Why Nobody's Excited For Cata Classic | Asmongold Reacts 

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

They should have left WOTLK indefinitely

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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).

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

I dont understand why they dont just make separate servers for vanilla, tbc, wotlk, cata classic so people can pick which classic experience they want to enjoy.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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!

I had a blast raiding the first 2 tiers of cata and will do so again, probably. It really depends what other games I'm into around the release of cata.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Yes! When I was first leveling, I was heading to Hillsbrad to level, and had to run there from the Wetlands through Arathi Highlands. Got merced by raptors ALL the way there....

I'm not sure if Guild Wars 2 created this, but it's used the 'bulletin board' style LFG system since I think when it launched and it's great. Drop down tabs sorted by region and content type and you advertise your party/squad in it.

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.

I absolutely loved cata. I personally think cata is actually peak wow. The qol updates were awesome. The guild system was great. I had the most social experiences I've ever had in wow in cata. Now I don't disagree with some of the criticisms and I agree with asmon that this was the first of the downfall of focusing on mmo players.

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

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.

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.

People forget just how much new content was added in cata. It wasn't just a few new zones and level cap with some abiltiies. It was a rework of the whole map, questing, all classes and specs, two new races, brawlers guild. It was MASSIVE. It showed what blizz was capable of, and every expansion since just showed they cared more and more about profit than great content.

cataclysm should have added new stuff to existing zones with minimal changes to those zones, basically integrating into what already existing while adding some new stuff

That commemt about the bird in deadwind pass is frickin on point and hilarious. Exact same thing happened to me

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

I grew up on Warcraft 2. I not only knew who Deathwing was, but I had chosen to play the Deathwing server because I loved him so much. From a story perspective I was super excited when it was first announced that he would be coming to WoW. The Cata raids and dungeons were not was made the expansion garbage... it was the game overhaul. Destroying the old world and revamping the class and talent system that just made me fall out of love with my characters, and the nostalgia of leveling a new one was gone, since the quest zones had all been deleted. Add to the fact heavy phasing that kept me from questing with friends was the final nail in the coffin. If i was on a different step of a quest than my friend, I could not play with him. In party it would just say "player is in another phase", with no option to join it. It became a waiting around simulator, as we had leveled as a duo from day 1, despite being on very different schedules. I could no longer quest ahead and then come back and help him catch up when he got on. Cata was the reason i quit WoW... and sadly, it is the reason I am once again letting my subscription run out. It's back to random steam games for me... unless by some miracle they come back and say "woops, we forgot to mention WotLK eras at Blizzcon!" Edit to add: I forgot to mention Also, Cata was the first expansion to permanently remove collectibles from the game. So all those months or years you spent trying to get the ZG tiger or Raptor were wasted... you ran out of time. I got 3 raptors, and never once saw the tiger drop. ;-;

Feels like ages ago but the best time in wow for me was pre lvl 50, gear chasing was a thing. It was so good. Ahhh the good old times

Cata was were I got my first warlock legendary weapon. 😁 However the Deathwing fights felt, idk, too unfocused on a direct fight with Neltharion. Would've loved fighting a whole dragon at the end.

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.

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.

First time I did Margit, I completely avoided going up to that castle until i was about lvl 30 and had a +6 claymore. I went in there and killed him on my first try. On my second/third playthroughs, i went in there at lvl 15-20 with a +3 weapon and had to die a few times to learn hit fight mechanics to beat him.

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

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

I'm personally excited for Cata, the first expansion I did any type of end game content.

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.

Main reason I want to play cata was cause arena was so much fun back then. The raids were pretty good as well .

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

Replaying Classic, especially TBC, I joined this superb guild on Westfall server. It was alive, warm, and you could always find someone to run non-current content with (older dungeons and TBC dungeons - not only the last raid). That guild was composed of about 50% players who had never played WoW before and I got a smile listening to them talking about how great this game was... and I watched their soul progressively get corrupted as WotLK progressed. These are the guy that convinced me to get into WotLK again, I am and always will be a TBC guy, this is the ONLY xpac I want to play, FOREVER... yet they convinced me to join them. But when quit last March, they where all consumed into the raid treadmill. No longer could you play other dungeons, or even play together again except in those darned raids... Only ppl that would where the other WoW veterans who knew better, but there wasnt enough of us left in the guild at that point. I guess they're going to hit the Cataclysm wall head-on, like most if us did back then. And I am still angry, now what? 18 months later? that Blizzard pulled the plug on TBC. Not giving them my sub anymore either, but they aren't briging it back and it p*sses me off to no end. Never was a private server guy. So TBC is dead again, and with it, the warm cozzy guilds it created. Now that said, I will probably come back if they make a MoP server at some point, provided it's permanent and won't be deleted like TBC. But I've lost any and all trust in Blizzard these days. We'll see.

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

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

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

Cataclysm was a great expansion. The biggest cause of hate was the year long drought on last raid... And the fight with Death wing being a letdown. Phasing was also in its infancy, so that awesome unlock chain for Hyjal could be annoying when your friends were in different parts. But sync came in a bit later and fixed most of that. And, come on, Firelands was EPIC writ large. Though... there were two major oversights: Because of the spread out high level areas, no one had a reason to SEE many of the new quests. And there were several awesome chains that I KNOW the bulk of people probably never saw. The be a quest giver on the Horde side was just a cool chain. And they should have updated and moved Quel'thelas, Ghostlands, and Azurmyst to the main maps. Those whole areas are in dire need of updating. I think, technically, the Exodar was fixed and hovering over the island by Pandaria.

LFG was introduced in WotLK, wasn't it? I remember I was using it for the end-game heroics

It's like back in the 80s and 90s you'd go to the stores to go shopping, the layout forced you to explore and you'd find things you didn't intend on buying and you'd make a day of it and go with family or friends and have fun. Now you go online and get precisely what you need in a few clicks and it feels more like a chore than fun because it's designed entirely for functionality and not experience. Even if you go to the store now you know everything they have because of the internet so the stores don't have the same role anymore.

I'm excited for Cata. I feel like the dev team will make some appropriate changes to make the expansion better.