This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
I think the biggest failure with Cataclysm was that it was "more of the same". There were a few neat ideas thrown in here or there, but us who have been playing since BC or before recognize most of the content for what it is: same thing, different paint.The second biggest failure was difficulty. We went from Wrath which was casual paradise to this ridiculously difficult thing. Then by the time we were all starting to actually get accustomed to difficulty they nerfed it into oblivion.Introductory raids were not introductory. Leaving all of the casual raiders from Wrath stuck. We were promised "multiple raids with multiple levels of difficulty" coming into Cataclysm. In the end we had multiple raids with a hodge podge of boss difficulties that made progression tiresome. Granted, you could jump around from raid to raid in one night, but do you know how hard that is to pull off with a group of pugs and casual raiders? Its hard enough getting them into one spot.Honestly, I enjoyed the complexity at the beginning of Cata for the 5-mans. My huge qualm was that the rewards sucked. Since BC we've been taught clearing a heroic means a chance at epic loot at the end. Even if it was one piece. Then we get to Cata and we're getting the same level of blues we got at the beginning. I know in the overall picture color of loot doesn't matter, but MMO's thrive on those little feelings of accomplishment for completing tasks.The third major flaw that I think is really part of the first one is a lack of ingenuity. We expect more out of Blizzard. They really need to get some fresh blood or at the very least some fresh ideas going.
I think the problem with Cataclysm and why a lot of players dont like it as much as prior expansions is mainly due to the attitude shift in development of the game.In past expansions Blizzard listened to the players more and tailored the game toward the feedback, within limits of course and still influencing how things went but they did more observation and took in more feedback and BC and Wrath had more enjoyment for more people because of that.For some odd and ridiculous reason only known internally to Blizzard, they went the other direction with Cataclysm and started to dictate to players how they wanted them to play. Changing talents around like they did, homogenizing class differences, changing how healing works, making questing completely linear (you have to finish one quest before you unlock more, you cant decide to skip any anymore that you might not like if you want to do more) all of that became a dictation of how "this is how we think you should play our game" instead of "this is how we interpreted how we should improve our game" and that is the fundamental difference with Cataclysm compared to other versions of WoW.When you dictate to people how to do something, they tend to shy away from it, especially something that's recreational. You take the ability for people to be "unique" away and that makes them enjoy it less because its no longer their game, its how Blizzard wants their game to be.That is the reason people are less enthusiastic about Cataclysm. The uniqueness of playing how you want, being able to hybrid your talents (even if it was stupid to some people, you could still do it if you wanted to, now you HAVE to spend 31pts in one tree before another tree opens), those things made each character for each player their own, an extension of themselves in a virtual world. Now everyone is the same. Its like someone at Blizzard read 1984 and said "hey, this is a great concept, lets put it to work in WoW!". While it keeps cost of development down because you control the direction of the game in every aspect, it limits your subscription base because people get bored being like everyone else.
The reason WoW sucks more and more is because player base is getting younger and younger.Low level (= up to and including 84) PvP is full of undergeared noobs etc.I think lower levels should contain some damn training quests so they learn the class at least a bit.The problem is, most of these people don't even understand English. They have NO idea what does the ability do, they can't read the guide in game box (it's outdated, but most of those things are still/again true, they would at least learn the basics)The other thing are localized versions.. now you have 4 yo kids from Germany, France and who knows which other countries who CAN autoattack and push 1-5 buttons (that they get till lvl 10 when your spells stop autoappearing on their actionbar) without knowing what are they good for, what stats do the class/spec they play need.. etcLast 2 weeks I'm trying to play, but seriously, after about 20 minutes of seeing those tards in action, I'm so disgusted that I turn wow off and go play League of Legends..
WoW is an 8 year old game running on a 12 year old engine, the Warcraft III engine. It's about time that some changes are made. While I think it is being done the wrong way, Transmogifying (or w/e) is a great way for people to feel nostalgic by turning their new gear into old gear and it gives newer players a reason to do older raids or go on a "quest" to find that cool looking piece of gear.I've been playing WoW since the days of yore back in Vanilla and I remember that all the fun I had was player made. We organized raids on IF/SW, we set up guild wars between Horde and Alliance, and we would go out and explore the game and find areas no one else had seen at the time. That's what made the game fun for me and if they could some how take a step back and put the game back into our hands, I am sure we as a community could find ways of making WoW fun again.~Zuty
The only thing people would complain about more than WoW as it is today would be if Blizzard pulled the plug on it.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. PvP, as far as concept is concerned, is so easy to liven up. I began my MMO career playing Dark Age of Camelot. While that game has some major short-comings, it got one thing so insurmountably correct; PvP. One of the best features they had was a PvP zone that could be joined at any time. Inside this zone you had dungeons; keeps which could be sieged and taken over by opposing factions; quests and all sorts of other things. So the idea that each faction had a set number of keeps which they could defend was enticing enough. After you've done some farming in your own world, or a few quests or dungeons, you could hope on over to the PvP zone and have some fun. Maybe you join the siege or defense of a keep, start one, or just run around lookin' for people to fight. You also had dungeons with some pretty unique drops and things to bring your guildies into for a bit of something new. Each faction also had specific relics that they controlled which provided PvE zone buffs to experience gains or damage done or travel speeds. So siege the keep that holds those relics and you can gain the opposing factions buffs. They also had some dungeons in PvE zones that were linked to this PvP zone. They were linked by the number of keeps controlled. So if you owned enough of the total keeps, you would have control over those dungeons and thus could quest in there, farm, or kill bosses. On top of all of this, you actually had rewards for going up in rank in PvP. They would mostly be PvP specific things, but they were actual abilities and attacks that could be used. Some really freakin' sweet ones too. This gave players a lot of incentive to PvP in this zone because it affected so much of the world. It made it feel like you really were in constant battle with the opposing faction, rather than just sort of mildly suspicious of them unless you were playing capture the flag. They also did something interesting with the way they did instances and expansions. When you received a title, IT MEANT SOMETHING! They had a great system for trying to get some new gear, or title, or abilities. You started a quest chain, BUT; this quest chain involved getting a group together to complete quests that required groups. So you'd travel underwater to take part in an ancient atlantian proving ground, then take your notoriety there to beat the piss out of some other guy who gives you a keep to unlocking some ancient artifact with take you to a raid boss, which empowers you with lightning or flying abilities to take you to fight a demi-god or extinguish a plague, or find the pieces to an ancient weapon or blah blah blah. It can be part of leveling or end-game content. The idea that you had more to do during the game than just quest quest quest, dungeon, dungeon, farm, farm, craft, "Lol, my gear and mounts are cooler than yours', made the game so much more immersive to me. WoW has done SO many things correctly, and they have really done well in providing the community with a lot of things to do. The problem is that they are starting to recycle. Yeah it's great that there are new raids, but really... It's still just a raid. Yeah things make look different, but it's the same old thing over and over. It's not the time to refine and refine anymore, it's time to do something completely different. When I got into high school years and years ago, I didn't just take arts and crafts over and over again so I could figure out the best and coolest clay pots to make for my parents, I took photography, and film, and metal shop. Still doing arts and crafts with those things, but god dammit I wasn't building clay pots anymore.
Sorry for a lot to read from one guy who's opinion probably doesn't matter, but they also did some FANTASTIC things with classes.Every expansion had new races and classes for people to look into. And they weren't just another caster or warrior, but classes with legitimately different mechanics. They had a necromancer (I think; can't remember the class name) that didn't just raise an ally right next to him sort of like a warlock. He summoned his ghoul, zombie, or warrior and then essentially disappeared. He became and ethereal being that floated around essentially pulling on the strings of his creation to do his bidding. He continued to cast and could move pretty freely, and if his pet died, he reappeared with almost 0 health and pretty much died as well. They had a bonedancer who essentially created his own army of skeletal mages, hunters, warriors. All too weak to take on a boss by themselves, but just made the game so interesting. You had to control all of your minions so that they were doing exactly what was needed to get the job done. They're version of a warlock didn't have any pets at all. He channeled groups of spells into chambers which floated around his head. He could combine them to do different things and perform tasks in different ways. The point is that each faction had 15 different classes. And you could subclass as well. Of course there were overlaps, and I know i'm doing a stupid thing by advocating for a game that is NOT even close to being successful like WoW. However blizzard could learn from this. There are so many options that I just don't even see being touched by blizzard.
Cata is not terrible, it's just lacking some things, a few of which are hard to identify or even articulate.It's been said before but one part that's easy to pick out is that the whole Deathwing thing, as this xpac's villain and source of trouble, is just pretty bland and doesn't really take credit for anything. Through Wotlk, regardless of whether or not you knew much about the lore or even paid attention to quest text, you knew who Arthas was and encountered him/his personality/his influences throughout, even in 5mans. In contrast, Deathwing is pretty much a big generic dragon that's bent on blowing up the world; unless you watch the opening cinematic or get randomly fried by him in the world, he really doesn't matter in any way to the player. Sure he caused the cataclysm that changed the game world, but unless you're looking at the Valley of Heroes, you don't really see anything that makes you want to care.I don't know that class homogenization is really too much of a problem, as Interest's stalker was going on about. It has happened to an extent, and is annoying to a small degree, but such things are bound to happen and I don't think granting Bloodlust or brez to another couple classes really contributed much to roughly a million unsubs. What's happened with the flow and style of the classes is not homogenization, it's the classes being brought in line with the flow of the rest of the game....which was uncomfortably linear this expansion, and so the classes end up feeling the same way.Not to say Blizz didn't try though; there's a lot of content and just, stuff, it's obvious they gave it a shot, and the content wasn't completely horrible, else we'd all have quit playing. It just lacks, I dunno, some kind of synergy or flow that makes you actually care most of the time. The saving Thrall questline was very, very cool, might even be my favorite of all quests in game's history... voiceovers were well done and the addition of a few cutscenes and mini-cinematics were quite cool.I could make an even bigger wall of text naming off bits and pieces but it'd still only be half of how it feels...suffice to say, and I'm sure hackles will raise at this....whatever overall quality is lacking in cata, whether it was some subtle cohesion or environmental immersion or whatnot....Blizz needs to remember their design process and vision during Wotlk in terms of content. And that's not nostalgia talking, wotlk had more folks raiding and hitting the endgame than any other xpac yet. Easy gear is not the sole reason for this; in wotlk, people wanted to see more, and that's what we need to see in the next xpac.