This pretty much sums up Cataclysm better than any I have read.

Comments

• KhinRunite Member Posts: 879

  March 2011

  Well it definitely sucks to be in a lose/lose situation.
• Deathofsage Member UncommonPosts: 1,102

  March 2011

  Interesting read, and yeah OP i know you didn't write this but addressing the anonymous writer's thoughts--

  To be fair, Naxxramas was recycled content and was not received very well. It was greatly nerfed and people were upset about it for an entire expansion. Granted Cata isn't directly recycling content but instead recycled mechanics and it's nice to see Onyxia again, I was worried last time we played with her when she wouldn't get back up. (lol)

  Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
  12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
• fivoroth Member UncommonPosts: 3,916

  March 2011

  How is this more than extreme exaggerations of various aspects of the game and put forward as facts>?

  Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
• Daffid011 Member UncommonPosts: 7,945

  March 2011

  I have two healing classes and they play very differently from each other and you most certainly don't press the same button over and over again.  Every single healing ability I have has a situational use and those situations present themself pretty frequently. 

  I very much disagree with the hyperbole in the original post.

   

   

   

   

   
• Germaximus_S Member UncommonPosts: 1,061

  March 2011

  No.

  I dont play anymore simply because i dont want to, the game is great.

  I can point out the things i disagree with easily but i just dont care.

   

  "How is this more than extreme exaggerations of various aspects of the game and put forward as facts>?"

  Exactly.

  Jeremiah 8:21 I weep for the hurt of my people; I stand amazed, silent, dumb with grief.
  Join me on Twitch Facebook Twitter 
• fivoroth Member UncommonPosts: 3,916

  March 2011

  
  Originally posted by danJ188

  Because it puts together much of how people feel is wrong with the game?It isnt a exxageration. Thousands, if not millions of people feel this way about Cata. It was bungled, and ill developed late in the game. One has to wonder if Blizzard even cares much at this point how well patches and expansions go for WoW, when it's appearent the're already pushing their best works on their new pet project, Titan. Two years before release, and they're already boasting it's in a playable stage.

  I don't think you did a research on such a scale to be able to draw such conclusions did you? Or did you start counting forum posts? I am not saying this is not correct but there is no way of knowing if this is true or not. Your guess and mine are just speculations which are not backed up by any real data.

  Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
• retrospectic Member UncommonPosts: 1,466

  March 2011

  
  Originally posted by Battleskar

  1. Questing. The quests are fun, but mostly only the first time around as the new "on rails" design requires each zone be done in the exact same order - no choices, skipping, or jumping around. Leveling is also too quick. It took longer to get from level 70 to 75, let alone 80. Even at a leisurely pace, it takes only days to get to...

  This is not correct.  There are multiple paths to choose when leveling.  You can start in Hyjal or Vash'ir.  You can also choose to level doing instances.  I can't really comment on the speed.  I enjoyed getting to 85 quickly so I could experience 5mans and raids.
  
  
  
  2. Level 85. Cataclysm raid bosses are split between several raids, but don't be fooled - Naxxramas alone featured more bosses than all Cataclysm raids combined. Cata also has the fewest at-release dungeons of any expansion thus far, profession-related quests which pale in comparison to previous expansions, and few daily hubs. You get to 85 too quickly, and then there's nothing to do besides...
  
   

  There are 14 raid bosses currently in the game.  This is around the average for any given content patch.  Comparing this to Naxx is also a fairly poor comparison considering how quickly guilds were able to clear Naxx content. 

  
  
  3. Heroics. They are too long for too little reward. For a mandatory (for progression), daily task for the entire expansion, two hours is an outright chore (and it's often still over an hour in epics). Dailies on multiple chars + raid-prep gear grinds = recipe for boredom. But the biggest problem with heroics is...

  I also don't agree with this.  The user seems to be saying that playing the game for a few hours isn't worth playing the game for a few hours.  If he enjoyed doing content (which I do) those hours would not seem wasted.  Anyone in a decent guild will be able to breeze into heroics and use them as a training ground for the new difficulty of content.  You have to use you abilities now, folks.  Oh boy.
  
  
  
  4. Healing. Universally maligned during the beta, all five specs now have identical playstyles where one spell is spammed ad infinitum. Worse yet, going from greens to epics (and healing groups in epics), the playstyle DOES NOT CHANGE. You cast the same stupid spell even more often, while your other spells remain inefficient to the point of near uselessness. To ensure hour-long queues, Blizzard also targeted the other vital group role...

  This is just plain wrong.  If you are spamming one heal you are doing it wrong.  I can tell at this point in the post that the player is a Paladin.  He is probably a ret paladin who, because ret paladins were very undertuned at release, decided to try healing.

  His groups were probably wiping because he was spamming Holy Light over and over.  That's not how you do it.  If you are spamming one spell the entire fight, you are doing something wrong.  That isn't a game mechanic fail, that's a user fail.
  
  
  
  5. Tanking. Tank cooldowns are now along the lines of "Reduce damage by 10% for 10 seconds" - you don't even notice you've used a special ability. Skill- and control-based mechanics were replaced by DPS-like rotations, but without the DPS. The changes to tanks and healers were part of a bigger problem...
  
   

  It looks like our Holy Paladin friend tried tanking.  His assertion that tanks do low dps is just part of how the game works.  Tanks don't do damage.  Giving you a more dps-like rotation is a godsend for most tanks as they were stuck playing wack-a-mole for most of theirr careers.  Also, there are plenty of awesome cooldowns tanks gets, +hp -dmg +healing +absorbtion.  It isn't just one type.

  Again, only having one cooldown you use is a player fail.  Don't blame blizzard for your inability to read spell tooltips.

  
  
  6. Homogenization and loss of replay value. If you have one tanking or healing class, you have them all. The differences are superficial, and with few talent and glyph choices, even DPS classes all provide essentially the same experience. Every instance is the same, every character is the same, every day is the same - the game feels like a second job instead of an escape. There was only one thing left to screw up...
  
   

  User fail here too.  If you believe that everything is the same, you'll play it the same.  Tanks are significantly different and require a whole new set of skills to play correctly.  Just because his paladin can be every spec doesn't mean he has a handle on the entire game.  It is really sad that he seems to think his lack of ability is the game's fault.

  
  
  7. PVP. The imbalances are worse than at any point in WoW's history, and that's saying something. Tol Barad is an unmitigated disaster, with mechanics that were so poorly thought-out that it's mind-boggling. The "new" battlegrounds are quick clones of Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin (Battle for Gilneas even displays AB node names at the start of games, to make it clear just how little work was put into it). Rated BGs are regular BGs with 90-minute queues.
  
   

  Looks like our friend specced PvP with no resil and got rolfstomped by every other player.  Rated BG and BG queues are not 90 minutes.  I get into my daily and subsequent BGs in about 4 - 5 minutes.  At off times that queue is 10 minutes.  This again, seems to be a player fail.
  
  ---
  
  
  
  The hype coming from Blizzard simply does not resemble the reality of the game. The talent/glyph revamp made things more cookie-cutter instead of less. The healing revamp, done because some specs relied on only 2-3 spells, has all specs relying on one spell for 75% (based on log data in epics) of total healing.
  
  So our paladin friend looked at his recount and saw holy light was 75% of his healing.  That's not what my report says on my shaman.  I use a lot of different situational heals.  And even if that is how your meter looks, those other heals might have been much more life saving than the one you can spam.

  
  
  The worst hype is that Heroics are "harder." Heroics are longer, but the mechanics are simpler than ever. The perceived difficulty is from the removal of error recovery. Recovering from mistakes (which even the best players make) was actually the most fun you could have in a dungeon and the true test of skill. In Cata, neither do tanks have the cooldowns nor healers the output to make up for any mistakes, and most instantly kill you to begin with.
  
   

  This isn't true.  This again, is player fail.  I've recovered plenty of groups from near-wipes in heroics.  Again, please don't blame WoW for your group's inability.

  
  
  Blizzard's greatest misstep was blaming players instead of admitting their mistakes. They've convinced half of the population that the other half are unskilled whiners, causing a permanent rift in the community. The devs are in a lose/lose situation now, as they'll lose players if they don't make changes, they'll lose players if they do make changes, and there will be caustic bitterness in the community no matter what.

  I really think that this review's greatest mistake is to say that the limited content experienced by the reviewer is bad when it is very obvious what problems the reviewer had. 

  Also, changes to the game won't hurt the community.  Blizzard will nerf the old content and bring in new content.  Players, like the reviewer, will come back (if he left) and play the old content and hate it and complain but he'll get his epics and move on.  That's how the game works, I'm sorry that it was hard for this reviewer to understand why he wasn't doing a very good job.
  
  
  
  ***END OTHER PEOPLES WRITING***
  
                                

  Doktar - 70 Troll Priest - Perenolde
• retrospectic Member UncommonPosts: 1,466

  March 2011

  
  Originally posted by danJ188

  Because it puts together much of how people feel is wrong with the game?It isnt a exxageration. Thousands, if not millions of people feel this way about Cata. It was bungled, and ill developed late in the game. One has to wonder if Blizzard even cares much at this point how well patches and expansions go for WoW, when it's appearent the're already pushing their best works on their new pet project, Titan. Two years before release, and they're already boasting it's in a playable stage.

  Cata was one of the best things that Blizzard could have done to the game.  They made the entrance content at 85 difficult.  The 80-85 experience was well developed and nearly bug free.  The dungeons were fun and difficult in starter gear.  The raids are the same way.  If you think it isn't fun, don't play, but don't spread misinformation.

  Doktar - 70 Troll Priest - Perenolde
• Xasapis Member RarePosts: 6,337

  March 2011

  What they did was transform the quest system into a single player choo choo linear train and the open world into a lobby instanced game. WoW has finally managed to become DDO after 6 years of "evolution".

  Really. If I want to play Dragonage, I don't need to pay a subscription for it.
• Germaximus_S Member UncommonPosts: 1,061

  March 2011

  lol Just because people disagree with what was said doesnt mean they think the game is perfect, dont be stupid.

  I wouldnt doubt more people like myself quit the game simply because they played it for so long and its time for something else.

  Jeremiah 8:21 I weep for the hurt of my people; I stand amazed, silent, dumb with grief.
  Join me on Twitch Facebook Twitter 
• retrospectic Member UncommonPosts: 1,466

  March 2011

  
  Originally posted by danJ188

  I don't play, unlike most of you people, I expect quality in my games, and Cata doesn't have it. Wrath had some, but nothing will ever touch vanilla or BC WoW. Other then raid difficulty in the beginning, BC was probably the best WoW ever had to offer. I played that game since day 1, in november, and even before that in a beta phase. Don't sit there and try to lecture me about "It's not the truth, misinformation, oh, you have no proof.." I have known entire guilds just dissapear in the past few months. It is unejoyable for a large proportion of people.

   You said millions of people.  You have no proof of that mass exodus from the game.  You are using that information to validate the original post.  You cannot validate information that is purely opinion and based on information that isn't true (healing is one spell, tanks all have the same cooldowns).

  What really surprises me here is that you think The Burning Crusade was the best expansion.  At that point in the game the grind was even more tedious and less rewarding.  The bosses were hard because gear was very difficult to acquire and things to far longer to accomplish with more time to invest. Are you talking about post 3.0 nerf?  Are you talking about after the change to heroics? At either point in the game it was easy to acquire a full set of raiding gear with very little effort.  We aren't at that time in the game. If you want your free badge gear, come back in a few months.

  Get over it, and stop clammering to shut out critics that do not like it. Thinks will never change if all anyone hears is rosey "Everythings fine!"Well, everything isnt fine. Healing's been gutted, and is mind numbing. Tankign is not fun. "Difficulty" was not added in a fun way, it was just made harder, period. If there is no fun in the difficulty, then why would you subject yourself to it? Heroics, dailies..one big massive grind, that for the most part, a normal player will simply lose interest in.These are not things I simply pick up on forums, not things I just pass on from word of mouth. I played two months of Cata, and that is what I saw firsthand. What I hear from people who STILL play, hoping things will change.

  1. I never said everything was fine.  That's another generalization you've made that you can't really back up.

  2. Healing is still varied.  Sure, many of the spells are similar, but from my raiding experience, they don't have serve the same purpose.  Each healer brings a unique toolbox to a raid.  If you think that they are all the same you are not doing anything that requires your healer to think.

  3.  Tanking is quite fun from what I've heard.  For the first time tanks are actually placing on the meters.  I've heard more than once (I actually feel like I'm tanking).  In wrath threat was a non-issue for a majority of the expansion.  Now, tanks have to work for threat.  If you don't find doing your job well as a tank fun, then you probably shouldn't be playing one.

  4. The forums are word-of-mouth.  They are heresay usually derived from bad play experiences.  You can literally type drivel in the forums while you're playing the game.  You don't think people translate bad groups into core game failures?  It happens all the time.

  What I really get from all of this is that the game is too difficult.  The grind is not as rewarding as it was at the end of wrath or BC, so you feel like your time spend doesn't equal the reward you get.  Honestly, wrath gave players the worst mentality when it came to acquiring gear.  

  So don't sit there and dismiss everything that's said, because it's YOU personal opinion the game is just fine. You can pad numbers, and certaintly WoW will never lose it's 12 million subs, probably not even half of that. But the game is in decline, and unless it's changed, it will stay that way, and linger. WoW will never die. EQ still goes, and still releases expansions, I hardly doubt WoW will ever pull the plug. But it's a sorry state for something that was so dominant to put out something so dissapointing to the -general- player base.

  The game isn't "just fine".  The portions of the game I enjoy work well.  I won't pad numbers as much as you have because I frankly don't know or care about the number of subs the game has.  The whole point of replying to this thread was because of how misinformed the original post seemed to be.  Some of his information was just wrong.

  Doktar - 70 Troll Priest - Perenolde
• helthros Member UncommonPosts: 1,449

  March 2011

  
  Originally posted by Deathofsage

  Interesting read, and yeah OP i know you didn't write this but addressing the anonymous writer's thoughts--

  To be fair, Naxxramas was recycled content and was not received very well. It was greatly nerfed and people were upset about it for an entire expansion. Granted Cata isn't directly recycling content but instead recycled mechanics and it's nice to see Onyxia again, I was worried last time we played with her when she wouldn't get back up. (lol)

   

  You, sir, pulled that out of your bum. People LOVED the re-release of Naxx. Many people that never finished Naxx and EVEN MORE people that never even set foot in Naxx (Vanilla, the glory days as people like to think) were absolutely thrilled to see the instance through. The fights were a lot of fun and people received it extremely well. A lot of time and effort went into creating Naxx when something like 2% saw it, that's why it was released and I think you are dead wrong about it not being received well.