Reddit reviews World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Expansion Set - (Obsolete)

A lot of what I'd say can be read by this guy or the same game guy or these guys or This person, or any other faucet of (if it's still being updated) of the game. You'll find skepticsm for Cata AND Mists OR just skepticism for Cata, usually defined and repeated for various, yet similar reasons. This isn't me cherrypicking, mind you, being a small collection (least, part of it) as to why Cata was worth quitting over.

But my rants, usually, stem from a few things. (yes, these are the short versions)
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PVE

The Deathwing encounter was a straight up rip off of Akylios from Rift, which had been out for months at the time and was tuned down due to how often Trion updates their game, and that's for Deathwing alone. The previous tier of raiding was 7 encounter dungeon with a grindy daily hub attached and no clear form of progression. The patch before THAT one there was no new raiding tier. To that end it seemed like Blizzard dropped the ball for end game raiders that still cared about the game. Heroics were just "bosses hit harder and drop slightly better loot" for instances and heroics, not gaining any depth or anything else to set them apart from their former selves.

In the end, it was shallow. Not even in the Skyrim sense of shallow that there are redeeming qualities (an ocean with depth of a puddle, there being a lot of things to do at least, everything hinging on what you did). The best thing about Cata is arguably the inclusion of the Raid Finder since it gave people their 'Karazhan' (piss easy raid used to gear up while the real raiding content was separated and vastly different and harder), as much flak as it gets.

PvP
Blizzard decided to inflate everyone's health pools for PvP in Cata, making it 'harder to kill people'. The obvious problem with that is that characters with high burst or high survivibility and damage would make that point moot. roughly 2 years later that little 'mistake' has caused has caused PvP to be a matter of quick draw with gear dependancy, losing any skill requirement needed to perform. It's the worst the game has ever been, making Wrath of the Lich King's odd balance (good as long as you didn't Arena) look like a gift from the gods.

Moving back 2 years, toward the release of Cata? WoW PvP (namely Arena) was dropped from MLG due to 'It's constantly changing form and lack of balance' (see: It's tripe), and hasn't made a return since. Undetered WoW was picked up by another competitive tourney as a saving throw, only for it to never materialize into the tourney proper when it was held months later. In the end, 2 years later and still no return to MLG or anything, it shows that nobody with a sane mind is willing to touch WoW as it was (a recent patch undoing what Cata did and thensome). And this was the expansion that heralded "Bringing the War back in World of Warcraft".

RP

There's an RP rant, it encompassing how the game's lore was treated during Cata.

Cata's overarching story (what I'm willing to wrap my head around) was that at first we were (re)introduced to Deathwing as a large, objectively bad badperson (the last two main 'villains' of their expansions having small qualities of redemption, whereas Deathwing is M.Bison in dragon form). He faffed around, destroying things in his wake and fucking up the world until....he suddenly stopped becoming the main focus because Trolls be flippin' out, mon. Then Ragnaros is doing stuff on his own and is threatening to out Deathwing Deathwing while Deathwing is...well, not doing a damn thing. After ReRagnaros is dealt with Deathwing has suddenly Rereappeared to be defeated because he is now the main problem again again. And at the end of the day the Aspects lose their powers empowering the Dragon Soul they stole OUT OF TIME from when Deathwing first used it (which made him gain traction in the first place and would otherwise moot everything he did BUT SHHH) and Thrall (who became a neutral NPC at best and a wild-eyed hippy at worst) and his out-of-nowhere-with-a-really-cool-voice girlfriend are having a baby, that part being important to symbolize the world is saved.

As you can tell it's all over the place and not very good. Worse yet, they wasted many a perfectly good storyline (including the one they actually mentioned)

What didn't happen/was conveyed was that Ironforge got new leaders in the form of fucking Muradin (back from the dead as a DEATH KNIGHT), a Wildhammer Chieftan and a Blackrock Dwarf/warlock all working together nicely, how some lore figures disappeared or reappeared (Black Dragons doing bad things? Sablemane or any other 'good' Black Dragon are never seen again), and many other little stories that would've been infinitely more interesting than 'Trolls flipping out' and such. The biggest problem out of all of these is that much is/was conveyed through the comics and novels without many/any hint of this being in game (if you're lucky, see the dwarf triad above), like Blizzard automatically assumes you to know this. I'm a lore hound, if you hadn't noticed, and even knowing all this makes my head hurt with all the sudden characterization of people we, in-game, suddenly know.

But hey, you know. Vanity slots for gear, only taking them half a decade to implement.

Smaller things

"They redid many leveling zones" some may say being the main focus of Cata with things getting fucked up. Problem is Blizzard has been doing this with their zones since Vanilla (Duskwallow Marsh was remade thrice before Cata), any arguement that 'the world is no longer static since it's new!!!' going out the window with the previous statement and the addendum that '2 years later the world is still static, just in a different kind of static'. Every other (arguably) good thing about Cata goes to that tune. "They redid Deadmines and SFK to not be old content" gets conjected with "Now it's old content again, now that everyone has done it a million times" and so on and so forth.

One could argue that Cata's forcefully linear storytelling in a static universe only hurt the game, the 80-85 grind being an automatic chore at this point, whoes saving grace is that it takes a day to complete at most.
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At first? Mists was starting look like Cata 2.0, as Zell pointed out with many similar derptastic models returning even after they didn't work the first time. Mists has been in beta for a long time and has slowly changed to something far better and coherent (maybe). We'll only know, objectively, after a few months of it being good or not.

Myself? I'm on the fence. I understand that what makes me revile Cata is only amplifying what's good for Mists of Pandaria. As giddy and happy as the upcoming expansion makes me feel, from what I've observed and done myself (recent patch ACTUALLY bring the War back in World of Warcraft) I'm going to do the smart thing and give it some time. To that end, that is a Vanilla player's proper recommendation for the expansion, for what it's worth.

1-70 Cheapest, Comes with a free month; note all keys are battle chest keys now

70-80 Wrath of the Litch King

80-85 Cataclysm

85-90 Mysts of Pandaria, Coming out some time within the next 6 months.

So 1-85 now is $65 with a free month... Not too bad, $65 is a pretty decent price point. I think i paid like $140 over the years for xpacs.

>15$ a month for a game we all payed hundreds to get up to date is a bit too much for the quality of the game.

Hundreds? $61 would get you everything off amazon to be up to date and a free month.

$13.35 - http://www.amazon.com/World-Warcraft-Battle-Chest-Pc/dp/B009716ESA

$4.92 - http://www.amazon.com/World-Warcraft-Wrath-Lich-Expansion-Mac/dp/B000VJTJNE

$17.99 - http://www.amazon.com/World-Warcraft-Cataclysm-Pc/dp/B002I0HKIU

$25.95 - http://www.amazon.com/World-Warcraft-Mists-Pandaria-PC-Mac/dp/B0050SZBP6

There has NEVER been a time where it cost over $100 to get the base game and all the expansions either.

This + This + This is about $85

> the basic upgrade to the Battle Chest (which comes with 30 days) is $19.99. If you wanted everything altogether through Mists of Pandaria, you could buy it in a bundle pack as a digital purchase through Battle.net and that would save you approximately $20.

Buying WoW on Amazon is generally cheaper.

Battlechest: $20 from Blizzard, $17 from Amazon
Cataclysm: $10 from Blizzard, $8 from Amazon
MoP: $40 from Blizzard, $20 from Amazon

I don't actually see the bundle pack Araxom is talking about on the Blizzard store, but if we assume it's $20 off the above prices, that's still $50 for the whole kit and kaboodle from Blizzard vs. $45 from Amazon.

Now if you don't mind waiting for one of Blizzard's periodic Half Off Everything sales, that might be even cheaper, but who knows when the next one of those will happen.

It's cheapest on amazon:

Vanilla + Burning Crusade

Wrath of the Lich King

Cataclysm

Total: $79.97

Subscription is $15/mo with the first month free, discounts if you buy 3 or 6 months in advance. You can also get free months if you recruit new players or "resurrect" players who haven't played in a long time, and sometimes you can find 60 day game time cards on sale as they're fairly ubiquitous.

The trial version is nice if you want to play around with the game, but unfortunately you can't join guilds or chat with anyone that doesn't interact with you first. Give it a whirl at least, and try the dungeon finder when you hit level 15. You can either buy digital upgrades or use boxed copy codes to upgrade from a trial account.

There are 4 xpacs, Burning Crusade, WotLK, Cataclysm, and Mists of Pandaria. Burning crusade and Wrath of the Lich King come in the $20 battle chest, Cataclysm is $20, and Pandaria is $40. However these are retail prices and there are often sales (one for Pandaria direct from Blizzard just ended, sadly), and you don't really need these xpacs to start out unless you REALLY want your first character to be a panda or a goblin. The base set will keep you busy for a while leveling your first character or two especially if you're new to the game. I may be able to get a limited number of free xpac codes as well if one is having trouble buying all the expansions and has endeared themselves to the guild :3

Edit: Cata is $15 on Amazon, for instance http://www.amazon.com/World-Warcraft-Cataclysm-Pc/dp/B002I0HKIU and pandaland $25.50 (but only one copy?) http://www.amazon.com/World-Warcraft-Mists-Pandaria-PC-Mac/dp/B0050SZBP6/ref=sr_1_1?s=videogames&ie=UTF8&qid=1370458709&sr=1-1&keywords=mists+of+pandaria

Edit2: oh and the battle chest for $14 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009716ESA