• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

World of Warcraft |OT3|

Draxal

Member
Cata failed for a couple of reasons.

1. Not enough endgame, and some of the new content they added was horrific (archaelogy), and something like Molten Front ... was not light years ahead of say Isle of Quel'Danas.
2. 80-85 was not as fun as 70-80 or 60-70 when they came out, so much work was added to the 1-60, that it seemed 80-85 lacked alot of polish.
3. Metzen.
 

Bisnic

Really Really Exciting Member!
Well, login server is up, my updater jumped from 4% to 100% oddly.

Servers are still down though!

Of course they are, if we're lucky they will be up at 2pm-3pm EST like usual.

If its like most other big patch days, we might have to wait an extra 6 hours. :lol
 

Entropia

No One Remembers
To expand on why I think Cata was poor:

1) Heroics - These were a stark contrast to what people experienced at level 80 in Wrath. The Wrath Heroics were admittedly very easy even from the get go (I was in them as soon as I hit 80, wearing a lot of T6 level gear) and could plowed through. When you hit 85 in Cata, they were fairly difficult. However I can attribute this to people not fully grasping mechanic changes. For example, I was resto for most of my first dungeon runs and I hadn't learned the nuances of healing yet. The difficulty of the heroics vs. learning new class mechanics and such = bad times.

2) Raiding. The first raid tier offered a lot of bosses over 3 different dungeons. My huge huge huge huge complaint was how there were so many fights that required interrupts. :(

3) Poor content release time table. 4.1 gave us a revamped Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub. 4.2 gave us Firelands, there was also going to be an Abyssal Maw dungeon/raid but it got scrapped (more on this later). 4.2 came out in June, and Cata launched early December. Even though I'm not a hardcore raider and burn through content and wasn't finished the tier, I think 7 months is just a month too long to be current.

This can be double-edged: Hardcore, bleeding edge progression raiders blow through content in like 2 months. This means they have 3+ months of farming... then getting bored. Casual or lesser progressed guilds may get 3/4 done the tier before the new content is out. The problem for those lower guilds is that they don't necessarily have the option to stop raiding that tier. They want the gear so they have to keep going. This means they're seeing the raids over and over and over, it burns them out.

4) Touching on my Abyssal Maw point, in one of the Dev Watercooler blogs they said that they would've re-used a lot of assets from Vashj'ir and that the storyline was uninteresting. This of course was said a few months after Dragon Soul had been out. How can they even say that? Dragon Soul was full of re-used assets. Wyrmrest, Morchok, The maws, Zon'ozz, Yor'sahj, Ultraxion, Blackhorn, Hagara, Eye of Eternity, The Maelstrom. All places we had seen many many times before. There was very little in there that made me say - "oh wow this is really cool looking!". Instead it was mostly "Hey this looks like _______".

5) They did with Dragon Soul what they did with ICC... but we didn't even get a filler raid. Blizzard gave us ICC in December 2009 and Cata didn't come out till December 2010. They at least tossed us a bone and gave us Ruby Sanctum. Dragon Soul came out December 2011 and gave us Mists at the end of September. That's way too long for them not to provide any extra content or features. It's mind boggling that they think that's acceptable.

I sincerely hope that in Mists they don't put out the final raiding tier until we have an idea of when the next expansion is coming. I'm not interested in doing this again.

6) "Other Content". When Firelands came out, we got the Molten Front. What it turned out to be a painstaking, mind numbing grind of doing dailies over and over that were very mostly uninteresting.


I will give these few "good" things:

1) The talent/system changes made leveling nicer because you got core abilities earlier. (Except for Destro Locks, WTF is up with that?)

2) Azeroth re-design. This didn't affect the end game at all, but it was nice to level alts where the zone stories were much more cohesive, gear was more appropriate for classes, etc.


TL;DR - Worst expansion.
 

Entropia

No One Remembers
So BC and Wrath had more content than Cata?


Wrath was great in that the raid content was available for everyone. Normal modes could be pugged, heroics generally could not (aside from 1 or 2).

It felt like you could do something at anytime. Cata, you were mostly stuck running with your guild because no one ran the older content because of the level of difficulty (That is until they started getting geared in DS) and even then, a lot of people still fail running BoT/BWD/To4W.
 

ampere

Member
My download finished and I re-watched the opening cinematic. Exciting :D

Not sure what I want to do first when servers come up, maybe re-do my UI and test rogue dps on a training dummy for combat and sub. I tested them on beta a while ago, but I'm not sure if anything else changed since then.

This whole optimization process they have made is pretty crazy, my wow folder is only 18.8GB right now (that is with a cleared data cache folder).


So BC and Wrath had more content than Cata?
If you count the 1-60 leveling experience and Kalimdor/Eastern Kingdoms redesign as content then probably not, but that's not endgame content so it doesn't keep players who don't level alts busy. It was a great redesign, but yeah BC and Wrath had much more endgame content.
 

Bisnic

Really Really Exciting Member!
So BC and Wrath had more content than Cata?

At least twice as much. And the fact that they had whole new continents made the expansions more interesting. Having all the new zones separated in Cataclysm was a nice idea to fill the holes in old Azeroth that had been there since 2004, but it killed part of the fun that is visiting a new continent. Thankfully MoP goes back to that.
 

Berordn

Member
Wrath was great in that the raid content was available for everyone. Normal modes could be pugged, heroics generally could not (aside from 1 or 2).

Plus the split lockouts for 10 and 25 made it so if you raided one of those on your main, you could still bring them to pugs and generally gave you twice as much to do if you wanted to. Not that 10 and 25 being equal in difficulty and gear quality is a bad thing, but that was one of the perks of the old system. In Cata you need alts upon alts in order to do something else that week.
 

Ultratech

Member
Wrath was great in that the raid content was available for everyone. Normal modes could be pugged, heroics generally could not (aside from 1 or 2).

It felt like you could do something at anytime. Cata, you were mostly stuck running with your guild because no one ran the older content because of the level of difficulty (That is until they started getting geared in DS) and even then, a lot of people still fail running BoT/BWD/To4W.

Sadly, that's true. When we went and did the T11 content to get our Dark Phoenixes, it took quite a bit of trial-and-error to beat those dungeons, despite outgearing the place in DS equips mostly.
Best example was us losing to the Elementals fight in BoT several times, but one-shotting Cho'gall. I read up on a lot of those fights beforehand, and they're not crazy hard, but you do have to pay attention.

So BC and Wrath had more content than Cata?

Err...tough to say. The thing with Cata is that they redid the majority of the 1-60 zones. The main thing that hurt Cata was the lack of endgame stuffs.
 

Yoshichan

And they made him a Lord of Cinder. Not for virtue, but for might. Such is a lord, I suppose. But here I ask. Do we have a sodding chance?
the login screen + music is hyping me so much ._. wish I could play MoP.
 

Entropia

No One Remembers
And even though it was introduced in late Wrath - the dungeon finder fucking ruined this game.


Sure, it's great to be able to queue for dungeons and not spam trade or what have you and get ported right to the dungeon but as a result, no one leaves the damn capital cities. People sit in Stormwind/Orgrimmar for 15-20 minutes until their queue pops, gets their dungeon done and then repeats.

The odd person will go out to farm something, but 90% of the time you're not in a dungeon/BG, you're in Stormwind or Orgrimmar.

I'm kind of glad that they are getting rid of "Have Group, Will Travel" people are going to have to actually fly their own asses down to the raid. And I like that the Spirits of Harmony are BoP. It means people are going to be out in the world doing things rather than sitting on their asses. There's going to be dailies a plenty across multiple factions, things to do, people to see. I love it.


ONE MORE MONTH!!!!!!!!!!
 

aesop

Member
Man, I may have to dust of my mage today and respec frost. Sounds a lot more fun than arcane and will actually be somewhat competitive in PvE.
 

Bisnic

Really Really Exciting Member!
I'm kind of glad that they are getting rid of "Have Group, Will Travel" people are going to have to actually fly their own asses down to the raid.

Nah, you're just going to have to use a summoning stone to summon half your group.
 

Einchy

semen stains the mountaintops
Nah, you're just going to have to use a summoning stone to summon half your group.

It's going to be so fun flying to the raid on my 150 mount on alts.

Or when someone leaves the raid and we have to spend 10 minutes waiting for the raid leader and the replacement to fly back.
 

Berordn

Member
It's going to be so fun flying to the raid on my 150 mount on alts.

Or when someone leaves the raid and we have to spend 10 minutes waiting for the raid leader and the replacement to fly back.

Doing old raids for transmog runs is going to be hell when we actually have to attune people again.

Or just trying to teach them where it is.
 

Bisnic

Really Really Exciting Member!
Doing old raids for transmog runs is going to be hell when we actually have to attune people again.

Or just trying to teach them where it is.

Er... they got rid of attunement a long time ago for old raids. I doubt they are bringing this back.
 

Ultratech

Member
Doing old raids for transmog runs is going to be hell when we actually have to attune people again.

Or just trying to teach them where it is.

There's not much to do attunement for these days though.

-MC and BWL attunements are pretty easy and you can get it done fairly quickly at 85.
-ICC and ToC Heroic only require you do those raids on Normal first and beat the last boss.
 

Berordn

Member
Er... they got rid of attunement a long time ago for old raids. I doubt they are bringing this back.

MC and BWL mostly. MC's not hard since you can get there in 5 minutes through BRD and be done with it in the process, but I've had to guide way too many people in UBRS to get them into BWL the first time. No fun.
 

Enosh

Member
I'm kind of glad that they are getting rid of "Have Group, Will Travel" people are going to have to actually fly their own asses down to the raid.
yes, can't wait to add 10 more minutes of sitting on my ass in DS/other raid when someone had to leave or ragequit
 
Oh god, the Curse client is so bad.

I'm getting tired of Curse's bullshit where they've refused to make it work with 4.0 .NET. That's the current one - that's what they should be updated for. But no, for months they send their CS reps to tell people they're doing it wrong and they have to use the cleanup tool and use the 3.5 pack. I could complain that I have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich shoved in my router which is causing Curse not to start up after install AND THEY'D STILL COPY AND PASTE THAT RESPONSE.

I really liked their client when it worked to update my add ons in Warcraft. It just hasn't worked right for a long time now.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Ret Paladins were fucking terrible to lvl before Cataclysm, all you had was auto attacks and Judgment for nearly 50 lvls before Crusader Strike was available.

Yeah but Judgment consumed your seals so you had to press the Seal button again to use Judgment again =D
 

Tamanon

Banned
Yeah, Retadins have it easy now. There weren't these procs and such, it was....judge/seal/judge/seal. And then you got Seal of Command and it was "Pray it blows shit up"
 

ElRenoRaven

Member
I'm getting tired of Curse's bullshit where they've refused to make it work with 4.0 .NET. That's the current one - that's what they should be updated for. But no, for months they send their CS reps to tell people they're doing it wrong and they have to use the cleanup tool and use the 3.5 pack. I could complain that I have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich shoved in my router which is causing Curse not to start up after install AND THEY'D STILL COPY AND PASTE THAT RESPONSE.

I really liked their client when it worked to update my add ons in Warcraft. It just hasn't worked right for a long time now.

That's why I refuse to use clients to update my addons. Course I only use one and it's not looking so good for them. That addon is Carbonite.
 

Number45

Member
That's why I refuse to use clients to update my addons. Course I only use one and it's not looking so good for them. That addon is Carbonite.
So is Curse not working? I only have a few separate addons, I'd just assumed they were all up to date - I don't get any errors when I launch it (when it eventually loads...).

I use TukUI for everything that I can, just adding bits and pieces as necessary. The update is ready to go for that already. :)
 

Einchy

semen stains the mountaintops
So, apparently the scenario is a 3-man type thing? It's going to suck even more, then. :/

Oh well, at least I was around for the Cata event.

X6HmA.jpg


hxcxz.jpg


QUlUB.jpg


ZuJpX.jpg
Those were on my mid-pop server, I can only imagine the craziness on the Illidians and Mal'Ganises.
 
Top Bottom