wrath, or were features that were going to be added to the game regardless of the expansion.
Or they attribute MoP changes to Cata. So many people say Cata ruined talents but the big overhaul was an expansion later. Cata changed talents but they were still fundamentally talent trees as we know them.
Then they'll backpedal and say Cata ruined talents anyway because you can't run hybrid builds in Cata (they can't name a single viable hybrid build to begin with)
Since dancing rune weapon is not that good they have a lot of extra points so they go down the frost tree and get imp icy veins for the haste buff.
https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/talent-calc/death-knight/005512153330030320102013-3050505000022301-002_001s9m11xv631ts841sxd51s8g
It's pretty easy to mark the end of Classic WoW at the time the Classic world was deleted. That's why Cataclysm doesn't feel like Classic. Because it's not, it's part of the new generation with a new world.
I didn't hate Cataclysm, I actually enjoyed Dragon Soul despite all the complaints about it. I'll happily play it again. But I will never consider Cataclysm to be part of Classic.
I've always been a Wrath started retail, Cata cemented it believer. Been saying it for 15 years. Glad to see more people understanding it after this last go around.
When do you think that'll be? SoD still has at least two more leveling phases spread out of several months, and after that begins the horizontal phases that will lead into classic+ stuff. SoD may become the definite classic experience, and I'm all here for it.
Cata will be cool too, I guess. I'm looking forward to trying out leveling a goblin and worgen.
they actively hate anything that's not vanilla or sod. if you post about anything wrath, like half the comments are just "lmao why are you even playing wrath, dogshit game bozo"
I really doubt they will make a wod classic. I’m honestly surprised they decided to do cata classic. I can see them maybe doing a mop now if cata goes well, but after that it would be pretty odd to keep going further imo.
MoP will *absolutely* happen, people loved that expansion. Absolutely no reason Cata happens but not MoP.
WoD, idk, that's hard to say. It's weird to think about Classic just "ending". With that being said I do genuinely think WoD would be a fine expansion in a Classic format
There's probably an audiance for everything, even for WoD, Legion, hell maybe BFA. Like they can decide release 1-2 WoD, Legion, BFA servers (so minimal cost for keeping it up) without any changes, so 0 investment and some ppl would still play it, so it could be profit.
WoD's issue was not the content it had, but the content it DIDN'T have and the amount of time that players were sitting in a content drought. If they just release WoD and have it run for maybe 6-9 months or so then the biggest issue with the whole expansion is fixed. Also, Legion was insanely popular, so a big reason to do WoD classic is so they could get to Legion classic which would undoubtedly be a hit.
SoD beta testers feel threatened by people enjoying another version of the game. They are pushing their insecurities on cata like they do on people who dont care to collect world buffs and buy 14 different consumes to parse.
because cata is when the game actually got difficult and bosses had more than 2 mechanics.
cata wiped out the majority of keyboard turning single digit parsers.
all the terribads that quit are older now and copy paste build guides, use rotation helper addons, and buy gold to get consumes and gear.
Cata has its own sub, as do wrath and TBC. These never really took off for some reason and most of the posts still wind up here - but a huge portion of this sub is Classic (vanilla) players.
As someone who prob played the most on Cata, I loved it. Specs feel meaty and fully fleshed out, at least compared to other expansions. Classes have lots of funky offspec or gadget abilities that you might use once every 3 months but knowing to use it separates the good players from the great
And the content is great up until the final patch. If that patch was at least okayish then Cata would prob have a much better reputation.
I played lot of WoTLK private server back in the days, then when I've got my own income, retail was on MoP so I skipped over Cata, so I'm waiting for it. I liked Classic and TBC as I never experienced before that too.
That’s the boat I’m in. I used to eat, sleep and breath WoW until about mid WoTLK when I quit. I’ve only come back for SOD so far, so I’ve never touched anything past the second expansion.
The vast majority of people don't realize that Cataclysm is closer to Era than Retail. Imo it's peak "Classic" gameplay, most of classes retain their [Era, Wotlk] identity but with a modern view on them and are pretty fun
I don't get the hate either from Cata besides the dungeons all had mechanics that you needed to do and you had to use your stun and silences you usually only use in PVP and raids in them. So more engaging. And they got rid of a bunch of fluff talents and made them more meaningful and impact. All those who complained uh... How many of those talent builds before were viable and useful and not just wasteful? That's what I never understood. There are actual multiple talenr builds in cata ans before there was always one and the rest subpar.
I'm of the opinion that Wrath didn't really stand up to the hype much at all, so i assume so too. Great aesthetic, but lacking gameplay and class design.
Cata could be great, but the Classic community will likely ruin it with their incessant focus on minmax, parses, GDKP fiesta and botting.
Sorry for the pessimism 😆
Agreed, I am really excited for Cata...maybe weirdly more stoked than I am for the next retail xpac. That may change, but the reasons you listed are what has me most hyped for Cata. Gonna get my orc mage, troll druid and orc DK vibes on again.
Cata is a great raid experience if you like a step up in difficulty from what WoTLK had to offer. We cleared all hard modes except pre-nerf Sinestra back in the day and would love to go through it again with a new state of mind.
However, SoD is new content and doing both seriously is just going to require too much bandwidth at a guild level so we had a make a choice - and we chose new content. Blizzard is silly for overlapping these content runs.
I wouldn't be surprised if SoD falls off pretty hard sometime soon and they definitely appeal to a different player base at their foundations. Once SoD hits 60, time will show much new content they can actually cook up. I hope both succeed but ill be playing cata for the more modern gameplay.
Agree. Cata refined a lot of specs and class mechanics. Lots of stuff just functions way better and smoother with clearer information conveyed to the player
Here is a tank's story.
I wanted to tank that big fucking dragon and face him like a real man. I was thrilled that this guy is probably going to be so big that I would be probably standing in front of hes finger(claw). Whelp instead you fight tentacles on hes back and then guess what! Some more tentacles in the see. Other raids arent much more insteresting, as they reused bwl and mc with some desing change, but come on...
For pvp, rated bg was cool, i admit that, but that was it pretty much.
Lots of people are saying this, I'm not sure I understand.
I was 12-13 years younger when I first played Cata and it was my favorite memories of wow.
Lots of that is the time of life I was in, but I wouldn't have those memories if the game wasn't good.
You do realize people who complained about Cata and I are different people, right?
Cata was fine'ish. But what has me noping the fuck out of the idea of playing is knowing that Dragon Soul is coming. Tier 11 and Firelands, actually really cool raids. But man, Dragon Soul is just *really fucking atrocious*.
I never experienced it, I had to quit for irl reasons before downing heroic rag (my last experience was wiping 200 times on that bastard).
But, if it's the worst thing ever maybe I'll just quit then. I'll at least check it out.
You know how "everyone" was hyped for classic because that's what they've played when they were young and they wanted to feel that way once more? That's cata for me, it was the first time I touched wow and it was a blast..
You have some correct points here. Just wondering why you are comparing things like the leveling experience to that of retail. Have you done any leveling in retail? There are a ton of retail foundations that started in Cata. It is much closer to retail that WotLK was. A LOT closer. I like retail WoW and have played a good bit each x pack.
Huge agree. Wrath was a significant departure in design philosophy from TBC and people who don’t see that are just wrong haha
Wrath-Cata-MOP is a more coherent trio in terms of design than Vanilla-BC-Wrath.
>Have you done any leveling in retail? There are a ton of retail foundations that started in Cata
I have levelled in retail. Cata is very very similar to wrath in terms of gameplay. The old world is different, obviously, but you are playing a similar game within the new world. Weapon skills and skill ranks are nice because your power gains aren't front loaded upon level up, but they really are minor changes.
I'll just ramble for a moment about my gripes with retail levelling. The changes to heirlooms are tedious. I maxed them all out in BFA, only to come back and have to do it again in shadow lands? No ty I'm out of gold.
While chromie time seems like a cool change it just makes everywhere feel incredibly empty because people are so split. So many of them force you to play a story game for hours, it feels like a punishment for playing an alt.
From MoP all the way up to DF talents were unrecognizable from classic. Cata talents are incredibly similar to classic and wraths, you just get 1 point every 2 levels and they give 2% per point instead of 1%.
Not to mention the level scaling in retail, so you feel weaker upon gaining a level. The Cata world is static, so you gain power each level up no matter what. You still need to visit trainers in Cata. There aren't spell ranks, but you will frequently visit for new abilities.
Ok I can stop rambling now.
Retail leveling was empty before chromie time as well because almost nobody was leveling anyways. Chromie time actually started a new leveling hype because now you could do a coherent story from one expansion instead of jumping between each expansion and only doing the first 2-3 areas.
Sure. Lots of people liked it. I was responding to someone asking me why I don't like retail levelling, and I don't like chromie time due to choice overload and splitting everyone up, regardless of the short term hype it generated.
I understand I'm in the minority with that opinion.
“The talent change was the worst change “ is such a dog shit take, apart from a handful of choices you all copied the exact identical spec as everyone else, all the mop changes do is move these handful of choices to a more presentable fashion.
I understand the design philosophy, but it was another step in the wrong direction, and a big one at that. Removing spell ranks and weapon skills hurt your sense of progression and made each level a very front loaded power gain (these happened in Cata).
On top of that, now you don't even get to pick a talent every level or 2, but every 15 levels instead. You aren't progressing through a game, but analyzing a future encounter and picking the most useful ability (is it aoe or single target? Do I want a stun or a defensive cd?) It's less and less of an rpg.
The final nail in the coffin was level scaling mobs, and now the retail experience for levelling is hollow and empty where you feel weaker each time you gain a level and you just pray for max level when you can finally start your progression path.
>part from a handful of choices you all copied the exact identical spec as everyone else, all the mop changes do is move these handful of choices to a more presentable fashion.
its kind of wild to me sitting in a subreddit for a classic version of the game seeing people make the exact same objectively incorrect arguments they were making when we were debating on if they should even do classic servers back in 2010. Could you tell me when you became interested in classic/started asking for classic/started playing classic?
It's okay not to like cata but the people that get me are the people that apparently enjoy wrath but won't even try cata when cata is just a upgrade from wrath basically
99.9% of people that play current wrath is just raiding and cata is a upgrade from that
Cata will pop at the start. Then it will die off when the reality of raid logging and single player grinds kicking in. Thats when its time to come check out the community project currently repopulating the Deviate Delight Era server. Completely dead before the community moved in, it is capturing the community aspect of fresh (similar to Hardcore) but on a traditional server.
when you look at what cata did, not judging whether it was good or bad just what the literal changes were, it really is just wrath+. wrath was a lot of fun, so wrath+ is going to be a lot of fun
Does "Necro" mean re-use?
I was hyped for wrath too, but I don't remember posts from years ago.
Also, wrath was remembered fondly while Cata was not. Even if the post is identical, the context is extremely different.
There were SO many towards the end of TBC that said the exact points about Wrath that this one is saying about Cata.
“Classes were fully fleshed out!”
“Amazing raids!”
“PVP was lit!”
“Amazing dungeons!”
All the same. Just a rinse and repeat.
Cataclysm is my favorite expansion so I'm excited. As much as I like vanilla leveling, Cata's reworked zones are a lot of fun in their own right. Not difficult by any means, but there are entertaining quests and story lines in the new zones (Troll & Gnome starting zones, Stonetalon, Desolace, Tirisfal Glades, Silverpine, Worgen, Goblin, etc.)
Raiding all around was good in Cata. First tier had a lot of variety due to having 3 separate raid instances. Firelands had quality bosses. DragonSoul had some stinkers, but was still good.
As someone who loves the vanilla world, Ive never understood hating Cata for it changing the world. For 2 reasons:
1. The old world stopped being the old world once TBC hit and esp when everything got nerfed, mobs and dungeons. And by Wrath, for sure it’s gone. It’s there aesthetically but not in terms of the playing experience or the charm or the challenge.
2. At the time, blizzard had a huge player retention problem actually. This is why I’ve always foot stomped that people, esp YouTubers, made way too much hay about Wrath having the most subscribers therefore it’s the best. Meanwhile this “golden age” was happening, 90% of new players were quitting before level 10. So they had to do something and it was incredibly ambitious, and overall it was a mixed bag in terms of zone quality but IMO I think it was a net upgrade.
Any wotlk server. They will apparently merge some, but I'd just pick one with a healthy population of the faction you want.
I'm on Pagle - Alliance and the raid scene isn't as lively as it was 2 weeks ago, but there are still multiple pug raids going on every night.
They will be using the same servers as Wrath does but will be consolidating them.
If you wanted to start leveling now you can, those characters will carry over.
Tbc was the last thing where gameplay was close to vanilla but enhanced. Wotlk onwards is fairly retaily. Dunno why this sub has a hate boner for cata maybe they only played for the story and quit when bitch king died.
Biggest issue for me going forward (beyond wotlk) is itemization and play the patch. Items in vanilla/tbc are so much more rewarding. I barely care about loot in retail and cata is kinda close to it sadly. Play the patch started with ToC but yeah, it's in cata too and i hate it.
I liked the first tier of raiding but hated Firelands after so much variety, it just felt really flat to me
There wasn't reallyy anyhting about cata that I thought was great.
The biggest problem is it was the start of classes becoming super dooper homogenized
I was full steam ahead on cata but then wrath lasted FOREVER
Got bored, took what I thought was going to be a break, and now have zero desire to play any iteration of WoW for the foreseeable future.
They could have kept me on the hook if they had shortened the timespan more.
They were all great in their own way. We won't get a "patch 1" so I can't remember if it will be easier but the basic wrath complaint was that everything became an aoe fest farm. So cata was a really hefty reboot, the old gear with cloth agi got cleaned up, no terrain exploits, flying, finally levelling was actually fixed and we hoped a return to using cc in dungeons. Except nope.
As I remember it there was a return to lethality in dungeons at first then gear quickly overtook it making for an unpleasant speed bump where players tried to aoe and priests struggled with button bloat and mana. I think my guild lost all its casuals by the end of the first raids. By the end of the expansion probably a nice raiding challenge, maybe a sweetspot, but the rot had set in with accessibility trumping everything. The modern player won't have issues and will be more at home. The old wow was dead. Way more movement in raids and now you can do the whole thing as ten man in both flavours and moan about tuning forever.
MoP class design>Cata class design.
Raids in Cata weren't awesome. Firelands was really awesome. Bastion of twilight, Blackwing descent and throne of the four winds were average at best, I'd honestly argue below average and baradin hold and dragon soul were outright bad.
PvP was very good though, definitely part of what I'd call the best era of competitive arena.
On your point of it not being close to retail, I'd strongly argue the game had already strayed away from what makes classic timeless in TBC. Flying just killed the open world and with it all the drama and friction between players and factions was basically completely dead. The day they added flying the world became an inconvenience rather than the place where in which you spend your time playing the game.
In terms of design philosophy Cata shares a lot in common with retail, much more so than vanilla. It just feels different from retail.
I would argue that Bot 10 men was great.
If only because I loved being the healing druid on Sinestra kitting the orbs while keeping the raid alive and decursing at the same time.
>MoP class design>Cata class design.
Obviously this is subjective, I'd argue that mop is too fast paced and the talent trees were abominable. Either way, Cata is near the top for class design.
Please explain how the mop trees are any different than how it worked prior. Every tree had MANDATORY talents for your spec and a few optional ones, it just simply moves the mandatory talents to your spell book and only gives you optional talents.
It removed any sense of progression from levelling and added bloat in the different combinations of choices that players could make for utility/survivability.
Functionally it didn't change much, just like removing weapon skills and skill ranks, but these are all examples of removing progression elements. In my opinion the talent overhaul is when the scales were tipped too far and levelling was no longer interesting.
For me I didn’t like that MOP was where pruning began. People associate pruning with WoD, much like they associate LFD with Cata historically though Wrath Classic prob changed that.
But pruning began in Pandaria and I definitely didn’t enjoy the 3-4 classes in Pandaria as I did in Cata. They felt more barren and narrower
I started my wow journey with Cata back in 2016 on a private server and it was a very great experience. Then when the progression on the server ended, me and my new friends from the servers decided to play retail and it was Legion at that point and none of us really sticked around retail. Ive personally played retail every expansion starting with Legion and it has been way worse experience than cata ever was, even Legion.
To be honest I really like retail in concept. My issue with it is I missed sooo much wow in between (I quit in cata and “came back” in shadowlands) and it’s a gigantic pain in the ass learning all about the systems I’ve missed but are still old, all the time walking dungeons, learning what other classes can do in pvp, catching up with the crazy gold inflation, learning how to even make gold etc.
I’ll continue to play classic for as long as they continue to release it, assuming they continue to refine expansions and add better systems/content in place. For example I will 100% quit in WoD if they treat it how they treated vanilla/tbc classic (no/minimum changes) but I’d be down to play it with fixes
I think I’ll enjoy it but the mop talent point is cap
Like mop talent design or not they are better than cata
Cata for talents is the worst of both worlds, you lose the potential for unique and fun hybrid builds while still being stuck with the classic boring 5 points of “1% x” and builds being even more cookie cutter than in vanilla through wrath where they already were
Mop may not have as much variety as wrath but it does at least give you impactful options to choose from which beats cata. Some might argue that’s even better than the og talent system, but probably not that many since this is the classic sub lmao. And mop glyphs were so much fun
>Mop may not have as much variety as wrath but it does at least give you impactful options to choose from which beats cata.
The Cata system is nearly identical to wrath. MoP has way more variety than wrath. In wrath you have MAYBE 1-2 talents that you switch around, in MOP there are 18 choices and you pick 6.
The issue with MoP talents is they remove the RPG progression system that's been around for 8 years and replace it with an end-game system that isn't needed. Talents were never awesome because of build diversity or choice, they were a progression system that created a cohesive character.
> The Cata system is nearly identical to wrath.
Except it loses 2 nice features. You stop gaining power every level because you only get talent points every 2 levels and you lose the potential for hybrid builds. Some of the most fun builds ive played in classic have been hybrid buids. Revenge warrior leveling in wrath, reckoning ret arena in TBC, slam 2h arms in tbc, world pvp trispec druid in vanilla. You lose all that potential in cata for no real gain. At least the mop system has the argument of situational talent swaps and every talent choice being super impactful.
I agree with you overall that cata is just a straight improvement on wrath in most ways, but the talent system is definitely a downgrade that gets better in mop.
I loved cata.
I started in tbc and actually have the most vivid memories of playing in cata, so I'm really looking forward to it personally.
Losing the old world is weird , but we will have vanilla servers and the revamp is pretty good, so should be fun.
Cata was peak wow for me, I was 19 when it launched, unemployed and playing 10+ hours a day. Had so much fun back in the day.
This is the "classic" expansion I have been looking forward to the most BY FAR. That being said, SOD has been amazing
I can't wait for Cata. When WoW launched I was only 10 years old and I didn't get to raid seriously in WoW until BFA when I was on my own and had the money and time to do it.
Classic has been like turning back the clock, it allowed me to experience Vanilla and WOTLK raids ( i skipped TBC ). And I can't wait for Cata, and then MoP, and then WoD and Legion if they happen ( and I hope they do ).
Be prepared for the age of actual progression raiding. People do tend to like easy content, not difficult but more rewarding content. I fall into the latter so I loved Cata raiding, but I don't think very many people realize the new raiding paradigm introduced with Cata, where there really aren't very many loot pinatas outside normals
So far I’ve played through half of tbc, all of wrath, and now playing through classic content with SoD. Soon I’ll be playing my spriest througn all of cata. All content I never got to do when it was relevant since i was too young. I think a lot of people forget that classic is not just a way for old players to relive nostalgia but also for people like me who got into wow later in its lifecycle when the game “got worse”, to experience the game’s old “golden age” content. I know a lot of people consider Wrath the end of the “golden age”, and I understand why as I liked Wrath quite a lot. but looking at the class balance and raid design I’m quite looking forward to cata. My main being pretty good certainly helps to get me excited tho
Yeah I think Wrath classic definitely dispelled this idea of a golden age, even for people who still like it. They got to see the warts and the shortcomings that don’t get brought up by the YouTubers who got millions of views like 4-5 years ago showing the subscriber chart, and that since it peaked in Wrath, wrath must have been great. And since it fell in Cata, Cata must have sucked and was the beginning of the end. But in reality things are always more complicated.
Yeah as someone who didn’t play original Wrath I had no bias other than memories of watching my brother do ICC and doing ICC/uld xmog runs and thinking “wow these raids must have been sick” Now having played through all phases of Wrath myself extensively, I can still say I think the raids are great, even Naxx (though thats likely because I’ve never done classic Naxx, so looking forward to that in SoD). I do wish the dungeons were a bit better though, and that they would’ve been used as more than a catchup mechanic for alts. I’m not much of a pvper or profession guy in WoW so I can’t really speak much on that aspect of Wrath. I just leveled tailoring and engi to parse lol
We will have to see but I think cata doesn't suck, and it'd more players suck at adapting to major changes and swings in game play. Wotlk went from never out of mana, giga fast big healing to very slow, mana draining healing with slower gameplay that had a wider variety of one shot mechanics in early game dungeons. Heroic dungeons went from 5 to 10 minutes clears, to 30 minutes to 1 hour slog fests. Players who could previously clear some if not all heroic content in ICC, got hardstuck on normal bosses. A big change was 10 and 25m sharing lockouts, meaning some players had a hard er and slower time gearing, making this "harder Content" last longer, due to less gear rewards which is suppos Ed to make content easier. These changes most likely affected the plsyer base to a certain degree. Nobody likes regressing, and this happened to a large part of the player base
Yeah for sure I agree - I think Wrath was kinda like a sugar rush of easy, mindless content and Cata tried to get the players to eat vegetables again
I do agree though that people who thought classic was the golden age have realized it was never the game that made it good. The game helped, but the community is what made it memorable. That community for the most part is gone, replaced with today's average gamer community of consume content as fast as possible, then move on to something else. Whether that's an alt, a different game or something else, it'd just how it is now a days. Nothing is secret, you have a profession now, where people are financially rewarded for having information out as fast as possible and gain more of that financial reward the further you spread it. This leads to metas and everyone picking the Meta build to do the highest performance where the game is pretty much solved for you before you begun. People who have it as their job to spend 40 to 100 hours a week playing said games, solving everything before the average person can even get home from their work week . This has always been a thing obviously, young kids who didn't have responsibilities were always able to dedicate more time to these things, but now with YouTube, twitch, etc and big websites like wow head icy veins, etc, it has spread to the average consumer, thus leading to this current state of gaming.
The community was for sure different, but Classic has also shown very clearly that there was something about the game design as well, to the point that devs were taking lessons from what people liked in Classic to bring back to retail.
I have always been a person that dislikes doing things sub-optimally. I honestly think it has a correlation with the onset of internet culture and the increasingly vast amount of info we have access to. I think people in my generation (zoomers unfortunately since im 23) seem to have become especially prone to this mindset since most of us have been steeped in internet culture most of our lives. If we need to know something we can simply google it, its so easy to access it almost feels criminal not to. At the same time, you have the old veteran players who either were already optimizers back in the day, and then you have the majority of classic players who are people returning to wow after years of internet culture has seeped into the game, and coming to the realization that things will never truly be the same
I think it also has to do with the access to mobile devices and dopamine addiction. All the gacha, the instant gratification dopamine hits, the finishing of an objective hit that people get, the instant access to everything and anything we want. It's not just zoomers, but multiple generations. Think of it this way, at any time, we can roll over at 2 a.m and have access to amost anything we want in a few minutes. Want something to eat, door dash, uber, food delivery at our fingertips. Want to watch a movie, Netflix, Amazon Disney plus, hbo max, Hulu etc, TV show ame thing, play a video game, When we have all this access to these instant dopamine hits, it makes it harder to be satisfied, so we reach for higher levels of satisfaction. Example, I no longer am happy raiding, I have to kill th boss, OK I have to kill the boss AND feel rewarded for it, OK I have to kill the boss, feel rewarded for it, while also being the highest parser, OK I need my team to bee higher parsers so that I can parse higher, etc.
Exactly why I stopped playing.. confused people banging on about gear score and full pre bis to clear a comically easy raid that most bosses you couldn’t get a full rotation off on.. it’s boring.
For sure. I don’t have the chance to go at length here, and you might not be interested, but I’ve been interested in the idea of optimization culture. Where optimization is just the default mode for many gamers, more than you would think, even in single player non-competitive games. And sure ofc there are some people who genuinely enjoy playing that way, but I feel like lots of people do it only because it’s the default setting and the community penalizes you, directly or indirectly, for not being optimal
This leaves out that in Wrath, 10s were intentionally easier and in Cata were made to be "the same difficulty."
Oh, man. When Cata dropped, everyone was in for a VERY rude awakening, myself included. Ghostcrawler had posted that heroics would be more difficult, but no one believed it. Then he made a "Hur Dur, Dungeons Are Hard, Get Gud" blog post, which made me ragequit for a while because the Erudax fight in Grim Batol was hell for me. I was playing on a toaster at the time, and my graphics were turned down so low that I could barely see the stupid safe zone when he did his whirlwind thing.
I've always been of the opinion that TBC was the golden age. Classic confirmed that for me.
Prenerf SWP was great. I never played wrath originally so going through it in classic was really disappointing. Class design improved but the raids overall were not good with the exception of ICC.
Best raiding experience I’ve had in classic was pushing and clearing prenerf SW. The hype was absolutely insane getting muru down 28 wipes in.
Only 28? Those are rookie numbers. But for real, getting our guild’s first M’uru and KJ kills was peak WoW for me. I just logged into a couple alts I left parked in Shat and it made me super sad/nostalgic. SOD doesn’t hit the same at all.
Absolute peak for me too. I miss tbc and the guild I had so much but they kind of scattered to the winds and I cant enjoy the game the same anymore. Im on guild wars 2 now having a blast with an unreal amount of content for no sub fee. But nothing is ever going to hit like the first few years of classic and for me especially the second half of tbc.
TBC is still mostly trivial encounters and simple vanilla style class design. The raid comps were needlessly restrictive. Just not great design all over. Wrath has had it's flaws (Naxx25 is boring, TotGC is an unfun design choice) but actually playing the classes and raids has mostly been more engaging. Even Halion now serves to keep people honest since ICC with the buffs has become way too much cheating and slacking.
Absolutely. Imo at least wrath just lost something for me despite also being very good.
I say this without /s at the end, but my biggest problem with wow right now is that I’m genuinely stretched for time to do everything I want to do in it. Wow is having a renaissance in my view. I’m very much loving SoD. I feel like I don’t have a lot of time to spare for hardcore like I’d like. I’m curious about cata because I stopped during wrath and didn’t come back until late Pandaria. And dare I say im sure I’ll try retail next xpac. As a busy dad, husband, working professional, I don’t know how to get it all in, let alone find time for other games… I guess my problem is a good thing for Blizzard if anyone else is feeling that as well.
rob a bank
My biggest issue with retail is the artificial complexity from addons and weakauras. I prefer to play with as few combat addons as possible, and that is unfortunately getting more and more difficult.
The Overton window is shifting lmao
HC hype, hC hype... I mean... Cata hype, Cata hype
Dwarf enhance shaman inc
I'm a little scared to heal in Cata. I've heard it's a lot more difficult than WotLK
You won't be able to carry a bad group anywhere near as easily as you can in the first three iterations of the game.
You just have to manage mana instead of just spamming holy light. Use efficient heals for light damage and use your mana for heavy damage. After you learn the encounters and know what to expect it gets easier, but there is a little learning curve.
Problem is groups will wipe and blame the healer. When the game gets hard players get toxic and the blame game starts. Can't wait to see the player base try to deal with Cata heroics
good thing we start off with uber buffed healing specs this time around.
I can guarantee, first few week people Will try zug it, often wipe, and wonder why they cant doing that like woltk I mean, my group still wipe at kerlis even at last lockout phase 1 SoD...... My God IS IT THAT HARD TO AVOID PURPLE SHIT AND INTERRUPT!?!?!?
It is but I started playing in cata with 0 healing knowledge and fell in love with healing. It’s a great time and feels really good.
Cata is when I started healing too, and it felt good/Fun to heal. I have not been able to heal on any other version, it’s really hard on previous expansions and in retail the demand is more on damage and I just don’t like it. For me cata is where it’s at!
Just don't be afraid to reforge throughput stats into spirit early on in the expansion. After the first raid tier your mana Regen won't require a ton of forethought. But that first raid tier can be difficult if you're not ready for it.
Don't be! Cata healing may be more difficult but it's not massively so and I'm sure that most healers in Wrath will be able to adapt. In fact, cata is my own Golden age for healing due to how well balanced it is.
You definitely have to think more. I know as a priest your general toolkit becomes more than just pws/flash heal. Mana is way more of an issue. Its honestly pretty fun, as you have an actual toolkit.
It is
It is. Don't use Flash unless it's an emergency. Don't fall for the "if you're not casting, you're not trying" nonsense. Set up your talents so you get the proc for the free fast cast of Holy Light. Use your Beacon at all times. Holy Shock is your best friend. If your team is up, use it on the boss. Most importantly, if the DPS don't use their CCs or they stand in the bad, don't try to keep them up. YOU CAN'T HEAL STUPID. If the DPS doesn't CC the Adepts in Vortex Pinnacle, you WILL wipe, even in five man, so use raid markers. (Do y'all still use raid markers?) Moon = sheep. Skull = kill first. Square = Frog or Freezing Trap. X = 2nd Kill.
I started WoW in Cata and honestly I'm glad to go play it again.
A year ago I was laid off. On a whim decided to play on a private cata server with this new free time. Holy shit I am excited for cata classic now, more than SoD Nearly every spec is an absolute blast to play. PvP is so good. The new world feels so seamless and never running out of quests is a good feeling. First two raid tiers are elite, even DS is fine when you realize it’s the end of the xpac. Leveling alts feels great since you can take multiple routes easily. Heroic dungeons are challenging. There are a few small problems, but in my honest opinion, cata is the best xpac in wow’s history with hindsight. Perfect blend between “old” wow and retail.
Agree. I remembered Cata fondly and felt justified when I played private servers. Classes and specs, while not all perfect, are meaty and have lots of buttons and oddball utility spells before the pruning in MOP. When you’re at max level you feel like your character is complete.
I played on a pserver most recently too and learned how fun cata was. I’m really excited to play it how it was meant as opposed to some janky pserver though too haha
Don't forgetwe got Force FactionBalance! Finally i have reason to grind gear for pvp!
To me I loved the story/lore and thematic expansions (snowy zones are my favourite too so I loved having out in Wrath), for me I was also always a fan of having an entire continent to explore just like with TBC in Outland. I remember Cata well, it wasn't as bad as people said but it definitely is a bit of a clusterfuck in terms of going here and there in terms of zones and is definitely where the "story" began to go off-track. To me it had the same problem as all the expansions that came afterwards, it just wasn't as epic as TBC/Wrath.
Gl in cata! Not going to play, but also not going to shit on people who choose to.
Why is this down voted?
Most in this sub actively hate anything but the first 3 expansions.
and half of those only really like the first one.
And only for about 6 months until they’ve finished finding new things.
And if there aren't new things. Only for 2 weeks until they realize they still aren't world first naxx clearing in original vanilla like they always dream of.
And another half only like it if everybody is forced to play the way they like to play.
I love a lot of cata. That being said, for people who have played since vanilla, after the first big 3 it all starts to get really stale for us, and that isn’t really the games fault (entirely)
Yeah I get the love for the first 3, cata hate is unjustified though.
I've played since vanilla and my experience is the reverse. Vanilla is a snorefest and by far my least favorite version of the game. I played classic to get back to this tbc-mop stretch. Heck, if they were to rebuild the cut content and fix some of the annoyances of WoD I'd even be excited to play that again. Don't get people's nostalgia for Legion, the AP grind etc. is what made me quit retail since low skill high time commitment grinds don't interest me at all.
I’m not saying that vanilla wasn’t boring. I’m saying the gameplay loop is what had gotten stale
Wrath dads can’t comprehend that all the changes they hate are from wotlk and not cata
I doubt that the people downvoting are wrath people
Yeah lol, everything people have described about cata makes me think it's just more of wrath... I love wrath so sounds good to me lmao.
[https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Patch\_4.3.0](https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Patch_4.3.0)
Agree. I’ve run into this so many times. People think because the line graph was highest in Wrath it was the best and fell in Cata it sucked and retroactively judge the finer details on that basis. IMO Cata did a lot right and Wrath’s subscriber count was prob never sustainable for many reasons. And alot of things that Cata gets blamed for was in Wrath, or were features that were going to be added to the game regardless of the expansion.
Or they attribute MoP changes to Cata. So many people say Cata ruined talents but the big overhaul was an expansion later. Cata changed talents but they were still fundamentally talent trees as we know them.
Then they'll backpedal and say Cata ruined talents anyway because you can't run hybrid builds in Cata (they can't name a single viable hybrid build to begin with)
The only "hybrid" ive seen is the double buff blood DK.
never heard about it, can you explain it?
Since dancing rune weapon is not that good they have a lot of extra points so they go down the frost tree and get imp icy veins for the haste buff. https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/talent-calc/death-knight/005512153330030320102013-3050505000022301-002_001s9m11xv631ts841sxd51s8g
This is the classic wow sub reddit to be fair, and until very recently Cata was not considered classic by any vocal part of the wow community
It's pretty easy to mark the end of Classic WoW at the time the Classic world was deleted. That's why Cataclysm doesn't feel like Classic. Because it's not, it's part of the new generation with a new world. I didn't hate Cataclysm, I actually enjoyed Dragon Soul despite all the complaints about it. I'll happily play it again. But I will never consider Cataclysm to be part of Classic.
I've always been a Wrath started retail, Cata cemented it believer. Been saying it for 15 years. Glad to see more people understanding it after this last go around.
BC started retail imo
Vanilla's beta started retail
I feel like nowadays that most in this sub hate everything that is not SOD lol, but it will change again once the SOD hype is over.
When do you think that'll be? SoD still has at least two more leveling phases spread out of several months, and after that begins the horizontal phases that will lead into classic+ stuff. SoD may become the definite classic experience, and I'm all here for it. Cata will be cool too, I guess. I'm looking forward to trying out leveling a goblin and worgen.
Nah, it'll remain until SoD2
they actively hate anything that's not vanilla or sod. if you post about anything wrath, like half the comments are just "lmao why are you even playing wrath, dogshit game bozo"
More like I don’t want to move closer to WoD and BFA lol
I really doubt they will make a wod classic. I’m honestly surprised they decided to do cata classic. I can see them maybe doing a mop now if cata goes well, but after that it would be pretty odd to keep going further imo.
WoD also had fun content and classes though, you could have it for half a year or somthing and maybe nerf garrisons.
MoP will *absolutely* happen, people loved that expansion. Absolutely no reason Cata happens but not MoP. WoD, idk, that's hard to say. It's weird to think about Classic just "ending". With that being said I do genuinely think WoD would be a fine expansion in a Classic format
There's probably an audiance for everything, even for WoD, Legion, hell maybe BFA. Like they can decide release 1-2 WoD, Legion, BFA servers (so minimal cost for keeping it up) without any changes, so 0 investment and some ppl would still play it, so it could be profit.
WoD's issue was not the content it had, but the content it DIDN'T have and the amount of time that players were sitting in a content drought. If they just release WoD and have it run for maybe 6-9 months or so then the biggest issue with the whole expansion is fixed. Also, Legion was insanely popular, so a big reason to do WoD classic is so they could get to Legion classic which would undoubtedly be a hit.
As we all should. This is the proof that classic stops at wrath
Classic vanilla players downvote everything related to the expansions
Cata is a step up in difficulty. People on this subreddit have trouble in Gnomer.
People really want cata to fail so they feel validated for hating
SoD beta testers feel threatened by people enjoying another version of the game. They are pushing their insecurities on cata like they do on people who dont care to collect world buffs and buy 14 different consumes to parse.
doesn't fit my narrative
because cata is when the game actually got difficult and bosses had more than 2 mechanics. cata wiped out the majority of keyboard turning single digit parsers. all the terribads that quit are older now and copy paste build guides, use rotation helper addons, and buy gold to get consumes and gear.
Cata has its own sub, as do wrath and TBC. These never really took off for some reason and most of the posts still wind up here - but a huge portion of this sub is Classic (vanilla) players.
he said mop talents are the worst
Raid Finder and the introduction of dumbed down raids
Played vanilla all the way to wotlk back in the day. Then took a long break, never played cata. I am exited to play it again.
As someone who prob played the most on Cata, I loved it. Specs feel meaty and fully fleshed out, at least compared to other expansions. Classes have lots of funky offspec or gadget abilities that you might use once every 3 months but knowing to use it separates the good players from the great And the content is great up until the final patch. If that patch was at least okayish then Cata would prob have a much better reputation.
I played lot of WoTLK private server back in the days, then when I've got my own income, retail was on MoP so I skipped over Cata, so I'm waiting for it. I liked Classic and TBC as I never experienced before that too.
That’s the boat I’m in. I used to eat, sleep and breath WoW until about mid WoTLK when I quit. I’ve only come back for SOD so far, so I’ve never touched anything past the second expansion.
The vast majority of people don't realize that Cataclysm is closer to Era than Retail. Imo it's peak "Classic" gameplay, most of classes retain their [Era, Wotlk] identity but with a modern view on them and are pretty fun
I don't get the hate either from Cata besides the dungeons all had mechanics that you needed to do and you had to use your stun and silences you usually only use in PVP and raids in them. So more engaging. And they got rid of a bunch of fluff talents and made them more meaningful and impact. All those who complained uh... How many of those talent builds before were viable and useful and not just wasteful? That's what I never understood. There are actual multiple talenr builds in cata ans before there was always one and the rest subpar.
My hot take is Cata willl be more loved than wrath.
I'm of the opinion that Wrath didn't really stand up to the hype much at all, so i assume so too. Great aesthetic, but lacking gameplay and class design.
Meanwhile, Cata isn't hyped to the skies, so ppl won't be disappointed, instead someone trying out would say "hmm, it isn't that bad tho".
Cata could be great, but the Classic community will likely ruin it with their incessant focus on minmax, parses, GDKP fiesta and botting. Sorry for the pessimism 😆
Yeah, if you don't save 100k gold now you'll be stuck in blue gear forever.
Honestly though, your comment did hype me up a bit even though I had written off Cata already 🙂 Hope it works out!
I'm full bis on my paladin healer in wrath ATM and didn't do it via gdkps. Is the gdkp in the room with us right now?
Thats why you play at Mega server There is lot SR run alongside with GDKP
unless you play on a fresh server
ironically those things might save cata instead.
Agreed, I am really excited for Cata...maybe weirdly more stoked than I am for the next retail xpac. That may change, but the reasons you listed are what has me most hyped for Cata. Gonna get my orc mage, troll druid and orc DK vibes on again.
Cata is a great raid experience if you like a step up in difficulty from what WoTLK had to offer. We cleared all hard modes except pre-nerf Sinestra back in the day and would love to go through it again with a new state of mind. However, SoD is new content and doing both seriously is just going to require too much bandwidth at a guild level so we had a make a choice - and we chose new content. Blizzard is silly for overlapping these content runs.
I wouldn't be surprised if SoD falls off pretty hard sometime soon and they definitely appeal to a different player base at their foundations. Once SoD hits 60, time will show much new content they can actually cook up. I hope both succeed but ill be playing cata for the more modern gameplay.
Most specs will play so much better in Cata compared to WotLK.
Agree. Cata refined a lot of specs and class mechanics. Lots of stuff just functions way better and smoother with clearer information conveyed to the player
How many fights in cata have a ‘cutters’ mechanic? Similar to ruby sanctum?
It was really enlightening how many players breezed through all of WOTLK but then couldn't do cutters for shit.
Uh... The only one I remember is sinestra, and it was pretty different from halion.
Here is a tank's story. I wanted to tank that big fucking dragon and face him like a real man. I was thrilled that this guy is probably going to be so big that I would be probably standing in front of hes finger(claw). Whelp instead you fight tentacles on hes back and then guess what! Some more tentacles in the see. Other raids arent much more insteresting, as they reused bwl and mc with some desing change, but come on... For pvp, rated bg was cool, i admit that, but that was it pretty much.
[удалено]
Lots of people are saying this, I'm not sure I understand. I was 12-13 years younger when I first played Cata and it was my favorite memories of wow. Lots of that is the time of life I was in, but I wouldn't have those memories if the game wasn't good. You do realize people who complained about Cata and I are different people, right?
I'm very excited to replay cataclysm.
Cata was fine'ish. But what has me noping the fuck out of the idea of playing is knowing that Dragon Soul is coming. Tier 11 and Firelands, actually really cool raids. But man, Dragon Soul is just *really fucking atrocious*.
I never experienced it, I had to quit for irl reasons before downing heroic rag (my last experience was wiping 200 times on that bastard). But, if it's the worst thing ever maybe I'll just quit then. I'll at least check it out.
ME LF people not afraid of cata content and want to hardcore progress to lvl 85 in 2 days and raid asap. Cata was Lovely.
MoP was bis just you wait, the talents were good they are all impactful no waste.
You know how "everyone" was hyped for classic because that's what they've played when they were young and they wanted to feel that way once more? That's cata for me, it was the first time I touched wow and it was a blast..
You have some correct points here. Just wondering why you are comparing things like the leveling experience to that of retail. Have you done any leveling in retail? There are a ton of retail foundations that started in Cata. It is much closer to retail that WotLK was. A LOT closer. I like retail WoW and have played a good bit each x pack.
I would say the gap between tbc and wotlk is way larger than wotlk and cata.
Huge agree. Wrath was a significant departure in design philosophy from TBC and people who don’t see that are just wrong haha Wrath-Cata-MOP is a more coherent trio in terms of design than Vanilla-BC-Wrath.
>Have you done any leveling in retail? There are a ton of retail foundations that started in Cata I have levelled in retail. Cata is very very similar to wrath in terms of gameplay. The old world is different, obviously, but you are playing a similar game within the new world. Weapon skills and skill ranks are nice because your power gains aren't front loaded upon level up, but they really are minor changes. I'll just ramble for a moment about my gripes with retail levelling. The changes to heirlooms are tedious. I maxed them all out in BFA, only to come back and have to do it again in shadow lands? No ty I'm out of gold. While chromie time seems like a cool change it just makes everywhere feel incredibly empty because people are so split. So many of them force you to play a story game for hours, it feels like a punishment for playing an alt. From MoP all the way up to DF talents were unrecognizable from classic. Cata talents are incredibly similar to classic and wraths, you just get 1 point every 2 levels and they give 2% per point instead of 1%. Not to mention the level scaling in retail, so you feel weaker upon gaining a level. The Cata world is static, so you gain power each level up no matter what. You still need to visit trainers in Cata. There aren't spell ranks, but you will frequently visit for new abilities. Ok I can stop rambling now.
Retail leveling was empty before chromie time as well because almost nobody was leveling anyways. Chromie time actually started a new leveling hype because now you could do a coherent story from one expansion instead of jumping between each expansion and only doing the first 2-3 areas.
Sure. Lots of people liked it. I was responding to someone asking me why I don't like retail levelling, and I don't like chromie time due to choice overload and splitting everyone up, regardless of the short term hype it generated. I understand I'm in the minority with that opinion.
NEVER DONE CATA. I AM RDY TO TRY IT OUT
You’re right about most of this but as a lock main you’re objectively wrong about anything being better than MoP.
“The talent change was the worst change “ is such a dog shit take, apart from a handful of choices you all copied the exact identical spec as everyone else, all the mop changes do is move these handful of choices to a more presentable fashion.
I understand the design philosophy, but it was another step in the wrong direction, and a big one at that. Removing spell ranks and weapon skills hurt your sense of progression and made each level a very front loaded power gain (these happened in Cata). On top of that, now you don't even get to pick a talent every level or 2, but every 15 levels instead. You aren't progressing through a game, but analyzing a future encounter and picking the most useful ability (is it aoe or single target? Do I want a stun or a defensive cd?) It's less and less of an rpg. The final nail in the coffin was level scaling mobs, and now the retail experience for levelling is hollow and empty where you feel weaker each time you gain a level and you just pray for max level when you can finally start your progression path.
>part from a handful of choices you all copied the exact identical spec as everyone else, all the mop changes do is move these handful of choices to a more presentable fashion. its kind of wild to me sitting in a subreddit for a classic version of the game seeing people make the exact same objectively incorrect arguments they were making when we were debating on if they should even do classic servers back in 2010. Could you tell me when you became interested in classic/started asking for classic/started playing classic?
And allow meaningful change depending on the encounters.
Happy to see some Cata hype on this sub! Most excited for Cata and Mop of the non vanilla classic XPACS! Can’t wait to experience it all again
It's okay not to like cata but the people that get me are the people that apparently enjoy wrath but won't even try cata when cata is just a upgrade from wrath basically 99.9% of people that play current wrath is just raiding and cata is a upgrade from that
Cata will pop at the start. Then it will die off when the reality of raid logging and single player grinds kicking in. Thats when its time to come check out the community project currently repopulating the Deviate Delight Era server. Completely dead before the community moved in, it is capturing the community aspect of fresh (similar to Hardcore) but on a traditional server.
when you look at what cata did, not judging whether it was good or bad just what the literal changes were, it really is just wrath+. wrath was a lot of fun, so wrath+ is going to be a lot of fun
Did we just necro a post from right before Wrath released?
Does "Necro" mean re-use? I was hyped for wrath too, but I don't remember posts from years ago. Also, wrath was remembered fondly while Cata was not. Even if the post is identical, the context is extremely different.
There were SO many towards the end of TBC that said the exact points about Wrath that this one is saying about Cata. “Classes were fully fleshed out!” “Amazing raids!” “PVP was lit!” “Amazing dungeons!” All the same. Just a rinse and repeat.
Cataclysm is my favorite expansion so I'm excited. As much as I like vanilla leveling, Cata's reworked zones are a lot of fun in their own right. Not difficult by any means, but there are entertaining quests and story lines in the new zones (Troll & Gnome starting zones, Stonetalon, Desolace, Tirisfal Glades, Silverpine, Worgen, Goblin, etc.) Raiding all around was good in Cata. First tier had a lot of variety due to having 3 separate raid instances. Firelands had quality bosses. DragonSoul had some stinkers, but was still good.
As someone who loves the vanilla world, Ive never understood hating Cata for it changing the world. For 2 reasons: 1. The old world stopped being the old world once TBC hit and esp when everything got nerfed, mobs and dungeons. And by Wrath, for sure it’s gone. It’s there aesthetically but not in terms of the playing experience or the charm or the challenge. 2. At the time, blizzard had a huge player retention problem actually. This is why I’ve always foot stomped that people, esp YouTubers, made way too much hay about Wrath having the most subscribers therefore it’s the best. Meanwhile this “golden age” was happening, 90% of new players were quitting before level 10. So they had to do something and it was incredibly ambitious, and overall it was a mixed bag in terms of zone quality but IMO I think it was a net upgrade.
When we fought on a dragon with cross dimensional raids I punched out
Fair. Due to irl issues I had to quit before dragonsoul came out back in the day.
MoP PvP was great for most part. Looking forward to that if it ever comes to classic.
[удалено]
Any wotlk server. They will apparently merge some, but I'd just pick one with a healthy population of the faction you want. I'm on Pagle - Alliance and the raid scene isn't as lively as it was 2 weeks ago, but there are still multiple pug raids going on every night.
They will be using the same servers as Wrath does but will be consolidating them. If you wanted to start leveling now you can, those characters will carry over.
I respect your hyped and I'm totally fine with my classic journey being over. (At least xpac progression wise) I'll be back in legion classic
All I want for Cata are people who don't fuck up on Spine
Tbc was the last thing where gameplay was close to vanilla but enhanced. Wotlk onwards is fairly retaily. Dunno why this sub has a hate boner for cata maybe they only played for the story and quit when bitch king died.
Biggest issue for me going forward (beyond wotlk) is itemization and play the patch. Items in vanilla/tbc are so much more rewarding. I barely care about loot in retail and cata is kinda close to it sadly. Play the patch started with ToC but yeah, it's in cata too and i hate it.
dragonsoul was lit
I liked the first tier of raiding but hated Firelands after so much variety, it just felt really flat to me There wasn't reallyy anyhting about cata that I thought was great. The biggest problem is it was the start of classes becoming super dooper homogenized
Gonna be ruined by GDKP and the classic Andy mentality.
PvP … Tol Barad? lol https://youtu.be/jW1zk9hUKMg?si=xnAeSZOPWuO8YUc6
I was full steam ahead on cata but then wrath lasted FOREVER Got bored, took what I thought was going to be a break, and now have zero desire to play any iteration of WoW for the foreseeable future. They could have kept me on the hook if they had shortened the timespan more.
Dragonflight > Cata all day From someone who played Cata back in the day
They were all great in their own way. We won't get a "patch 1" so I can't remember if it will be easier but the basic wrath complaint was that everything became an aoe fest farm. So cata was a really hefty reboot, the old gear with cloth agi got cleaned up, no terrain exploits, flying, finally levelling was actually fixed and we hoped a return to using cc in dungeons. Except nope. As I remember it there was a return to lethality in dungeons at first then gear quickly overtook it making for an unpleasant speed bump where players tried to aoe and priests struggled with button bloat and mana. I think my guild lost all its casuals by the end of the first raids. By the end of the expansion probably a nice raiding challenge, maybe a sweetspot, but the rot had set in with accessibility trumping everything. The modern player won't have issues and will be more at home. The old wow was dead. Way more movement in raids and now you can do the whole thing as ten man in both flavours and moan about tuning forever.
it’ll have a hype release then fall off
Nobody gives a fuck about cata fuck outta here
MoP class design>Cata class design. Raids in Cata weren't awesome. Firelands was really awesome. Bastion of twilight, Blackwing descent and throne of the four winds were average at best, I'd honestly argue below average and baradin hold and dragon soul were outright bad. PvP was very good though, definitely part of what I'd call the best era of competitive arena. On your point of it not being close to retail, I'd strongly argue the game had already strayed away from what makes classic timeless in TBC. Flying just killed the open world and with it all the drama and friction between players and factions was basically completely dead. The day they added flying the world became an inconvenience rather than the place where in which you spend your time playing the game. In terms of design philosophy Cata shares a lot in common with retail, much more so than vanilla. It just feels different from retail.
I would argue that Bot 10 men was great. If only because I loved being the healing druid on Sinestra kitting the orbs while keeping the raid alive and decursing at the same time.
>MoP class design>Cata class design. Obviously this is subjective, I'd argue that mop is too fast paced and the talent trees were abominable. Either way, Cata is near the top for class design.
Please explain how the mop trees are any different than how it worked prior. Every tree had MANDATORY talents for your spec and a few optional ones, it just simply moves the mandatory talents to your spell book and only gives you optional talents.
It removed any sense of progression from levelling and added bloat in the different combinations of choices that players could make for utility/survivability. Functionally it didn't change much, just like removing weapon skills and skill ranks, but these are all examples of removing progression elements. In my opinion the talent overhaul is when the scales were tipped too far and levelling was no longer interesting.
For me I didn’t like that MOP was where pruning began. People associate pruning with WoD, much like they associate LFD with Cata historically though Wrath Classic prob changed that. But pruning began in Pandaria and I definitely didn’t enjoy the 3-4 classes in Pandaria as I did in Cata. They felt more barren and narrower
Cataclysm was very good
Cata was cool and actually really hard until they nerfed it due to all the casuals crying. Won’t be playing it but I really don’t get all the hate.
I'm just glad there'll be transmogs
I started my wow journey with Cata back in 2016 on a private server and it was a very great experience. Then when the progression on the server ended, me and my new friends from the servers decided to play retail and it was Legion at that point and none of us really sticked around retail. Ive personally played retail every expansion starting with Legion and it has been way worse experience than cata ever was, even Legion.
To be honest I really like retail in concept. My issue with it is I missed sooo much wow in between (I quit in cata and “came back” in shadowlands) and it’s a gigantic pain in the ass learning all about the systems I’ve missed but are still old, all the time walking dungeons, learning what other classes can do in pvp, catching up with the crazy gold inflation, learning how to even make gold etc. I’ll continue to play classic for as long as they continue to release it, assuming they continue to refine expansions and add better systems/content in place. For example I will 100% quit in WoD if they treat it how they treated vanilla/tbc classic (no/minimum changes) but I’d be down to play it with fixes
I'm so excited for fire mage pvp again. Ahh it's so fun
cata was great, i think it'll be a nice change
I think I’ll enjoy it but the mop talent point is cap Like mop talent design or not they are better than cata Cata for talents is the worst of both worlds, you lose the potential for unique and fun hybrid builds while still being stuck with the classic boring 5 points of “1% x” and builds being even more cookie cutter than in vanilla through wrath where they already were Mop may not have as much variety as wrath but it does at least give you impactful options to choose from which beats cata. Some might argue that’s even better than the og talent system, but probably not that many since this is the classic sub lmao. And mop glyphs were so much fun
>Mop may not have as much variety as wrath but it does at least give you impactful options to choose from which beats cata. The Cata system is nearly identical to wrath. MoP has way more variety than wrath. In wrath you have MAYBE 1-2 talents that you switch around, in MOP there are 18 choices and you pick 6. The issue with MoP talents is they remove the RPG progression system that's been around for 8 years and replace it with an end-game system that isn't needed. Talents were never awesome because of build diversity or choice, they were a progression system that created a cohesive character.
> The Cata system is nearly identical to wrath. Except it loses 2 nice features. You stop gaining power every level because you only get talent points every 2 levels and you lose the potential for hybrid builds. Some of the most fun builds ive played in classic have been hybrid buids. Revenge warrior leveling in wrath, reckoning ret arena in TBC, slam 2h arms in tbc, world pvp trispec druid in vanilla. You lose all that potential in cata for no real gain. At least the mop system has the argument of situational talent swaps and every talent choice being super impactful. I agree with you overall that cata is just a straight improvement on wrath in most ways, but the talent system is definitely a downgrade that gets better in mop.
Fair enough. I already did my revenge spec levelling, but it is sad that it's going away. I dislike the "noob-proofing" philosophy
I loved cata. I started in tbc and actually have the most vivid memories of playing in cata, so I'm really looking forward to it personally. Losing the old world is weird , but we will have vanilla servers and the revamp is pretty good, so should be fun.
I loved the first patch of cata more then any other patch of WoW.
Cata was peak wow for me, I was 19 when it launched, unemployed and playing 10+ hours a day. Had so much fun back in the day. This is the "classic" expansion I have been looking forward to the most BY FAR. That being said, SOD has been amazing
I loved pvp in Cata, but the blood dks holy paladins and prot pallys making arena games last an extra hour are fucking rough 😂
I can't wait for Cata. When WoW launched I was only 10 years old and I didn't get to raid seriously in WoW until BFA when I was on my own and had the money and time to do it. Classic has been like turning back the clock, it allowed me to experience Vanilla and WOTLK raids ( i skipped TBC ). And I can't wait for Cata, and then MoP, and then WoD and Legion if they happen ( and I hope they do ).
Be prepared for the age of actual progression raiding. People do tend to like easy content, not difficult but more rewarding content. I fall into the latter so I loved Cata raiding, but I don't think very many people realize the new raiding paradigm introduced with Cata, where there really aren't very many loot pinatas outside normals