Why Nobody's Excited For Cata Classic | Asmongold Reacts

At BlizzCon 2023, Blizzard revealed what's next for WoW Classic. Here's why it turned out to be the most underwhelming announcement..
by @NixxiomOnKZbin • Why Nobody is Excited ...
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Channel Editors: CatDany & Daily Dose of Asmongold
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/ catdanyru

[@twiggsherman3641]

Streamers always talk bad about group finders. Esfand did it. Asmon did it. Then when Blizzard finally listened to the players instead of the influencers, it was too late for WOTLK. These people have armies of viewers. They're effectively using a group finder every time they go live, they just get to pick and choose who they invite. They aren't making groups out of their friends. They're making groups with their viewers. It's essentially a "Let Them Eat Cake" argument.

[@brandonc8892]

PREACH

[@nuke2099]

Asmond is a hypocrit when he said "People like that want to get carried" when all he does is play the game by getting carried.

[@tainicon4639]

I hate group finders with a passion… play League of legends if you don’t like MMOs…

[@nuke2099]

@@tainicon4639 I would rather not lose what's left of my sanity thanks. I will stay with group finders.

[@tainicon4639]

@@nuke2099 genuinely curious… I have only had bad experiences with group finders. Where as people I find manually almost always stick with the dungeon, are engaged socially and gameplay wise, and a generally friendly. RDF people are assholes, leave randomly, and frequently don’t engage socially…

[@salemteko8777]

If they wanted to do the Classic reboots they should have just done each expansion on their own servers. better data to collect on what people really enjoy and then make future expansions better from that.

[@tianskullerud385]

This would make everyone happy but i dont think it would last. Less enjoyed expansions would have very few players and that would sabotage the experience for the people that actually want to play that expansion. Personally i think this sort of «recall» to the past with each previous expansion in order while also leaving vanilla as permanent was a good choice.

[@MrHardanheavy]

Man I remember watching TotalBiscuit's PTR playthrough of the worgen starter area and how the worgen mount would glitch out making you into a worgen holding your human form in your left hand with a speedboost. Man I miss TB

[@theplaylistchannel6300]

Classic

[@FNESSE]

RIP TB

[@ErgoCogita]

HahaahHH!!!!

[@silvius6244]

I miss him and his content, i really liked "WTF is X?!" he also was one of the few curators you could take seriously on steam

[@benlambe3168]

Tb was a legend RIP

[@cameronharvey4746]

The thing that I always found baffling was that the destruction in Cata was cool... It reset what people knew about the world and had an end boss that was actually affecting the environment, it was bold at the time. BUT then they just bounced over to Panda land, and left the world exactly the way it was with Cata. It would have been amazing to have an interim expansion that had quest lines and world building focused on factions and races rebuilding their homes and fixing the world from what Deathwing did to it. THAT is the world we should have right now in retail and it still isnt exactly the case. They just keep adding worlds and islands.

[@GX-105D]

that's the problem with wow, the old zones never evolves in relationship to the expansion, imagine in goldshire seeing DF npcs having daily quests that offers catchup rewards instead of vaults

[@1ViivviiX1]

Personally if they didn't just go to panda land and they instead just built up on Cata making it so the world would be getting fixed and healed and continuing what was made in Cata, then WoW wouldn't be where it's at today in retail. They totally dropped the ball with MoP.

[@qunt100]

I never understood why the old overworld had to be deleted to make way for the revamp. I thought it was stupid now, and I thought it was stupid back then to. The talents and everything else got nerfed. They should have kept in weapon skills and ammo as well as every other rpg feature. I mean, hybrid speciliaztions were so fun. It became boring when mages had only frost moves for frost mage. Only frost dks had frost spells and frost runes only. Never understood why they did that. It just felt like so much to take in. As cool as the revamp was, and it was. They removed the old overworld. Never will forgive blizz for that. I just want one permanent version of wrath classic servers. Wrath was so good. Never should a mmo delete stuff like that. It's find to have exclusives. But man did it suck to be told, oh yah. That old overworld. You are never coming back. I also felt like the old deadmines and old sfk were way better than the revamped ones. Kind of deleted the idea behind transmog to. So much stuff you couldn't even transmog because they were deleted. Just so frustrating. Like you shouldn't have to give up old content to appreciate new content. For the next several years, blizzard had a perma boner for deleting shit in the game for really no real reason. And it just was stupid to me.

[@GX-105D]

@@1ViivviiX1 but that chinese market they tried to capture, all china did was steal their source code then kick blizz out

[@xdrag0nflyx]

The problem for me was that lvling was so fast you out lvled a zone before you even finished the quests. There was no time to even just be in for a while, just a conveyor belt of content.

[@SonOfNone]

That's a really good point, and one I experienced also.

[@joelmcknight9995]

+1 to conveyor belt. You get no time to take in the story in like any zone or dungeon.

[@sidradeave]

Yup, this was a big part for me. Zone lore was downhills from there to me.

[@Vida_99]

i mean the same happened for me in wotlk honestly

[@why97359]

​@Vida_99 not to mention classic wrath is worse with the XP boost and in both original wotlk and now in classic, lots of people started just dungeon finder leveling

[@goss0055]

I started and WotLK, and so Cataclysm was the first time I've been there for day one of an expansion drop. It brought huge changes to my favourite class, paladin, by introducing Holy Power as a resource. I loved the zones that came with it, and the dungeons were a genuinely challenging experience, and the last time I've seen a dungeon that REQUIRED CC to get through. I'm excited to play it again, but I also think that it goes completely against the spirit of WoW "Classic", because Cataclysm was the expansion that destroyed the Old World.

[@kecaw]

YUP! spot on my friend. Cata, at that point where it dropped was something that IMO was needed, you had the "old" world build on old stuff and then you went in to Wrath with its new mechanics etc. There was ... a gap, a really big gap that didnt make the leveling experience "fun". Cata did break the world but it also changed it so people didnt feel like they were doing the same thing AGAIN. At least to level 60 (at that time). But is it a smart move to bring Cata again like that? No, what people wanted was the "classic" experience of Vanilla WoW, BC and Wrath. Cata isn't in that ball park.

[@thewitchertales]

Your the audiance they made this xpac for a wraith baby.

[@dengmo3625]

Play M+ if you think you don’t need to CC in dungeons 😂

[@Thrall966]

Cata is the first expansion the game became fun and classes became entertaining . There is 0 gameplay on all classes before cata. I’ve been playing since OG TBC . And I think the biggest divide between people that play retail and classic . Classic players are not there for the gameplay . They don’t mind pressing 1 button for a whole rotation

[@prozzt]

Wait this shit dropped? I heard no news of this whatsoever maybe time to get back on wrath them

[@lukelorianTRON]

So, I really do agree with the point that having a high level zone right next to a low level one is a great feeling even in new expac content. In dragonflight even I accidentally did this in waking shore in the black dragonflight area, I knew it wasn't going to stay hard but when you're 62 and you run into a 70 (or any other relative number) it just feels good.

[@nickmagrick7702]

25:40 soloing group quests was probably my favorite thing to do in vanilla and burning crusade wow. Honestly. That, and the raids which were way more wonky and satisfying back then. I remember downing rag for the first time, being like one of the first 100 guilds to do it. How much of a pain in the ass it was to get 40 ppl together, the dramma that would go on, and how my heart was racing the first time we got that guy. These dynamics just didn't exist anymore with group finder, and the massive toning down of difficulty on quests and the open world. Soloing 3 mobs was no longer this challenging thing to do anymore. Not only could the tanky classes do it, all the classes could do it, and mages started trying to farm like 20 mobs at a time and often it not being a problem. People started scripting it with macros. The game started being automated, which didn't make it a game anymore, it was a job and you were min maxing your farming routines and subroutines.

[@VANZ1111]

I remember going into deadwind pass with my first character when my level was in the mid 20s or early 30s. Felt exactly what Asmongold describes about how it adds to the experience seeing endgame zones at such a low level.

[@I_Crit_My_Pants]

While I agree, there's more to the game than just this and Cata added a lot to the game, a lot of good things. I've played WoW since Vanilla, back when I was 14 in 2004... I loved the game back then, games were different and as a result what I expected out of them was a lot different... Nowadays with all the changes to WoW over the years, while I hate the latest expansions, I've started to find things like TBC and Wrath dungeons to be an absolute chore, the sheer amount of CC is just... boring. Like I want to play my class, not have control taken away from me constantly, that's really dull, at least make it so I can avoid this kind of stuff... Which is what they really started focusing on from Cata onwards, instead of just constant unavoidable damage in the majority of content, there was more avoidable stuff added in and less CC which made combat feel more engaging, like I'm playing my class, I'm able to actively do things in response to attacks to ensure I don't get dead without having to have some CD up or rely on another idiot in the group to use theirs (they never do) Not to mention the intricacy of quests, they became more engaging if not as expansive. Pre-Cata quests were almost always "go here, kill this", "go grab this quest item" or "go talk to this guy"... very few if any notable quests that AREN'T like this back then and while those quests can be good, when they're pretty much all there is they get a bit stale, at least to me, as a now 33 year old (that still has all day every day to play video games). I can happily say, now that everyone's had their fun with Vanilla, TBC and Wrath, it's my turn to play my favourite expansions and I'm extremely excited and there's sadly a lot of people in the community that are sitting complaining that people like me now get to enjoy our expansions while we sat quietly and waited while they enjoyed theirs.

[@mantasignatavicius7787]

@@I_Crit_My_Pants Idk, for me the "go here, kill this" is not a bad design because if you spend time reading then it feel real, when I lvled my undead warlock and the quest giver said bringe me 6 bat wings so I would make a blanked because I feel cold it felt natural for me and different than the others. So mostly those quests are just bad if you don't read and just accept - complete it

[@raydafuq3570]

But nobody did that in Cataclysm because it was too linear and everybody experienced this happen already in the classic world. I was happy to have the empty spots on the map filled finally and the travelling wasn't as bad because of portals but it also made the world smaller. In Wrath you had to fly from Tundra to Stormpeaks and in Cata you just hearthed and took the portal.

[@raydafuq3570]

@@I_Crit_My_Pants just shows you never read quest texts. Classic is teeming with memorable quests and I can't remember a single chain from Cataclysm because that was exactly the boring experience Nixxiom said. Less CC? CC was ramping up even more than before because I was mainly a PvP player. Tell me about not playing my class - they added more CC which lead to the exact opposite.

[@GameUnCrafter]

I have a story like that with Nagrand (started in TBC). I was level 61 or something, and I was exploring Shattrath. I stepped foot into Nagrand and was absolutely blown away. It was such a beautiful zone that I stepped foot into it just to check it out. I then was chased by a level 68 elekk and died. It was worth every second and I knew EXACTLY where I wanted to go to level.

[@mitchellmartin4580]

I'm actually a little excited for Cataclysm classic. But that's just because Cataclysm was when I started raiding in WoW, but I wasn't able to experience all of Firelands because the laptop I was playing on was too weak to handle majordomo or Ragnaros, even on lowest settings. I kinda want to have a chance to see what I missed out on.

[@BrawndoQC]

Cataclysm is no longer a classic era though. That is the problem. For me it ends at WOTLK and I played WoW since vanilla launch in 2003.

[@dwarfminerwillie]

@@BrawndoQC By what metric and why do YOU get to decide that? For me and Mitchel cataclysm IS CLASSIC because its where we started playing, there was no real nostalgia for us in vanilla/tbc/wrath because we didn't play them.

[@wickian9571]

I still remember the first time I was lifted into the air as the Chosen One by Elune and told that I and I alone was the one who needed to save the world. It was a terrible plot idea that only got worse over time.

[@Wayne_The_Great]

@@BrawndoQC World of Warcraft launched on November 24th, 2004. I'm not sure where you're getting 2003 from, but have fun lying, I guess.

[@Groadergreen]

​@@dwarfminerwillieCata was the final and complete breakaway from how the game systems in actual classic functions. It couldn't be any less "Classic" Wow. Your nostalgia or when you began playing isn't an objective factor in this.

[@aneth101]

I love Vashj'ir. Still to this day the top 3 zones I've had. I think it's beautiful/colorful. Seriously, I fear depths and when I went to its depths for the first time. OMG I shat my pants. Or when you have to go to the dungeon for the first time... OMFG I was freaking out.

[@pauls4522]

I would love to have the unreleased dungeon in vashj'ir in cata classic. Maybe that would make it more interesting for some people.

[@qunt100]

It is one of my favorites also. I still don't understand why they had to delete the old overworld though. So in order to appreciate vashjyr and all this other cool shit. I have to accept the fact that I can never, ever EVER visit unflooded thousand needles again. Or visit og non split barrens again. Makes zero sense to me now. And made zero sense to me in 2010 as well.

[@PindusWrath]

I mean the entire point of Classic is to experience Pre-Cata WoW You can literally play Cata in Retail, most of the zones haven't changed since then

[@TheKobasen]

But hey, I love some of the story progression in Cata. Like what happened in the plaguelands. Argent dawn retook part of the city of andorhal, cenarion circle finally be able to grow some trees in desolace, the grim batol in wetlands finally have purpose, mount hyjal is finally open to the world, we now can see what uldum is and so on.

[@shadowarez1337]

I loved the Legendary Daggers on my Rouge didn't like asshole DK/Druids taking them as I was the one on the Quest to get the wrap. Because I was there and on this they'd drop and of course some shithead would be ooooo purrrtyy orange I'll take ☠️🤦‍♂️

[@Vegeta-9000-and-a-half]

@@syrasmine Tech limitation is the issue here that was back in 2010, having a phase for every single players who are at different stages would be chaotic for them back then there was no layers tech CRZ (Cross Realm Zone) did not even exist yet and ETC. However they could 100% do this today in Dragonflight or the next expansion but probably won't, It would be cool though.

[@shadowarez1337]

@@Penguin_Happy I started using PvP to level as the ques for dungeons on hunters/DPS classes was agonizingly longer then pvp

[@entryofemotion12]

@@Vegeta-9000-and-a-half You say that, but even in BFA where there were quests about healing the world, we never saw any phasing for what parts of the world we did work to heal. I just think that phasing is hard to do and keep the game feeling fully "together" since a big problem people have with Retail is how there's no real sense of community in the game. Splitting up players at all is probably not the best way to deal with things, which is probably the real reason we don't see phasing to that extent. I think if we had even half the playerbase of the Wrath days they'd probably be more open to doing it.

[@slippers8000]

Never played cata but have absorbed quite a bit of wow content so ignore me if I'm ignorant. They revamped the world, losing some while gaining a lot. I feel like the amount of new lore and how you interact with the quests, had a hard time sticking with players after they left the zone. Almost too dense. Then, it again became stagnant and left behind with future expansions. I'm sure if zones actually evolved throughout future expansions. It would be a massive upgrade.

[@sticky-soup]

Another reason why changing the old zones damaged the game that is not nostalgia: it made it so new players cannot relate to the experience of journey of old players, dividing the community and separating veterans and newbies even more.

[@entryofemotion12]

I would argue the "new world bad" players were more damaging than the world changing. The world became better. They updated zones to have a more coherent story instead of loosely tied together stories that barely made sense to the greater world. Was it perfect? No way. There was problems with the new world too. But the experience of leveling 1-60 and leveling 1-85 wasn't different because the world changed. It was different because the game wasn't months of leveling to get to max. It was leveling AND all the end game content, with a new method to enhance gearing and a new method of using LFG(Which was still pretty new at the time) to help enhance all of that. You run dungeons and farm up rep to get some of your gear to help you get into heroics and then progress into raiding. The game was no longer a weird disjoined path to end game raiding, you had a laid out plan for what you had to do starting from level 1.

[@MrVaeron]

@@entryofemotion12 I mean i dont dislike Vanilla, but when im now watching some HC streamers, it just comes back to me how bad the Vanilla World just was. Some Quests took hours - not of epic fights and content, but of running around half the world for no reason (look at you, SM quest...) - and a lot of Zones were just dead ends with pointless, scattered quests (like Desolace, Aszhara, Hinterlands and literally every zone from lvl 50 upwards...). When i was leveling up an Alt in Wrath back in the days, i literally spammed dungeons, cause it could not force myself to go through the 1-60 Threadmill again. From Cata onwards, i basically leveled every alt in Vanilla, cause the quests made kinda fun again.

[@Fartboy226]

This, this is kinda true, i started in cata and have always have a bar between me and the people who started in vanilla for that reason

[@sticky-soup]

@@Fartboy226 ye, I myself started after the world revamp, and I always had this feeling like I missed out on something great, and I will never be able to truly understand what the game was about

[@entryofemotion12]

@@MrVaeron I am of the opinion that people can prefer the old world, but the new revamp was just objectively a better experience. Like you mention...running across half the world because you have to go deliver an item to someone who was in a different zone because "I don't know" just never was exciting, and it one of the most painful things about the Classic experience. Like I love playing the game. But then you have a 7 or 8 minute run through a zone just to get to the parts you need to be at....and it's just not fun or engaging. I've gotten to where I have stuff to read up and I just numlock and read a bit just glancing back to make sure I stay on track while I run. Just because I don't want to sit there and waste my time. These days in retail I also just do Vanilla stuff. None of the quests are hard and it's very easy to just pound out 2-3 zones in a couple hours, and if you want to tank or heal it you can knock out Vanilla dungeons too, though some of them have also had their revamps, and it's a pretty painless experience.

[@user-nn9mg3sw9j]

Brooo I read Day of the Dragon in middle school. I was that kid who chose it as a book for class and had to give a book review in front of my class. At the end, I got the grading sheet from the teacher and she wrote the title of the book as “Dave the Dragon”. Realized people must’ve thought I was reading a book for a 4 year old as a teenager.

[@tomasdoubek]

With classic i appreciate no push to be part of a guild (expect raiding probably) and i appreciate phases and associated currencies i can get through various ways, because in my mid 30s sometimes there is time of several weeks you just do not have time or energy to play. It is definetly great system also given a fact that i can get close with equip using currencies.

[@ParzivalMcfly]

You know, at earlier points in my life I’d wonder why people would say they didn’t have the energy to play games because in my mind it wasn’t a physical activity. Now that I’m in my thirties I 100 PERCENT now get it. Just turning on my console sometimes is enough for me to be like “nah.”

[@idkidgaf]

@@ParzivalMcfly lazy boomers

[@skeliskull]

VashJir is such a cool zone. It’s one of the few zones that reading the quest text made so much better. I thought it was so cool you get shipwrecked on the zone, have to explore the wreckage, and complete quests under the boat. You don’t immediately have underwater breathing or an underwater mount and they get unlocked over time. And then you slowly make your way exploring the rest of the zone where quest givers have made camp in little caves. It’s such a unique zone and I really love the feeling that you were kind of stranded exploring this strange Naga infested ocean with only a small group of survivors

[@Arcexey]

@skeliskull I only like vanilla really and see the rest of the expansions as sucky, and yet the underwater zones in cata are actually really awesome. the quests and mounts and lore and all that is pure shit, but the idea of an underwater zone belongs in the final version of vanilla. like the only way you can get there is you have to swim out into the ocean or something. it could be level 50 or something. everyting you said is right, it's such a unique zone and the stranded exploration was awesome.

[@user-ug4vg2qf3h]

😂😂😂 trash zone worst in the game.

[@TheTechnicalMiracle]

Vashjir is a zone for chads, the only people who hate it are wowmount mixmaxer addicts.

[@qunt100]

I wouldn't have minded cata so much if they had just kept all the old content and zones in to. Vashjyr is still one of my favorite zones in the whole game. But they deleted all the other cool content for no real reason.

[@gabegu5102]

I understand Asomon's feelings so well. Cata was were I really came into my own in WoW and I really started to understand the game and I become a well known warrior on my server. Out of all of them Cata is the expansion I miss the most

[@markhowell9440]

Wrath is still my favourite but I played the most during Cata, holds a special place in my heart and i'm personally really excited for it

[@crithappened]

How old were you in cata? To me and many many others cata was a wow killer. I would not want back something that ruined the game for others regardless of my own personal experience. Wow cata should never be defined as a classic. Classic killer of game ye

[@rRekko]

I'm excited for Cata because it means we will likely get MoP, the best expansion ever imo, the one i played the most (i started at the last 5 months of wotlk and played until 2 months of shadowlands) and i was even working back then, i decided to skip college and just work, so full time job and i still played it more than the other xpacks before MoP. God i wish they go for it.

[@JACpotatos]

Cata was where they fucked everything up. It's where they decided that classes didn't need to be unique, and we were stuck leveling in that stupid underground zone for all eternity

[@JACpotatos]

​​@@crithappenedi couldn't agree more. If someone wanted cata or MoP...... They should just play retail.

[@mr.meatsoup5639]

To me all of Catalcysm questing felt like a guided tutorial, rather than being sent out to a sandbox world where you have to figure out the path by yourself(and google).

[@SmoothjazGamingTV]

For me it's similar to a lot of other opinions out there - Cata was exciting at launch but quickly became an obvious decline for the playerbase and fans quitting the game, and my memories of it are tainted by that slightly, as well as the fact the entire expansion builds up to what is a disappointing final boss encounter. I'll definitely be jumping in though to see how I feel about Cata now knowing what is to come.

[@pauls4522]

good to hear you will return to cata. I think catas 80-85 content was some of my favorite content in the game. The dailies felt satisfying. Personally I would really love if they can make firelands last a little longer this time. It felt like firelands was out for only a few months, and then they tossed us into dragonsoul where we were stuck with that for the longest time.

[@Vidar93]

​@@pauls4522The problem is that people wanted "the game to be challenging again" so at launch they made it so you had to farm heroics to get blues to be able to the go and raid. They tried keeping it difficult and because of that overtuned a lot of bosses. One thing I think massively gets slept on is how good PvP was in Cata. There is always S tier comps and things like that but in terms of how classes played / CC and things like that it was really well balanced. Cata really is the blending point of classic era wow with modern wow. As far as the raiding experience there was still a lot of the "bring the player not the class" mentality that started around ICC. I personally find Cata much more enjoyable than MoP or WoD.

[@qunt100]

I think generally speaking, it wasn't a bad expansion and had alot of good moments. But the removal of the old overworld, was definitely not one of them. I hated the fact that the old overworld had to be deleted to make way for the revamp. It ruined the appeal of transmog to. So much gear that even to this day is still lost for transmogging because it is deleted. Even now I still request that they add the old overworld for chromie time. Alot of other things I didn't really care for either. The talent tree system in wrath was better in my op. I liked getting ammo on my hunter and weapon skills on shamans. Cataclysm just had so many problems and changes. Alot of stuff felt disjointed to, specially for leveling. I definitely feel it is imperative to have at least one permanent classic realm up. Vanilla sucked to in my op, and wrath was really where wow got really good. And I want to experience cata classic. But not at the cost of wrath classic.

[@th3orist]

the point of having WoW classic is to relive vanilla WoW and maybe the first or second expansion at best, but then it already stops being "classic". What we will end up having at some point is two games where one is lagging behind a few expansions, thats all. Whats the point of this? Its ridiculous. So they will do another Classic Classic in 10 years where they start again from vanilla WoW?

[@Kishimatto]

Classic dragon flight ?

[@moshpit89]

It's the ultimate consumer milking

[@atelierbagur3831]

I meam...we still have vanilla WoW. Even more, they seem to be experimenting with Classic+ with SoD. Who cares at this point, let them do what they want

[@Edigor100]

it stops being a classic for you, for others this isn't the case it's still 13 years old (actually almost exactly), many players would love to relive cata as a lot of them have either started in cata or had their best experiences in cata, I don't see why you wouldn't want it in any case no one forces you to play it

[@th3orist]

@@Edigor100i dont need to be forced to play it in order to voice an opinion against it from my own perspective. But i get your point about it not being a classic anymore for me but then for someone else who started at that point.

[@dotmadhack]

I'm like, one of the few actually looking forward to re-experiencing cata because I took a break from WoW due to playing wrath a little too hardcore. I think Cata has some good additions but the zeitgeist of people is they don't like it so no one is allowed to like it.

[@MrBeetsGaming]

Just play on a private server that's what I do, it's free...

[@dotmadhack]

@@MrBeetsGaming I have a solocraft server of both wrath and legion. I do love playing on them, as on wrath I can set the talents per level higher and just fill out all the trees for hilarity. The problem is they don't really function like a regular server. Even private servers function a bit weird depending on how the owner sets them up and a lot of times the population just isn't there. Honestly if I were blizzard, I'd have it set up so for each expansion there's at least one dedicated era server and one rolling server that goes on like retail used to.

[@andywest6062]

" they don't like it so no one is allowed to like it." Or is it simply that it was shit.

[@dotmadhack]

@@andywest6062 Thanks for proving my point lol

[@Tgsomerset]

1. State that you look forward to playing cata. 2. State that you took a break during cata and thereby didn't play it as much as others 3. Get annoyed when the people who actually played it tell you it was shit. If you enjoy it, good on you. Unfortunately that doesn't disallow the rest of us from ranting about how cata sowed the seeds for the shitshow that was to become modern wow.

[@stefandemerov8423]

Off the top of my head, I think these are the problems most people have with Cata: 1. The old world was gone. Flying around was nice, but the freshness of it was kind of soured, because you were not flying around in the old world, just the new one, which felt (and was) specifically designed to be flown in. 2. Almost every single class was remade into a version of "Generate *combo points* -> spend them on a big attack" rotation (holy power?). Big damage cooldown abilities were less powerful now, or gone, and this led to the game feeling more hack-and-slashy (remember getting that 3K auto attack crit in WotLK? Compare that to Cata and current *miniscule* numbers for auto attacks) 3. Worgens were a weird furry addition as a race, Goblins were straight up silly comic relief. 4. Lorewise, WotLK was the epic conclusion of 15 years of Warcraft story. Cata was the first major expansion, that went way out of the preset lore path. Blizzard didn't have a really good idea where to go to after WotLK, which led to more panda nonsense later on. Only later did WoD make an epic comeback lorewise, which again ended with Legion. After the emo Sylvanas phase, we are at emotional furry dragons atm. 5. In general, WotLK was very high standard to live up to, kind of "Classic with upgrades and convenience" (not praising RDF here), which Cata changed in many, many ways, officially turning WoW away from Classic. 6. Despite giving you the signature class/spec abilities at level 10, the new "choose your spec and be locked into it" system actually felt more limiting and killed the feeling of gradual progression. Also, only 5 levels of progression felt rather arbitrary and limiting. I do have to praise Cata for one thing though - the level of character customization was peak, tallent trees still remained (in a reduced form), you still had glyphs, enchants and reforging on top of all that. I personally had a blast in PvP as well.

[@TheUnkow]

Dungeons were great as well, but raids not as much. The only thing I hated in PVP, namely arenas, was that you could have 2v2 endless battles, if it remained as 1v1. The later addition with timed debuffs really made it better. I think people were let down after the ending of Wotlk. I think everyone expected a better conclusion with the lich king. Maybe the problem wasn't that they changed too much, maybe the problem was they changed too little in Northrend. Shadowlands came too late and even the plot was not satisfactory. The damage was already done.

[@patchup]

I stopped playing after Cata. I never completed the expansion but I got about halfway through it, at least. What I remember is that I started to realize that I was just logging in to do dailies. This was the first time I felt this way, in WoW. One major change I recall changing my perspective is the ability to fly in the original zones. We were no longer tied to the flight paths and we no longer had to travel through the environment. I am not sure if this was a problem. But it did mean people skipped past a lot of the game.

[@alexfisher3556]

Benchmarking leveling was one of the last things I did before Cataclysm changed the old world, when they added some of the pre-expansion content before they changed everything. I was able to take a mage with full heirlooms from lv1-80 in just under 22h played, this was largely in part to having played for years and knowing optimal questing routes.

[@rulinggodsidly2941]

Loremaster achievement was actually hard to get originally due to quests being so limited. Actually felt amazing to achieve and some of the quests were awesome. I still have some item to see ghosts in blackrock mountain, tho not sure if it does anything anymore. It was on a different level.

[@ep8310]

I'm running loremaster right now about to finish kalimdor... it's a slog lol but the old writing for some of the quests is so good. especially with that AI voiceover addon - really adds a lot of flavor to the game while running around

[@rulinggodsidly2941]

@@ep8310 hmm,i assume your talking about classic wow,otherwise not sure how u could on retail since they changed it all back in cata..,so that's still a thing huh,u can actually go through the process of getting the original loremaster achievement? That's awesome. Well, enjoy man, as fulfilling as it was,it was definitely brutal finding enough quests in some areas but felt worthwhile in the end. And just the things you'll see, is pretty cool.

[@TheRiverweasel09]

I did this on a private server in Cataclysm and it was basically my last WoW checkbox. Now that I've done it, I don't really have any care to ever return to the game.

[@jeremybot1]

@@rulinggodsidly2941 unless he's talking about WotLK, no achievements in classic wow; I'm assuming he's talking about getting the loremaster achievement in retail which would involve doing the current questlines which woooould be any cata replacements. The loremaster achievement now is just broken up by expac, zone + specific questline rather than # of quests in a particular zone, and you have to do it for all expacs to get the title/ tabard afaik

[@rulinggodsidly2941]

@@jeremybot1 Ya i couldn't quite figure how you could do the ORIGINAL loremaster since everything got changed in Cata, so basically people can't read very well or they don't know what the word ORIGINAL means.

[@db212006]

Im playing SOD right now. Haven't played classic in since 2004. Decided to give it another shot. AND OMG i honestly love the quest system. Almost every quest in the game is worse if you don't party up. Creating a reason to be social with others. Where as retail, my bread and butter, is in all reality a solo game. In Classic every upgrade I get feels great. Leveling is like the game itself. Ive been in the Barrens for 5 days now. This is ONE ZONE. I've been in more parties for quests than I ever have. I've been a retail andy, but this feeling that classic wow has given me is something I miss so much in MMOS. So glad I gave it a shot!

[@willajer]

Dude I could not agree more, level variety in zones is great fun. Love bumping into something crazy strong and running! Makes the world feel real

[@DadsCigaretteRun]

I feel like such an outsider, I LOVED the new zones in cataclysm. Quests were way better

[@RelaxMyDude]

Agreed, Cata zones were incredible

[@Fartboy226]

Dont forget the cool gear

[@Reaper_One]

I loved Cata. I actually enjoyed WoW in general prior to 7.3.5. I hope Classic's progression stops at Draenor and never makes it to 7.3.5. If it does, I'll quit and wait for WoW Classic: Classic haha.

[@qunt100]

Meh. They were good. But it made no sense to be told, oh, that old non flooded 1 k needles. Fuck that Shit. Never seeing that again. So don't even bother. We should have had the option to choose the original 1-60 overworld or the cata 1-60 revamped overworld at will. There should have been ziridormi standing in orgrimmar allowing you to travel to the past and experience azeroth before death wing whenever the fuck you wanted to.

[@qunt100]

@@Fartboy226 I mean, but I just think of all the cool gear that was deleted to as a result. Never forget wanting to do blackened defias armor for my rogue in transmog. Well, fuck you bro. We deleted blackened defias armor from the game. Cata just pissed me off with that.

[@tynomite]

Man I’m so glad I played vanilla-wotlk as a pre teen/young man back in the day. I quit right before Cata bc I was graduating high school that year and had big shit happening. I’ll never forget experiencing Azeroth the first time with 2 other buddies. Snow days meant wow all day baby. It was truly a special period of time.

[@atlas.9]

Vashj'ir, Ragnaros, the PvP instances, awesome dungeons, Deathwing Raid, Worgens, Goblins and many more reasons to love Cataclysm! It is one of the best expansions in WoW! Hands down

[@chrish0001]

“Cata started at level 85 whereas Classic started at level 1” - I really like this quote as an explainer. Reminds me of the Southpark where they finally grind to max level and the answer to “what now?” Is “now we can finally play the game” 😅

[@terraconz]

I started in vanilla day one and was the 2 rank 14 on horde on my server. Then raided through TBC and Wrath and quit as soon as Cata came out. Cata was the point where WOW stopped feeling like a real living and breathing World your a small part in. From Cata onwards it was catering to casuals and convinience at the detrimend off a community. Before people had a reputation on their server, their were rivalarys and everybody knew each other but all that was gone in Cata. But it started way before with stuff like realm groups, LFG/LFR finder and all that stuff. It thrifted more and more into a almost single player game with a lobby. They lost me on that road and Cata was the point where I had enough and clearly saw where WOW was heading. So I quit and never logged in again and looking back it was a wise move never felt more vindicateted. Edit: and don't forget that's where all the microtransaction store BS started big.

[@crithappened]

Ye eit was a role playing at its best

[@vi8799]

Because Cata is the first expansion when people started wanting to roll back the game.

[@Cpt0bviouss]

Why is no one mentioning flying mounts in azeroth for the first time? That killed it for me.

[@qunt100]

Yah. Flying in general was a bad idea.

[@kryssmiralli130]

You had to be a certain ilvl for the lfr system so u cant say oh hes got greens from previous xpacs... i remember on alts gettin no gear nd then having to go quest(as a healer spamming dungeons) to get the better ilvl gear aftercthe first couple dungeons

[@3allz]

I agree that the Cata questing experience from 1-85 was 100% better. They started moving away from the "gather/kill 60 X's" quests and made them more interesting and varied. Sure you still had those quests but it felt like 50% less. It put them on the path they are today with their questing, which is pretty good in retail today. As stated, the problem was we lost the old world for good, which isnt a problem any more...

[@andrewmeyer3599]

Yeah, questing was definitely more fun in Cata but I also didn't like how drastic the map changes were although that is a personal gripe

[@mcdick1621]

for me it just felt like a really really shittier version of actually good single player rpgs. like i get that its the natural course of things that less and less people will level and the "multiplayer experience" of questing in the old azeroth slowly fades away but i personally when playing a mmo want to play with and against other people. imho the should have just leave it be and cut the leveling process as much as possible instead of reworking it. it was still ass, took a ridiculous amount of dev ressources and still wasnt played by the vast majority of players because dungeon spamming with the heirloom gear was a bazillion times faster. and ultimately it didnt change the fact that leveling is still more viewed as a tedium rather than an enrichment by most players nowadays (hence all the shortcuts you can use). the person that greenlighted this deserves a round with ngannou in the cage

[@LobsterFusion]

The questing was better but the problem was the zones being revamped so much. It's even worse now that it's ten years later because the same tornadoes are still spinning in Westfall to this day. It's weird.

[@atraxian5881]

I guess the sensation of having 50% less comes from the fact that in vanilla if you wanted to level by questing you had to spend a long time in many zones up to the point of knowing them by heart. In cataclysm, for early levelling you just followed the arrow in a handful of zones you over levelled almost without even noticing. You grow no attachment.

[@atraxian5881]

I guess the sensation of having 50% less comes from the fact that in vanilla if you wanted to level by questing you had to spend a long time in many zones up to the point of knowing them by heart. In cataclysm, for early levelling you just followed the arrow in a handful of zones you over levelled almost without even noticing. You grow no attachment.

[@blakelandis2434]

I dont know if im the only one but man i LOVED cata. It could also be the time it came out, and just feeling nostalgic for that time period in my life. I was so pumped for worgans, so pumped for flying in the old world, so pumped for seeing how the old zones changed. It was great at the time. I dont get the hate tbh.

[@buzcs5336]

not the only one my man, me as a cata baby looking forward to it

[@Rakeekee_X]

I loved cata man, titan forging stats on gear, pvp arena was just so much better, was a great expac

[@BrawndoQC]

It's not really hate, it's just not classic anymore. Classic ended with WOTLK for most people who played since vanilla. Leveling was fun as hell compared to the grind that is before it though, but at the same time, not as rewarding.

[@craiglochrie6774]

Im a cata fan too, I started playing wotlk about 3 months before cata came out. Cata for me was a battlefeild leveler as my friends were well into raiding by the time I got lvled to start joining in. All the things they hated about cata i really like.

[@Dreamonology]

cata is fine, the cringe fake stuff by this streamer and his 12 year old audience just go along w/e they say, tons of people enjoyed 4.3.4 the final patch, which is what we will get in classic,.

[@ingyinginging]

I'm excited for cata classic. In terms of gameplay, cata was where the game peaked for me. The huge improvement to leveling/quests, the better spec/talent/glyph systems, the challenging heroic dungeons, the abundance of new race/class combinations including goblins and worgens, flying everywhere, the updated areas like Orgrimmar and Thousand Needles looking way better than before, etc. Admittedly cata raids weren't the best but for every other aspect of the game it was an improvement. Leveling 80-85 and surpassing 100k health was fun. Note: I am not looking forward to MoP which was truly where the game went into terminal decline.

[@Dukes3677]

I feel MOP was great as well, but WOD? straight dumpster fire after.

[@tnndll4294]

WOW Landscapes are like works of art. If you destroy a work of art, it won't be a fond memory.

[@nickhundley21]

The lack of level scaling in zones also taught you respect - you couldn't just go wherever you wanted and cheese the game into what ever you wanted. You'd walk into a new undiscovered zone with a sense of trepidation asking yourself the question "did I progress to fast, did I duck up and is this zone going to kill me?" And a huge sense of pride if your class could handle zones with say a 3 level deficit

[@qunt100]

I don't even know anymore tho to be honest. I mean, can you imagine having to level up like 200 times from each zone in a linear fashion. I just wish they had kept the old content in the game. I hated the fact that the revamp had to delete everything.

[@ic3t3ap3ach]

i havnt played since cata but the zones are great and i like it more than a new island and new sub zone like we had since mop. it was nice to go back to tomb of sargeras, see pandaria and nazjatar (wasted zone) but now it gets pretty old and we have too much disconnected zones which results into teleporting around the world 10.2 was released in november and we have to wait almost 1 year too now 😂 nothing changed with long last patches.

[@ellypsis603]

PVP in Cataclysm was the best we ever had, it was actually a great expansion but few understand

[@grundged]

Cataclysm turned the game into easy mode. Before Cata, I only had one 60 character. After Cataclysm I had max level characters on both Horde and Alliance.

[@Reaper_One]

I enjoyed the easier and more relaxing gameplay of Cata. Even prior to that, the difficulty was still fair and laid-back. It was update 7.3.5 that ruined the game for good with cheap difficulty mechanics and that awful level scaling, etc.

[@WallyJ40]

I came into the game in BC - Cata was my favorite - was the only time I raided and killed the boss of the expansion - leveling (which is what I love doing) was so much better - I loved it - wasn't attached the nostalgia of vanilla

[@korassssssss]

I''ve done everything through all expansions up until MoP, and Cata was simply amazing, loved everything about it - the whole hate for me was so wild, as the gameplay was at it's absolute peak and wow only tanked since then, I've lost interest with game after pandas, but I've came back and leveled 2 characters to 80 at classic wotlk so I can play them as soon as cata classic comes. DS raid was lame thought, BWD and BoT and Firelands were simply amazing, so were the heroic dungeons. You can argue that being locked into talent tree was bad, I've liked tinkering with talents so this was a minus, but they could easily not make it as such and still just give us the main skill like Penance right away.

[@kyosgg]

i will play Cata as well. I dont get this moaning about it. You have classic and SoD, you had BC you have wotlk and you will have retail what's the problem. They are making this content only to farm views on complaining... fuck it cant wait to play Cata

[@e-naa4118]

People like different things. I'm sure Cata will be viable, but I doubt it'll be a successful as earlier iterations. Player numbers might've peak, but it also had the sharpest drop off. Me included, and for once not because my friends quit or my guild fell apart. @@LeagueClassicAndy

[@JACpotatos]

​@@e-naa4118numbers peaked during WOTLK I'm pretty sure. Cata was when everyone started to quit

[@korassssssss]

I've asked for it. The fact you aren't excited doesn't mean others aren't too.@@LeagueClassicAndy

[@michaelpurdon7032]

They had to revamp the old world anyways so they could add flying mounts (which ppl really wanted) so it really isnt a huge step at all to doing something bold with the time. I also get why not everyone liked the idea at all. Its an interesting time in gaming history tbh

[@swardlertv1372]

flying mounts was the worst decision they ever made, at first glance its cool if you follow through with it, it really took away alot from the game

[@erikostebo2152]

​@@swardlertv1372 Flying mounts rule. Sorry you can't gank low levels anymore, play call of duty or something to get your angst out.

[@swardlertv1372]

@@erikostebo2152 it takes away most of the original mmo aspect, because it forces you into other players. most fun i had was in classic and vanilla, so many rivalaries endend in long friendships

[@Tazzoz54]

@@swardlertv1372yeah we fundamentally disagree on what makes a good mmo I guess. I don’t play wow or any game to make internet friends. I just want to do dungeons get loot. I don’t make relationships in video games.

[@eply995]

@17:12 that is Ataraxis, Cudgel of the Warmaster. Drops from Warmaster Blackhorn.

[@Angelfyre.]

I have hopes Blizzard will say at the end of Cata “hey the worlds going back to what it was this change is only for this expansion” A Naaru or some other entity comes by and puts things back to the way they were, or something along the lines of hey this Cataclysm world is temporary. They can retcon and add Pandaria like they almost certainly are anyway and the two major continents will still be what they were pre-cata. I think people would be more hyped then if it was a temporary change.

[@Reaper_One]

I hope Classic will stop progressing at the end of Cata. If it continues to progress, it may catch up to update 7.3.5 which was the update that ruined the whole game.

[@redryan20000]

If that were true, they just wouldn't have released cata classic in the first place. Sadly, they'll keep going through expansions.

[@Ohanrahan]

I think its a bit like this : on paper the idea sounds amazing - You get to fight Deathwing, hes gonna change the zones and bring destruction. Yeah that does sound pretty epic. But when actually doing it in game and experiencing it, it kinda sucked. And the video says it too the zones felt disconnected and it didnt really make any sense. Its kind of like reading about something and in your head it sounds epic, but some things should have just stayed written and not actually implemented, or rather implemented in the way Blizz did it in Cata.

[@nicksanfilippo9513]

i thought it was a great idea to have the cataclysm changing the way zones looked after the first 2 expansions. what i don't like is that after all these years later, the players/npc s have not done anything to heal the lands and just ignore it all. could have some really fun druid/shaman factions come together to help heal the the zones..... put out fires, regrow burnt area's, fix the dam and so on

[@qunt100]

They should have kept the old content in my honest opinion. The revamp was cool. But it sucked losing all the old content to. I hated that shit. It kind of made transmog less appealing to. Look at all this armor you want to transmog, but you can't because it was deleted from the game. Like I never will get the idea of deleting content.

[@goodknight6828]

⁠​⁠​⁠​⁠@@qunt100nah. The game was out for 6 years when cata released. It needed a change.

[@qunt100]

@@goodknight6828 No. It absolutely did not. It needed the revamp. And the original 1-60 content that I could go to whenever the fuck I wanted to lol. I should be able to choose to do the revamp or the original 1-60 content at will at any given time playing cataclysm. Simple as that.

[@TrinaryAdept]

i hated questing in vashiir in cata because there was an entry bottlecap quest that kept getting bugged the nagas never grabbed me and the battle reset endlessly and it would only get fixed when the server reset and then it was prone to break again and so there was a heavy risk that whenever you started vashiir the bottlenecked quest would prevent all progress. I otherwise loved the zone i wish they didn't bail out on thier ideas of underwater zones.

[@phgamer4393]

the problem with the guild thing wasnt the incentive. it was that unless you were a big guild no one would join you. they wanted those rewards so they killed small/mediumish guilds for big ones because they unlocked everything.

[@triceron0082]

Cataclysm was panned for a few key reasons - Content difficulty, and content drought. A Classic version should be able to avoid both, but the stigma behind it being a 'bad expansion' will never be truly erased.

[@nopnop9077]

the stigma of Wrath being the super best xpac was deleted, why can't Cata have a redemption arc? after all, Cata is simply a much better game than Wrath.

[@ProjectpvpProduction]

​​@@nopnop9077straight up, tbc and wotlk honestly sucked gameplay and pvp wise. Cata was always the better expansion. Classic has already proved wotlk wasn't some amazing experience that everyone loved. It was simply the best game to play at the time. It was wrath and cod4. That's all anyone played. Cata only lost players due to the fact that gaming wasn't just world of Warcraft anymore. The entire gaming landscape changed during cata and the new era of constant game jumping became a thing. Too many new games for world of Warcraft to hold everyone's attention.

[@qunt100]

@@nopnop9077 Meh I disagree. I liked cata. But it deleted alot of stuff, and changed alot of stuff to. And I wasn't a fan of being told that I could never go back to the old overworld ever again. Like sorry but that is completely stupid. And classic era, wrath era was better in my op. Vanilla era just sucked. But, they won't give us permanent wrath classic servers. Like fuck this company.

[@HellfireBowsa]

I'm actually excited to see what Cata was like and how they do Cata classic (speaking as someone who started in Legion). From my experience, most of the hate for Cata stems from the "Dungeon/Raid Finder bad" or "Mah world building" groups. The actual reworking of the world I believe was overall positive for the health of the game, removing a lot of the piss-taking quests and making the world fresh again to explore. Granted the Cata-exclusive zones were... mixed (fuck off Vash'jir and Twilight Highlands), but it was still overall positive. I believe the actual features of Cata were probably some of the ebst decisions Blizzard ever made. Reworking the talent system to remove bloat and feature creep, guild perks to reward a guild for sticking together and doing stuff together, expanding the glyph system to allow more customization without making it overbearing, the reworking of a shit ton of classes to actually make them meet up to modern standards and be playable (looking at you Paladin and Hunter), were all exceptional for the game as a whole. I also like the story of Cata and how everything connects back to the expansion's villain. No, not Deathwing. N'zoth. Deathwing at this point was basically a mindless pawn of the Old Gods and N'zoth (the last living Old God at this point in the story) was sending him around the world essentially nuking everything to try and distract people while he set plans in motion for his escape. This also connects to each of the new zones (Naga being servants of N'zoth via a pact, the Highlands and Bastion being a base for Twilight's Hammer, the fire people trying to burn down Mt. Hyjal, Uldim being a center for Titan technology and Titan creations, and Deepholm being connected to the STonemother). Not to mention that the expansion involved all four of the Elemental Lords, which were basically SLAVE GENERALS of the Old Gods until the Titans came along! Looking into everything, you see how interconnected it is into N'zoth's bid for freedom and conquest, which wouldn't succeed until a decade later, but still! The early game zones are also an example of this connection to this story. A repeat from the last paragraph, the entire old world is basically getting nuked on repeat, and you're dealing with the fallout and consequences of that, and seeing people's reactions to everything burning down and changing around them. Now there are some aspects of the story I don't agree with (Insert "Wtf are you doing Thrall?" x9999 here), but overall each of the zones that got changed or introduced in Cata were all done very well. And if you still want that classic experience, Outland and Northrend were untouched. As for criticism to linearity, yeah, eventually everything will fall into linearity. It's called a meta (Most Effective TActic AVailable). While potentially you have a lot of choice, eventually people will gravitate to what's most efficient and what give the best result. Also the Dungeon/Raid Finder isn't really a problem as long as it's kept to entry levle content (AKA Normal Dungeons and Easy Mode Raids) for people who want to experience the story moreso than try to push high tiers. Like, any actual raid difficulty still needs you to find a group, and if they took away the Heroic dungeon queue I think it'd be perfect. Now there are some bad parts as well that I agree with. Yes, 4.3 way overstayed its welcome, same with 3.3 and 5.4. Archaeology was pretty much dead on arrivial. Yes it gets you cool swag, but leveling it and getting to that shit is so annoying and tedious that sometimes it's just not worht it. Some of the instance design fell flat on its face as well (cough Spine of Deathwing cough Nefarian cough Forgemaster cough). Also the level cap was... too low. Come on, WHY THE HELL didn't you go all the way to 90? Overall, I think that people will come back to Cata classic and find that it's actually aged quite well, and amybe Blizzard will throw some changes in to make it more appeal to their Classic audience (they've done it beforE). Now, if I end up wrong, fine, I'll be fine being wrong. But either way, I think this release will be a positive thing. Either people will come to appreciate the expansion more or Blizzard will learn that this is where things went wrong and use the experience to improve both sides of their game going forward. Either way, I'm happy to see what the future of Warcraft brings.

[@Giggles4692]

Leveling was too easy, making it not fun, were people to kill mobs, while leveling with her eyes closed. Removing group contact in leveling took away a lot of the social aspect. Making more rewards for guilds and making bad classes good, is good and should be done on their own without adding the rest of the Bad Cata expansion.

[@levislooney]

I enjoy listening to people talk about wow as its a game I've always loved but never got to really experience at a young age. Cata is consistently the most shit talked expansion in my experience. Cata is when a lot of people think the game started to go downhill.

[@Arcexey]

@@levislooney TBC is when it started and wrath was nail in the coffin. cata wasn't even a game anymore

[@Arcexey]

@HellfireBowsa the linearity problem isn't cata's fault you're right that all things will fall into that eventually. the problem is that it should not have gone past vanilla to begin with. they should'ev stayd level 60 forever and just made that experience better. the ocean maps were A+, asmon is right, one of best zones wow ever did. the physical zone itself could belong in Vanilla and fit in nicely tbh. archaeology is also actually worthy of being in vanilla but it'd need ui tweaks to be 9999% more disjointed and difficult. like 100% of archaeology should be in text, nothing on the map whatsoever.

[@Ito-ogammi]

have anyone leveled in wrath recently? there is pretty much no grp quests and mobs are nerfed while we are buffed

[@Reaper_One]

The mobs have been nerfed and the characters buffed? I need to return to the game then! Update 7.3.5 ruined the game for me and I've played next to none of it since haha. Other than Classic, of course.

[@michalotto5444]

I made 14 alts playing WoW from WoD but I would always unlock the Vashir, Deepholm and Twilight highlands portals on all of them. I would also do the WoD opening questline to unlock the portals in Warspear and Tanaan Jungle and get the garrison. Even on the alts I made in Legion. I liked the Vashir and Deepholm zones quite a lot. I also liked WoD Draenor. What I like about Classic WoW is I can level anywhere, well anywhere there are quests at my level. As a Druid I don't have to stay in Darkshore and Ashenvale. I can go to Eastern Kingdoms and level there and then go back to Kalimdor if I wanted.

[@Tentaculat]

A lot of zones had their story gutted and replaced with idiotic jokes/references in Cata. I think Westfall was the most aggravating example. Quests after cata felt completely automatic to the point were leveling fell like an absolute chorse and not like an adventure. I also think that adding flying mounts to the classic map killed what litlle was left of faction open world PVP and made ganking even worse.

[@brandonroberts3003]

the constant pop-culture jokes makes cata feel more dated than vanilla ever did

[@wantanamera]

Oh please. It stops feeling like an adventure after your 3rd toon.

[@bozzigmupp510]

I started playing WoW in cata so I don't know, but did they not have flying mounts before cata?

[@pauls4522]

if like a good amount of wow classic players you already leveled up one of each character in classic, then simply ignore 1-60 content.

[@WhiteSupreme]

@@bozzigmupp510 They had flying mounts in tbc in outlands and in northrend but not in the eastern kingdoms and kalimdor and people got sad because you weren't forced to use boats, zepplins, flight masters, or walk to your destination. People get really pissy when you play video games differently then they do.

[@zangetsuzabimaru]

I loved Cata. My only real beef with it was at the very end where they did away with the old talent trees and introduced those 3 choice every 15 levels abominations that we had to deal with for the next decade after

[@jellyfrosh9102]

That was added in Mists. Cataclysm had the vanilla style talents but you had the one point every 2 levels and were locked into a single tree.

[@amandapritchard9990]

@@jellyfrosh9102 People confuse it due to the pre-expac patch that was going on when a lot of people were still running dragon soul, but yep 100% correct

[@qunt100]

I didn't like how they deleted all the old content. That was such a dumb and stupid change. Ziridormi could easily just allow you to transfer between the revamped world and the old world at will. And cata would have been alot better.

[@zangetsuzabimaru]

@@jellyfrosh9102 It was mists pre-patch, but that's still technically part of cata to me

[@railguy2518]

They REALLY need to use some of their new retail tech to allow us to switch between the OG classic and Cata versioms of the old world zones

[@qunt100]

No this I agree with. One of the biggest L's from blizzard in my op when chromie time was announced. Like what the fuck.

[@jonathanwhite2681]

At first it was really cool to see the zones change... but most the zones changed in ways that weren't very satisfying. Rarely got to see the impact of our original quests, working for rambo was cool the first time but got old fast.

[@morten8586]

Im excited for it. Maybe not a popular opinion but cata wasnt that bad

[@JordenDude]

my man

[@MajorDryhole]

It's not unpopular opinion at all. Cataclysm was fine expansion.

[@qserkl4106]

Cataclysm it's where I found friends and lost them.

[@Rose-Dew]

14:32 Oh definitely me. It would be a challenge to discover something new with lvl skulls and see how long it would take to die, run forest run. In this regard, I do also enjoy world bosses. And I remember crying a little when Darkshore got wrecked. I mean to me it would only be nice to have destroyed world, if I could still experience the old world basically.

[@jookya2]

as an "extreme" gamer back in 04/05 I powerleveled solo thru vanilla, and TBC, and beat almost every quest solo, used to love to challenge myself. I was the first to spawn stitches and complete that quest on my server, quested for hours in that zone and had no idea what stitched was until i did that quest and started the stitches spawn loop. vanilla #1

[@boo5860]

this is strange to me because I'm actually pretty excited. TBC and cata are two of my favourite expansions at least in terms of endgame content. It's very cool and iconic to me, I had a lot of fun playing it back in the day

[@imnackeredsirnackered948]

Cata was the first expansion where I felt the world die around me and all I did was just Do arena all day and sometimes raid to get some of my Bis pieces for pvp. From Original wow to mid wrath wow felt like an MMORPG for me where Me and my irl mates would spam arena all day, duel each other or others outside stormwind/raid once or twice a week or world pvp. During this era I knew people on my server and we had a reputation for being toxic gankers where we had 2 horde guilds that had a list of all of us to gank and camp if they ran into us. We also had a list of a few horde players that we would also hunt down and camp. However when cata started coming around the world started to feel empty where world pvp was less of a thing and most people just raid logged/spam arena. people were less outside of stormwind dueling and player interaction became less of a thing. After cata I gave MOP a try and the game felt even more dead and by warlords of draenor I quit wow and never came back until Classic in 2019 and now SOD.

[@Afflictamine]

the introduction of LFR was awful, it was okay for dungeons but never should have been implemented for raids

[@markblaze4909]

Wod was good for Alts and solo play. Very good world and although world quests didn’t come until legion, wod has the treasures and elite rare mobs all over as well as a lot of achievements to keep you busy. Cata world kind of sucked. But the pvp was the best.

[@jeremyschwanke7467]

I never once played through the quests since CATA revamp, I also never read quest text and never will. I have leveled via LFD since its release and am totally excited for at least the first 2 tiers in CATA.

[@anon12549]

After going from Classic Vanilla into Wotlk, I just do not see it going well. From my experience each expansion step in difficulty chops off huge percentages of guild rosters who are just unable to complete the raids. Classic we did absolutely no recruiting and had players in Kel'Thuzad progression that had to learn to move their character for the first time a few months prior. TBC's increase in difficulty was low, but our roster still had to replace about 5-10 people who could not perform in SSC, TK, BT, or Sunwell. Fights like Vashj were huge indicators that some of our roster were not coordinated enough to understand the fights, even after working with many of them 1 on 1 to help them improve. Wotlk was an entirely different beast for us. Throughout WoTLK we went through 50-60 raiders and applicants. Once we reached Ulduar it was clear you needed another level of coordination to do fights like 0 light and Agalon during early progression. Personal responsibility was at an all time high for Classic expansions during WoTLK and our guild suffered. We killed Heroic Lich King with 12~ of our starting 35~ roster. People quote things like Covid being the huge stabilizer for Classic Vanilla, but sub numbers were higher in the past when less people had access to the internet or personal computers, literally hundreds of millions of more people have access compared to 2004. I think this is just poor judgement and analysis from people who have not lead a guild during any of the Classic expansions. The reason Classic was more successful is because its accessible to ANYONE. The simple fact is that ANYONE can sit in Molten core, spam 1 ability, and kill bosses. They need to just realize what the game is and develop two separate type of games. Retail should be competitive and hard content. Classic should be easy and accessible RPG content. They are making Cata for maybe 5% of the original Classic Vanilla playerbase.

[@yamxo17]

The only thing I hope about is getting the pet that allows you to turn into a flame cat I know it’s a mog you can use but I spent hours trying to get that in tmog runs to not get it and find out it had been removed from the game

[@casko9626]

Leveling through the revamped zones might be fun. If it where not for dungeon finder being there and lvling you 10x faster throught 2004 dungeons

[@xdrag0nflyx]

Dungeon spamming as a tank or healer was actually really fun, with enough heirloom gear you would barely have to repeat a dungeon and you'd get to practice your skills needed for raiding.

[@oswaldmensin5283]

For us it was running into Western Plaguelands from Tirisfal Glades. We ran down the road just to see what was in there, only to be greeted and murdered by a giant lvl ?? bear. Notice another detail to classic wow was that they made higher level mobs, bigger in size, so when it came running, not only did you know it was dangerous, but also that you are small in comparison to it.

[@Omba6666]

Vasjir is my favorite zone inn all the games. Cata was my first time playing wow, and i remember that zone sticking out compared to all the others. It was colorful, had cool questlines, and was overall a completely new experience. Il never forget vasjir.

[@RubyPiec]

HELL YEAH ANOTHER VASHJIR FAN

[@rddeb9304]

As a PvP-player, cata and MoP were my favorite expansions; really excited for it.

[@scomdnz9]

Same!

[@alexc5243]

I was beginning to think I was the only one with this opinion. Cata and MoP pvp were the best it ever was.

[@az9498]

RBGs! Let's goooo!!!!!!

[@ghoullyy]

Facts!

[@markblaze4909]

Yea both were really good for pvp. For sure

[@Raffgera]

I was talking to my brother the other day about how the game feels way easier, different, and just more of a solo experience than back in the day. I started playing late TBC, but watched my friend play from Mid expac. He was an Undead Rogue that played mostly with his friend that was a Tauren Druid Healer. I remember when the Underbog was a problem dungeon. It took them like 3 days to figure the whole thing out. They had strategy talks, who to CC, who to sap, who to poly, when to taunt, where to stand, when to use Tranquility, etc. It was super impressive to me, but I don't really see this anymore unless I watch the people that are trying for World Firsts, or content creators that actually did those things back in the day. It was a whole different beast in the old days, but it did feel like you were your character. I know I can sap, but I need to run and stay far away enough not to aggro the other mob, or I wait until poly is a few seconds in before I sap so my sap and poly are at the same time, and run before boss pats our direction. It doesn't feel like you are playing that role anymore. It's just generic damage dealer, damage taker, and healer now. Its odd, and feels so wrong imo

[@ZaerdinGaming]

It only took you 3 days to figure out Underbog if you didn't use Thottbot or follow a guide. The guides weren't great back then, but they existed. Trying to recapture that is mostly trying to capture the 2007 internet now, when everything is so much more secretive. Even if WoW Classic launched tomorrow, we'd have full YT guides of every dungeon, etc., within days.

[@holysecret2]

I loved the open world and dungeon experience during Classic-60. The open world took a hit from TBC due to flying mounts and being less interesting and complete than the old world, but heroic dungeons were a lot of fun. Before they got nerfed into the ground, that is. It was so fun planning cc, even resistance sets for some bosses. But Wrath has nothing except for raids. I'm not invested in the open world at all, and dungeons are a joke.

[@markblaze4909]

Heroic dungeons in original tbc were more difficult than classic tbc. And by wotlk heroics became a joke.

[@Momoka7]

16:09 Yeah you're right. Cataclysm was the first expansion where you "only" had to gain 5 levels, instead the usual 10. The thing was, those 5 levels took as much XP and time to level then 10 levels and the power gain was the same. They did the same with MoP, but by that time people where used to that.

[@figgusx2196]

A total quest revamp would've been interesting to see in SoD

[@TheZeagon]

cata was my first for a lot of things, a real guild, learning to move on from cespool guilds with 8 raid teams, my first arena friends. even cleared heroic by end of xpack. peak 12 year old played since end of vanilla on my dads account and only hit max during icc lol

[@fadedtimes]

I loved raiding in Cata, it was the last time I was in a great group of people and connected outside of the game. 90% of my guild quit as soon as MoP came out.

[@Gyrospeter0815]

Me too... e.g. Dragon Soul or Firelands

[@rickdiculous4663]

when mop comes back around i know i'll be leaving. cata put me on the line with their talent system, but i ultimately loved cata. i justified it because of levels increasing. but then they gave us that atrocity in mop. i wont put myself through that again.

[@TheFarGaurd]

I mean just look at populations of Private Servers, before WoW Classic was even a thing. The most popular ones were for Wrath, then Vanilla, and then Burning Crusade. Every other expansion had a very small population.

[@Drdankmusic702]

Having a new raid in blackrock mountain was so sick in cata

[@thanganbabp5570]

i think the new quests were worse because most of the new 'more engaging' things were one-click interactions about the level of fruit ninja, instead of the forays into dangerous territory of old where you needed to use your kit in different ways, and watch your surroundings. old just sounds worse because in essence its collecting drops over and over, but its differentiated by the adventure to get them. click the fire to put it out can't really go more than one way. on the lore side, the new quests were too memey too often, or else relied completely on prior knowledge of zone quests/npcs that are not there anymore. it's like going to a friends house to watch a series but they dont wanna start at the beginning again so you have to start halfway into season 2.

[@tenak]

I got to be in cata f&f alpha. Seeing how broken it was and how it came together for me is more nostalgic than cata itself is.

[@Wokiis]

Got in in early beta. Remember Harrison Jones was in Vashj'ir and characters had their reflection in the new water.

[@rawwhide]

I tested cata also and i told them the way healing was screwed over was not acceptable. I played holy paladin and healing was impossible for me in cata.

[@silver2zilver]

They should have let Deathwing destroy things slowely, have us experience his destruction make it real for us players.

[@Fantax92]

Everything was done through Group finder and you got teleported to your dungeon and farming was all done on your flying mount. The world was basically dead. Say what you will about Classic, but you go anywhere and you will find people farming, herbs, fishing, levelling, doing group/raid quests, farming rep. The world is alive in vanilla

[@DarkAkuma]

I have a hard time answering this question, as I came back to WoW at the end of Cata after quitting at the end of WotLK. I skipped much of the expansion, and came back and found myself in a new guild/raid (the best guild I have ever had in EQ or WoW), was EXTREMELY appreciated for my DPS/skill (until then in WoW, while I was always top DPS and last to die on a wipe... the guild/raids were VERY click'ish, and I never felt appreciated and like I wouldnt be replaced at the drop of a hat), and as a Rogue I got to work on the legendary. So my perspective is skewed. I look back at that time fondly as my most fun I have ever had in WoW. I had no issues with Cata. From the content itself, I got 2 things I always wanted. A Legendary quest that felt as close as to working on a Epic quest from EQ as you can get in WoW, and transmog (something I was asking for, for years!). But I have always known others felt like Cata was the downfall. So trying to figure out why... Resetting/remove nostalgic content. The begining of the gap between hardcore and casual guilds widening. What I call the Planes of Power effect, in that in EQ PoP felt like the endgame, and WotLK did for WoW. So its hard to buy into the threat of the next expansion. And as I recall, didnt the guild perk additions kind of kill a ton of guilds?

[@dominicdo2719]

The reason why so much players dropped off(aside from the world literally changing) during Cata was that it was too linear. It was a great first time experience because everything was well curated but essentially there was only one way to play it. It's great game design if it were a single player offline rpg but this was the most popular mmorpg at the time and it contradicted with many of the game's core designs. Many OG players who liked the original gameplay left and the new players it did attract left too because they were the more casual type players that Blizzard wanted by making the game easier and more linear.

[@Chinamen]

Classic lived long enough to become the villain..again

[@MY735TV]

I seriously dont understand why when i goto the blizzard laucnher i cant just choose wow classic tbc classic wotlk classic cata classic individually.. allow me to have a character start on any of them and if i complete for example vanilla wow give me the option to transfer it and clone it from the vanilla to tbc to join the chars i started on tbc seperatly if i want to

[@benhickerson6695]

Will it be new servers or upgrading the wrath servers? And why couldent they have kept at least a couple BC servers?

[@Pyrro5]

I’m personally excited for MoP. Cataclysm Classic is just a stepping stone to get there

[@TH-yt6xv]

I cannot wait for MoP/WoD classic, was pvp heaven

[@Pyrro5]

@@LeagueClassicAndy Same thing J Allen Brack said about 2019 classic but it seems to have been one of the best things Blizz ever did

[@cocidoner]

I'm excited for mop tbh

[@Tuoni996]

MoP, Legion, and BfA will be fun again. WoD might be half-ass ok with a shorter time frame like a year or year and a half max

[@Pyrro5]

@@Tuoni996 They’ll probably draw the line at MoP tbh

[@audioostrich]

I have a lot of pvp friends who love cata and are excited for it - mostly because it means mop is next. Its really the first time modern arena pvp starts to take form

[@faithcaraway565]

I love that theres ppl who are fans after cata but at the same time I kind of hope Blizzard does not release MOP and the reason is because at that point what are they doing? Just rereleasing every expac? Are they gonna go as far as rereleasing BFA? Or Shadowlands? I mean that would be a crazy desperate attempt at keeping players. Unless they go through and change things in the expansion its just the same exact game and slowly becomes more and more like retail. At that point the only thing ppl could go back to is OG 2004 classic. Or retail. Those would be the options vs now we have retail era or classic era. If i knew there whole plan i wouldnt be so scared of MOP probably but if they just rereleasing im just wondering how far they will go and they are sort of ruining the “classic” era rn

[@tatedoh]

You gunna play shadowlands classic?

[@audioostrich]

@@tatedoh wod classic goes hard frfr 💯💯

[@TS-uc4hi]

Will be legit insane if they actually keep going and do MoP. It's the 4th expansion and came out when the game was 8 YEARS OLD. It is not was not "classic" in any sense of the word by that point.

[@ricardomota3964]

The reason Blizzard never did anything like adding zones to the old continents like they did in Cata was not entirely because people didn't like it, but If I was willing to bet, was because there is no "real estate" in the old world like there was during vanilla. Remember mount Hyjal, Twilight highlands and Uldum were already there is the old world, we just couldn't access it but the space was there in the map. And even with all that real estate they still had to tweak the world a bit to make those new zones bigger. Since they were already redoing the world for flying mounts to work in the old zones they might as well tweak them and add those zones that everyone was so curious about while playing vanilla. They couldn't just keep changing the continents to fit new stuff every expansion so we've just gotten new clusters of islands. I personally hope that by the end of the Darkness trilogy we get to see all the old world zones brought back into relevance into the present by using the "Zidormi" approach or adding an even better solution that allows us to just move in time in the world.

[@hendonburgism]

Some of the most fun i had playing WoW were in battlegrounds during cataclysm. In addition to the world changing, they made leveling from 1-55 even easier/faster in cataclysm.

[@alexandersokolov7001]

Cata is when I really started playing wow, before I dabbled with TBC pirate servers, but cata retail was awesome, at least until dragon soul. I had 5 max level twinks, and that’s the only expansion I had any max level twinks…

[@democratsarepedos]

I agree. It was alt-friendly. And if you go on Netherwing right now (the best TBC private server) half of it is just Chinese Horde and the rest are insular guilds. There's no game for pugs.

[@ZaerdinGaming]

There was 28 weeks between 3.3 ICC and 3.35 Ruby Sanctum and a 24 week gap between 3.3.5 and 4.0.1. That's 52 weeks compared to 43 weeks from 4.3.0 to 5.0.5a. The end game gap wasn't anything unusual. Blizzard almost had the same problem with BC -> WotLK but they added in Sunwell to buy time. The reason it didn't seem as long is because ICC was gated when it originally launched.

[@Reaper_One]

Anything prior to update 7.3.5 was good if you ask me! I hope Classic doesn't ever catch up to that update and maybe it'll permanently stop at Draenor haha.

[@GuiltyNoticer]

I like cata

[@BloodVixen]

I remember everybody saying back during cata that the problem with the expansion was that it spent too much time working on renovation, and not innovation. Nobody really complained about a lot of the minutiae of it unless you were a sweaty die hard player. The underwater starting zone was probably the biggest pain point, and the initial 5 man dungeon rollout was unforgivingly difficult.

[@lazy_racer]

For me Cata is second best expansion.(after TBC) I renewed wow subscription 1st time since 2011 just because they announced Cata.

[@skaluv]

I thought it was a mixed bag. I liked most of the new zones though they were a little drawn out. I liked some of the quality of life stuff and by the last patch it was was pretty good. What I didn't like was a lot of the revamped zones. In Kalamdor it was needed in a lot of zones because they always seemed unfinished. Thousand Needles and Tanaris being the only exceptions. Darkshore I'm on the fence about. In the Eastern Kingdoms most of it was annoying. I didn't mind the "time jump" with new buildings but the deathwing destruction was really annoying. The removal of weapons points and grouping of quests was also kind of annoying. I do get the point of it being cleaner though. I hated losing Southshore but I did find the Forsaken changes interesting. The game just became to linear and it lost a lot of the magic. I started at Cata launch and didn't hit 85 until about 3 months before MoP. After that I pretty much quit the game until Legion. I'd come back periodically to check things but nothing held my interest. I did enjoy MoP fresh leveling in Legion though.

[@Kil777xx]

Vashjir was cool, I remember the rumors of an underwater future zone went around ever since vanilla

[@tkinginyellow]

Couldn't care less about the vanilla nostalgia and I played vanilla back in the day. I liked Cata, there I said it.

[@maverickdm8193]

As someone who was a 10 year old kid first playing World of Warcraft with Cata as my first expansion, I am hyped for it but it is more for me as a nostalgic trip through memory lane of first leveling up a Worgen Warrior (I was a ten year old kid and werewolves were hella cool to me as a kid). While I've played through classic to wrath now, I'm kinda excited to see that jump from wrath and Cata to truly understand that difference from old world to new in cata.

[@miloradmickovic2831]

Good for you buddy, but that excitement you felt for Cata, that's what us older players felt for each of our expansions when we started playing the game, and given how the biggest WoW has been is Wotlk (12 Million) , it's fair to say that we lived through the best WoW had to offer in terms of gameplay/story and such. I had a bit of fun in Cata too, but real life responsibilities took the main seat over gaming so I guess that's why I couldn't even enjoy it as much as the others